How to prepare your home's exterior for the summer months

Summer's on the way, and that's a good reason to be excited. However, it would certainly be inconvenient if you were to enjoy the usual thrills of the great outdoors only to later return home and find that it's developed a problem you could have helped avoid.

For this reason, we have decided to provide several pieces of advice that we reckon you should follow if you are eager to prevent a residential issue blighting your summer fun.

Inspect and refresh - if necessary - the front door

Find a screwdriver and use it to probe weather stripping that surrounds your door, HGTV advises. If you spot any gaps that have emerged in that stripping, now is a good time to caulk them while the weather is still good.

Your door might also have developed the problem of loosened hinges. These can come about due to temperature changes, but you can now take the opportunity to tighten those hinges.

Check and wash the windows

Gaps might also have formed in your window framing, so don't neglect to caulk those openings. Might harsh winter weather have adversely affected your window mechanics? You can judge for yourself if, a few times in succession, you open and close each window to test it.

With all of that done, you can move onto washing the windows. You can prepare for that washing by filling a bucket with a cup of vinegar and another of ammonia, plus a gallon of hot water. Also, use warm water to fill a second bucket.

You would start washing the windows by using the vinegar-ammonia solution; later, you would switch to washing just with the water. However, we would advise that you do all of this only when the weather is cloudy, as abundant sun could too quickly dry the solution and so leave streaks.

Don't condense the job of ensuring good condensing

How does the condensing unit for your home's air conditioning look when you are outside? Can you even see it? It wouldn't be a good sign if grass or leaves have grown across the unit, as it could malfunction as a result, QuickAndDirtyTips.com cautions.

Therefore, be sure to clear away the grass and leaves - and properly clean this unit in accordance with what is specified in the user manual for this product. Also, don't forget to check that power is disconnected from the unit before you start cleaning it.

Inspect your roof

You might be concerned about safety implications of doing this yourself. However, your first step could be just crossing the street from your house and then using binoculars to inspect that roof.

In doing this, you could help yourself to spot whether any particular tiles have curled, cracked or gone missing. Also, before putting down those binoculars, check whether metal flashing surrounding the chimney and pipes looks damaged.