Real tips for new homeowners

You’re responsible for the maintenance of your property, and if you don’t keep up with it, there can be consequences.

Case in point: My driveway is in the back of my house, then there’s a driving path, then a grassy hill that is part of the street behind mine. I had no idea that the stretch of grassy hill that spans the width of my house is part of my property until I got a ticket from my township because the grass on the hill was overgrown.

I trimmed the grass on the hill right away, and the township excused my ticket.

If you’ve never had a lawn to maintain before, but now you do, don’t worry. Lawn care is the only household chore I enjoy because I’m out in the sun, in the fresh air, and fresh-cut grass has a melon scent to it.

Get yourself a good lawn mower and a trimmer/edger and you’re all set. I prefer battery-operated machines since they are more environmentally friendly and because having to keep a tank of gasoline in your shed seems dangerous.

Once a week during the summer, mow your grass and then use the trimmer to take care of the edges of the perimeter where the mower can’t reach.

If you need to fix little things around the house, a nice toolkit will cover all your bases and is relatively inexpensive — especially when compared to calling a repair shop to handle something you might have been able to handle yourself.

Make sure your toolkit has all the essentials: a hammer, Phillips head and flathead screwdrivers, an adjustable wrench, wire cutters, pliers, a level, a tape measure and a box cutter.

If your home already had major appliances when you bought it, it’s unlikely the previous owner thought to find the owner’s manuals and leave them for you.

I remember scratching my head trying to figure out how to use my washing machine when I first moved in.

A few months in, my refrigerator started making ice cubes so rapidly the freezer was filling up with cubes and the button I believed would stop that did nothing. Without being able to refer to the owner’s manual, I was left guessing.

Go online and type in the make and model of your appliance and search for the owner’s manual. Most manuals are available online as a PDF. This will save you a lot of time and frustration.

Speaking of going online: If something isn’t working in your home, and it’s not a dire situation, before you call a repair shop, take to the internet and see if there’s a simple fix online.

A perfect example of this: My freezer started to develop frost. Every day, it got worse and worse, until one day I opened the freezer and found tiny penguins sliding around an arctic wonderland. (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. But only slight.) I was about to hire someone to fix it but decided to go on YouTube instead.

Turns out one of the most likely causes of frost build-up is the freezer door not sealing when closed, which allows air and moisture in. I took out the freezer drawers and found the culprit: a pack of frozen peas that fell behind the drawers and wasn’t allowing the door to seal. I scraped out all the frost, and in the ensuing weeks it didn’t come back. A $0 DIY repair.

I’m not a handy person. At all. If something breaks, I will likely have to shell out some money to have a professional repair it. But I was surprised at what I could do on my own after some help from my friend the internet.

I was able to fix a sluggish bathroom sink with just a bucket, a wrench and my vacuum cleaner. There was a hairball clogging the drain that liquid clog remover wouldn’t handle. Turns out I just had to turn off the water, unscrew the J-shaped pipe under the sink, and clean out the clog. I was having trouble getting the hair out, but the hose attachment on my vacuum did the trick and sucked it right out.

Another repair that was surprisingly simple: replacing my toilet. The hardest part of replacing a toilet is lifting it up. It’s definitely a two-person job. A toilet weighs about 100 pounds. I was able to separate the tank from the base and carry them in two parts on my own, but my back regretted that decision. Replacing the toilet was pretty simple after following the steps from a video tutorial I found. Just be sure to do thorough research before you get started.

Of course, you don’t want to do any repairs yourself that could be dangerous. Anything involving wiring, gas lines and things of that nature is best left to the professionals.

If you’re like me, your down payment on your house was, by far, the most amount of money you’ve ever spent in one fell swoop. After the sticker shock wears off, you may find yourself reluctant to make any big purchases for a while.

The one type of expense where you need to make an exception: structural repairs. Take care of those as soon as possible to prevent more damage that will lead to even more costly repairs.

I have a leak in my office ceiling that I put off for a long time. I just slid a bucket under it, put some towels on the floor, and told myself I would take care of it when I had some money saved for it. Well, having put it off or a while, once I do repair the leak (I haven’t yet), I also need to replace a part of the office ceiling, and the kitchen ceiling below that, and the basement ceiling below that, because the leak went all the way through. Waiting did nothing but compound the expense.

The central air filter is most likely a big cardboard-edged rectangle that slides into the unit (or occasionally elsewhere). Gently slide out the current one — noting which way the filter faces — to find out the name of the filter, which will be printed on it somewhere. You should be able to find replacement filters at a hardware store or online.

A few months into living in my house, I got a bill from my township that said I owed $1,700 in property taxes. It was my understanding that all my property taxes were rolled into my monthly mortgage payment, held in an escrow account by my lender along with my mortgage insurance premiums.

So I took a picture of the bill and sent it to my lender, who verified that the property taxes noted in the bill were indeed already rolled into my mortgage payments, and I didn’t have to pay the bill. I just kept it on file.

Particularly when you’re a new homeowner, a very large portion of your mortgage payments go to interest, so the deduction at the end of the first full year as a homeowner can be significant.

My first full year as a homeowner, my mortgage interest was what put me above the standard deduction and allowed me to do an itemized deduction and get a much bigger return.

Of course, your mileage may vary. I’m not a tax consultant. Be sure to talk with your accountant — or find an accountant if you’re currently doing your own taxes.