Remember the old jingle, ‘it takes a licking and keeps on ticking’? It was the famous tagline from the Timex watch advertisements. The gist of the ad is that no matter what you threw at it, a Timex watch kept working. If you think ab…
Living in a dense urban area like Chicagoland can be something of a dirty job. And the task of cleaning off months (or years) of accumulated grime and dirt from the exterior of a building takes much more than a scrub-brush and a bottle of …
It's a common enough story: the condominium was relatively new, but from the start its board of directors was stingy with maintenance and repair dollars. Then the recession struck, and the percentage of unpaid maintenance fees spiked. …
As spring dawns anew on a frigid Chicago landscape, many condo dwellers will get their first prolonged looks at Mother Nature’s wintery ravages. Nowhere is this better seen than on a property’s exterior siding, much of which might need c…
They say a house is only as strong as its foundation. While it's true that a bad roof or shoddy plumbing can set your building back a lot of money, a foundation in disrepair can put the entire structure at risk, and can cost tens—even h…
After the four walls of a given structure, the roof is sometimes referred to as the “fifth plane”—and just like the walls that hold it up, the roof is an all-important structure that can make or break a building’s performance. Chicagola…
In Chicago, urban high-rises with sidewalk frontage and suburban HOAs containing walking paths, parking lots, and service roads are reliant on their paved surfaces for conducting their everyday business. Therefore, it's crucial that bu…
There was a time when most large residential developments relied on glaring floodlights to brighten parking lots, front porches and entryways. Today, there is more to exterior lighting than just chasing shadows away and discouraging cr…
When you consider all the different exterior components that a condo association has to deal with, decks are sort of like the Rodney Dangerfield of the list—they rarely get any respect. “Decks are definitely something that peop…
More often than not, when boards or associations broach the issue of their buildings “going green,” images of bamboo flooring, hemp drapes, or solar panels on the roof suddenly spring to mind. The impression seems to be that in a condo,…