Balcony 12

[Maitane Roderiques]

Abalcony (from Italian: balcone, "scaffold"[a]) is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. They are commonly found on multi-level houses, apartments and cruise ships.

In contrast, a Juliet balcony does not protrude out of the building. It is usually part of an upper floor, with a balustrade only at the front, resembling a small loggia. A modern Juliet balcony often involves a metal barrier placed in front of a high window that can be opened. In the UK, the technical name for one of these was officially changed in August 2020 to a Juliet guarding.

A unit with a regular balcony will have doors that open onto a small patio with railings, a small patio garden or skyrise greenery. A French balcony is a false balcony, with doors that open to a railing with a view of the courtyard or the surrounding scenery below.

Sometimes balconies are adapted for ceremonial purposes, e.g. that of St. Peter's Basilica at Rome, when the newly elected pope gives his blessing urbi et orbi after the conclave. Inside churches, balconies are sometimes provided for the singers, and in banqueting halls and the like for the musicians.

In addition to functioning as an outdoor space for a dwelling unit, balconies can also play a secondary role in building sustainability and indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Balconies have been shown to provide an overhang effect that helps prevent interior overheating by reducing solar gain, and may also have benefits in terms of blocking noise and improving natural ventilation within units.[3]

Balconies can be made out of various materials; historically, stone was the most commonly used. With the rise of technology and the modern age, balconies are now able to be built out of other materials, including glass and stainless steel to provide a durable and modern look to a building.[citation needed]

One of the most famous uses of a balcony is in traditional staging of the scene that has come to be known as the "balcony scene" in Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet (though the scene makes no mention of a balcony, only of a window at which Juliet appears).

Manufacturers' names for their balcony railing designs often refer to the origin of the design, e.g. Italian balcony, Spanish balcony, Mexican balcony, Ecuadorian balcony. They also refer to the shape and form of the pickets used for the balcony railings, e.g. knuckle balcony. Within the construction industry it is normal for balconies to be named descriptively. For example, slide-on cassette balconies referring to the modern method used to install aluminum balconies or cast-in-situ balconies relating to concrete balconies poured on a construction site.

One of the main reasons we chose our fifth-floor apartment in Copenhagen was because of the 20 metres of balcony space split between two balconies: one facing east, the other west. Perfect. (Even if this is at the expense of space actually inside the apartment.)

Not only do fabric pots help with drainage, but they also make it so much easier to move things around. If you want to avoid the wet fabric sitting directly on your balcony floor, you can place the pots on stands (some have wheels that make it easier to move them around).

Our mint plant also refuses to die, and is now making a valiant effort to grow back after dwindling in the winter. The same for our chives and parsley.

Other herbs can be a bit hit-and-miss on our balcony, including basil and coriander, but I like to companion plant them under other plants they get on well with. For example, basil under tomatoes and aubergines.

Our biggest gardening surprise in Copenhagen has been our trusty lemon tree, which finally delivered us with beautifully ripe lemons to last us through the Christmas period. If you have a climate that will make citrus trees happy (or lots of sun in summer, like our balcony), why not try growing citrus on your balcony?

I love, love, love Scabiosa. You can think of it as a less fussy alternative to lavender. It has gorgeous purple flowers (although you can get pretty varieties in pink, white, and other colours) and a super long growing season in most places.

Just as tomatoes and basil taste delicious together, they also grow well together. Tomatoes also grow well with parsley, nasturtiums (which are said to improve the flavour of tomatoes), and calendula.

This is something I do with a small Bokashi bin that fits nicely in the same cupboard as our bin. You just add food scraps, cover with a layer of the Bokashi yeast, and then press down the lid to compress it.

I do this at times when I can put the bokashi tea to use as a (heavily diluted) liquid fertiliser, and/or when I can put the bokashi scraps directly at the bottom of larger containers to then infuse through the soil.

There are all sorts of organic fertilisers that your balcony veg will love, but one plant treat I use all the time is liquid seaweed fertiliser. It seems to make everything in my balcony containers happy.

Gardening expert Monty Don shares how he feeds all container plants weekly with liquid seaweed or homemade comfrey feed. Monty explains that both are high in potash to encourage flower formation and keep the plant going strongly into autumn.

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With balcony hopping, you can focus your time on being truly impactful during critical moments. This is harder than you think when you are switching balconies every 30 or 60 minutes in a day. In a given day, you might be a member of a sports team, a student, an employee, a manager, a mentor, a team lead, a decision maker on product, a member of a leadership team, the family nutritionist, a daughter or son, a parent, a friend...the list goes on. You can play a lot of roles, but make sure that when you stand on one balcony, you stand on two feet, lightly balanced and ready to go. You are on that balcony with 100% of your attention.

How do you know which balcony you should be spending the most time on in a given week? Start by itemizing what balconies you stand on in a given day or week. You will find that there are potentially a lot more than you thought. Ask yourself if you have been 100% on those balconies or if you have been straddling. This is not meant to be a guilt-inducing exercise. Taking inventory of your balconies is an important step to understanding where you spend time.

Challenges in leadership can come from many places. Recently, I had the opportunity to practice shifting my perspective, taking the balcony view, so that I could lead effectively in a challenging situation.

What does this challenge look like from a different vantage point? The balcony view gives us perspective to evaluate the situation. We find different solutions that we could not see while in the middle of things on ground level.

Schedule time on your calendar to gain a fresh perspective. I find scheduling time for reflection daily, as well as times of relaxation and refreshment on a regular basis works best. Gaining margin in your life will help you deal more effectively with challenges as they occur.

I have a Coop unit that I rent out in Virginia. The Coop Association is requiring specific owners to replace/repair our balconies (built in the 50's) and pay the entire cost. We had an Engineering firm assess them a while back. My question is how I apply this expense to my taxes. Can I deduct the entire expense or will it be a depreciation.

If the replacement or repair of the deck would not materially increase the value or substantially prolong the useful life of the property, the cost can be expensed. Otherwise, it must be capitalized and depreciated.

An "improvement" must be depreciated. A "repair" can be expensed. The difference is that a repair maintains the property in as-was condition. An improvement, also referred to as a "betterment", improves the value of the property and/or extends the useful life of the property or one of its subsystems. (Hence, replacing a 50 year old furnace is an improvement because it extends the useful life of the HVAC system even though it might not get you a better sales price.)

Expenses you incur that add value to the property. Expenses for this are entered in the Assets/Depreciation section and depreciated over time. Property improvements can be done at any time after your initial purchase of the property. It does not matter if it was your residence or a rental at the time of the improvement. It still adds value to the property.

2) The improvement must add "real" value to the property. In other words, when the property is appraised by a qualified, certified, licensed property appraiser, he will appraise it at a higher value, than he would have without the improvements.

Now, if there was no "event" that caused the balcony to be unusable, (such as hurricane, tornado, fire, or something of an "immediate damage" cause), then this is not a repair. Considering the balcony is 50 years old, there's no question that replacing the balcony will increase the value of the property as a whole. The balcony has become unsafe over time, and "time" is not an event that caused something usable yesterday, to become unsafe and therefore unusable today.

This particular property improvement would be classified as residential rental real estate and depreciated over 27.5 years with depreciation starting on the date the project is completed and the balcony can actually be used for its "intended purpose".

@golomb-andrew It is a fairly safe bet to state that the IRS would be expecting the balcony replacement to be capitalized, assuming the replacement falls outside the de minimis safe harbor, considering the virtual definition of an improvement that is found in the treasury regulation at the link below.

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