JDL Blog

JDL Homes now has a YouTube channel! 

Doug and Jeff are on the job site with camera in-hand to give you inside tips, tricks and info about new home construction and major renovations.

Be sure to visit our new YouTube channel here and subscribe to get our latest videos.

JDL Homes is excited to announce that we are now a BuiltGreen™ certified builder!

BuiltGreen™ homes are 3rd party certified, energy efficient, and environmentally responsible. 

The BuiltGreen™ designation adds value your home by promoting the use of resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, construction practices and products.

Visit the BuiltGreen™ website to learn more.

We're super excited to be working on our own series of colour palettes for you!

Here is our first - Lisbon Fountain . . . Dreaming of Portugal after days and days of rain! Enjoy!

We are always on the lookout for new sources of colour and design inspiration. Here are two websites that will be sure to help you with inspiration for your next project.

Prepare yourself - they're addictive! Don`t say we didn't warn you!

Pinterest  is a visual-thinkers dream.

This virtual pin-board is a smorgasboard of visual design inspiration. You will find everything from architecture, design, colour, fashion, food, crafts . . . Anything and everything beautiful, delicious, creative and crafty.

You can re-pin Pins from other people's boards onto boards that you create, or you can surf the web and pin pictures and links as you go.

Each Pin is made up of a photo that leads back to the original source website. Found a backsplash you love? Pin It. Add it to your Dream Kitchen board where you'll be able to see it along side the cabinets you love and the flooring you crave. And when your contractor asks you where you found it, you'll be able to click the link to take you back to the supplier's website. Genius.

You can start a board for each project, each room, each obsession.

Start by following a handful of boards created by others, add the Pin It button to your browser's tool bar and Pin away.

You can check out my Pinboards to get you started!

Design Seeds is a new find for me. I wish I knew about it when I was picking the colours for my house!

Jessica Colaluca complies breathtakingly beautiful colour palettes - absolute eye candy. If you're about to start a new project, her website would be a fantastic place to start dreaming.

There's not really much you can say about this fabulous resource; the colour palettes speak for themselves. Gorgeous.

In the spirit of our blog series "Spend a Dollar to Save a Dime", we thought we'd try something a bit different, just to mix it up!

So this time, rather than telling you how to avoid spending a lot of money unwisely, we'll tell you how to spend just a little bit of money very wisely!

Air leaks can account for as much as 30-40% of the heat loss from your house. Weather-stripping is one of the first steps you should take to stop wasting energy and save on the cost of heating your home.

Weather-stripping is a narrow piece of metal, vinyl, rubber, felt or foam that seals the contact area between the fixed and movable sections of a joint. Weather-stripping prevents air infiltration around windows and doors by eliminating gaps between the frames and the moving parts when they are closed. All exterior doors, as well as doors leading to an attic or garage, should be weatherized, as should all operable windows.

Some other benefits of weather-stripping include:

    Improved window performance.
    A more comfortable interior.
    Reduced window condensation and related damage to frames and finishes.
    A quieter home by reducing outside noise levels.
    Keeps sashes from ratteling in high winds.

The typical cost savings for sealing cracks is aproximately $0.49 per linear foot. Your efforts will pay for themselves within three to five years.   

Check out this David Suzuki video on installing weather-stripping: