Happy Friday everyone! Quick post tonight because this week has been pure madness and I need to gear up for the weekend which will no doubt be even crazier! Nothing like already hyper kids collecting sugar. Are you ready moms? :) Up early for a Halloween parade and helping with three class parties tomorrow. I […]
The post Fashion Friday – favorite jackets appeared first on The Sunny Side Up Blog.
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| leo comforter, quilt - HomeGoods, stripe pillows - similar, count your blessings pillow |
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| Design Sponge |
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| Style Me Pretty |
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| mirror, chair, desk, lamp, paint - Sherwin Williams Charming Pink |
Rental costs have soared in recent years with no signs on the horizon of that changing.
However, are private renters their own worst enemies? Possibly, according to DIT’s lecturer in housing and economics, Lorcan Sirr.
He says that competition between tenants is so fierce that they are now out-bidding each other on properties. This is driving up the price of some rental properties by as much as 50%, he claims.
“There is a lack of supply of accommodation for people to rent,” Dr Sirr told the Herald.
“Landlords don’t really set the price. Tenants are out-bidding each other for the price.
“Under the legislation we have in Ireland, rent can be increased to the market level, which is being pushed up by 30%, 40% or 50%.
“It is unaffordable for people and causes them to move away to other places and you hear of kids going to stay with their granny, etc.”
Dr Sirr says there is not enough being done for renters compared to the provisions in place for homebuyers.
“We are happy to control affordability for people in the home ownership category,” he said. “But we won’t do it in the rental sector, which is wrong.
“People don’t really have security of tenure for what I would call spurious reasons, like the landlord needing the place back for themselves or for a family member.”
Dr Sirr says the Government should introduce more measures for the private rented market.
“Rent certainty is a very good thing and there is enough extensive and detailed research from the OECD and the National Economic and Social Council to show it is good in any civilised society,” he said.
“Rent certainty should be linked to the Consumer Price Index for a period of five years.
“The first thing I would do is provide 100pc mortgage interest relief for landlords. The system we have at the moment is not fit for purpose.”
Opposition parties have called for the Government to increase housing supply and introduce more measures to help those in the rented market.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
Have your say below…
The post Are renters their own worst enemies? appeared first on MyHome.ie Advice & Blog.
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| utility knife | safety glasses | hammer | pliers | tape measure | flashlight | screwdriver | level |
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| silhouette die cutting machine |
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Dublin City Council has selected five sites to house Ireland’s first modular homes.
According to RTÉ 22 are to be delivered by the end of the year with another 128 to be fast-tracked soon after.
The prefabricated houses will be used to provide emergency accommodation for homeless families.
The five sites are Poppintree in Ballymun, Mourne Road in Crumlin, Belcamp Avenue in Coolock, St Helena’s drive in Finglas and Cherry Orchard in Ballyfermot.
It is not yet clear how many homes will go on the proposed sites.
The locations are contained in a report prepared by the council and seen by RTÉ news.
In the report the council also says that families placed in these temporary homes will be assigned a support team to assist them in finding long term accommodation.
The tenants will also have to pay some form of rent.
The report also says that the units could be used in the long term as standard social housing or student accommodation.
The matters are due to be discussed at a meeting of the council tomorrow.
The post Five possible sites identified for modular housing in Dublin appeared first on MyHome.ie Advice & Blog.
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| sofa - pillow |
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| my domaine |
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| elle |
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| clements design |
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| Popsugar |
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Galway-based auctioneers O’Donnellan & Joyce has announced its second autumn auction, which will take place in the Harbour Hotel, Galway, on Friday November 13th.
There are a large number of family homes in the city and surrounding areas and also many investment properties in areas including Limerick, Tipperary, Mayo, and Donegal, as well as Galway city and county. On offer on the day will be a number of apartment blocks and also some retail and commercial units.
For further details and open viewing times log on to www.odonnjoyce.com for full brochure and pictures of each property, or contact the O’Donnellan & Joyce auction team on 091 564212.
The last auction for 2015 will take place on Friday December 18. Anyone wishing to place a property for auction on that day should contact O’Donnellan & Joyce on 091 564212.
The post O’Donnellan & Joyce prepare for second autumn auction on November 13th appeared first on MyHome.ie Advice & Blog.
This is a project we did over the summer and kept meaning to Instagram, but it refused to be contained by the limits of one shot just like the writers of The Walking Dead refuse to care about our VERY REAL FEELINGS about very fictional characters. But I digress. So here we are, swinging by like we mentioned we might randomly do in our update post/podcast.
We had filed this idea away for waaaay down the line (thinking it would be cost and time intensive), but turns out it was actually neither. In fact, as the sun set on the very same day that we started, we got to enjoy the finished product.
We’ve always gawked lustily at the homes in our neighborhood with landscape lighting (so stately!). You know, that welcoming come-hither glow in the evening hours. And when we saw Sarah at Thrifty Decor Chick post this tutorial, it quickly leapt to the top of our to-do list. I’ll fess up that we didn’t photograph the installation process very thoroughly (read: at all), but the whole connecting wires part was pretty straight-forward.
It was the planning and buying of materials that made our heads spin just a little – mostly because there was a smattering of math and some proper material selections that had to happen. Based on the ingredients of this soup-to-nuts $99 lighting kit that Sarah mentioned, we knew we needed three basic elements: lights + a power pack + cable. It was getting the right combination of these that put the ol’ noggin to work.
The lights were the easy part, since we stuck with the same 20W halogen spotlights that came in that kit. And it also didn’t take much research (scoping houses online and around our ‘hood) to determine that we wanted one between each downstairs window and on the house’s front corners, so we bought enough to fill those spots.
The power pack is where it started to get math-y. Also called a transformer, its job is to convert your outlet’s 120V electricity to the 12V low-voltage that these lighting systems run on. But it’s up to you to make sure you have one with enough power to illuminate all of your lights. So you add up the total wattage of all of your fixtures (in our case, 20 Watts X 9 lights = 180 Watts) and then choose a power pack with enough wattage, plus a little extra (at Lowe’s they suggest at least 20W extra). We chose a 200 watt transformer, which just plugs into any exterior outlet, and made sure it was a “multi-tap” version (meaning we could connect or “tap in” more than one wire). Which leads us to another thing we learned along the way…
The cable also requires some forethought. You typically want to keep your cable as short as possible (voltage drops the farther you get from your power source) and you risk your last light looking dimmer than your first one if you connect too many lights on any one long length of cable. So there are all sorts of strategies and charts for wiring your lights for the most even placement of lights along your wires (there are also other charts like this one to help tell you what size/gauge wire you should be buying). We split our lights onto two separate sections of similar-length 14-gauge cable, each running to either side of the front porch based on some of those recommendations.
Again, once we knew where everything was going, the actual wire-connecting, light-placement, and wire-burying was a cinch. You do all the wire connecting before the transformer is plugged in (three cheers for no live wires to worry about while you work!) so first we staked our spotlights into the ground and loosely laid our cable along them. Then we just connected each light to the main cable by screwing the light’s connector cap tightly over the cable according to the installation instructions – no tools needed. Below is a connection we unearthed this weekend so you can sorta see what it looks like.
Since we used two cables instead of one long one that loops back to the transformer box, we did have to figure out what to do with the outside ends of each cable. After some research we went with waterproof wire caps which are made to withstand moisture and corrosion (we hear they’re great for buried applications like this).
Then it was time to connect the cables to the underside of the transformer, which did call for some basic wire clippers to expose the end of the wires. Once we did that, we could plug the transformer into the outlet on our front porch, and mount it to the brick to keep it a few inches off the ground (both for looks and in case of any post-rain porch puddles). We nudged the planter to the side for this photo, but it normally hides the box and outlet from view.
Once we had connected everything and plugged in the transformer, we used the darker evening light to fine tune everything (like tweaking the angle of the spotlights and the placement of the stakes) to make sure we liked how the light was hitting the house. There’s about a foot of cord between the light and where it attaches to the cable, so even after everything’s connected you’ve got some wiggle room to move lights around a bit if needed.
After we were done tweaking our placement at night, all we had to do was dig everything in when we had some daylight the next morning. So we dug a small trench a few inches below ground level and buried all of the exposed cables, connectors, and wire caps. Since they’re all contained within the bounds of our mulch bed, it’s nice that we don’t have to worry about cutting anything with an aerator or some other lawn tool.
As you can see in the time-lapse video below they automatically turn on when it gets dark thanks to a light sensor on the power pack. It also has a digital timer where you can set how many hours they stay on (ours go off around the time we hit the hay). We love that they’re so auto-pilot and in total I think they cost us a little over $200 and took about four hours to install.
Oops, sorry, that’s just a video of a cat dressed up like a pirate. My bad. Here’s the right one:
Oh, and check out the set-up we used to capture the video above. Why yes, that’s a selfie stick clamped to an old stepladder (we used the iPhone’s time lapse feature and then went inside for dinner while it did its thing). I’m sure the neighbors were scratching their heads over that one.
We’re happy to report that these lights have been going strong for quite a few months and we still get excited whenever we roll down the street at night and they’ve already clicked on, ready to welcome us home. We think they’ll be especially nice on a weekend like this one coming up, both for guiding trick-or-treaters on Saturday and for coping with the earlier sunset after our clocks “fall back” on Sunday. Speaking of coping, I have some strongly worded Walking Dead fan-mail to draft…
