I have to admit that I am a sucker for hardwood floors, but having hardwood flooring installed is expensive. So when my wife and I discovered hardwood floors underneath the carpet of our 1950’s home, we were overjoyed. I mean, “refinishing” an existing hardwood floor is hundreds of dollars cheaper than having new hardwood installed. Sounds pretty peachy am I right? I mean how hard can it be to refinish a hardwood floor? Well, here’s a handful of things that I ran into while I refinished our floors: (more...)

Regardless of how much work you do on your home, a few simple tools can save you a lot of time and money. You don’t need to build a fence to justify owning a hammer…hanging a picture will do just fine. (more...)

I love to garden.  No, I don’t grow tomatoes and corn.  Rather, I like to garden for the sake of beauty. Luckily for me, I have 15 acres of land.  So, I have a pretty extensive canvass upon which I get to work.  As a result, I have gardens all over my property.  Each one has been named according to some feature, such as the pond garden, the doghouse garden, the bench garden, the shed garden and more.  (more...)

This is a confession and a pledge. I’m a stuffaholic, but I take solace in that I’m not alone. My husband was also a stuffaholic as were my mother and dad. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a genetic factor. Anyway, my pledge is to rid myself of all excess baggage. (more...)

Everyone loves a clean house. When the maids and butlers complete their daily chores, we can enjoy the comforts of a sparkling clean home, without the worry of the drudgery of doing it ourselves. The smell of fresh flowers, picked daily, enhance the ambiance of the dream. A smile crosses our faces and quickly turns to a frown, as we open our eyes and realize the smell is not fresh flowers, but none other than the cat box we forgot to clean, for the last three days. (more…)

Every weekend the ritual begins. Each of us starts a lawn mower and begins the pleasant task of trimming the grass. Round and round in circles, enjoying nature at its best, listening to chirping birds, enjoying the sunshine; more like getting a sunburn, hoping the high decibels from the lawn mower does not cause hearing loss and wishing the grass would mow itself. Once we finish the main lawn, the worst begins, trimming around trees and various other obstacles on the lawn. Lawn mowers are not designed to make tight circles around tree trunks, nor pointy noses to get in between the exposed roots.

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I don’t consider myself to be a shy or introverted person, but when it comes to calling service professionals I become nervous.  I’m not sure why it happens, I just don’t like calling them.  It seems here lately I’ve had many opportunities to face this particular demon head on.  I’m a school teacher, which allows me to have my summers off.  Somehow it seems that all of our home improvements fall during the summer, and obviously I’m the one to handle them seeing as I’m home. (more…)

No, deck fighting is not a new martial art form. Deck fighting for me started with a plywood deck using ¾ inch exterior plywood. It took a few years for it to deteriorate, but I couldn’t keep paint on it, so it always had that needy look. I decided to replace it when a rather heavy friend of mine darn near broke his leg. You see there was a soft spot in one corner of the plywood and that is the exact spot my friend decided to stand. The top of my friend was above deck, but his leg up to the calf ended up below deck. Fortunately, I have good friends and didn’t get sued.

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Fortunately, this story is not about one of my many screw ups. It’s about a friend of mine who just built a brand new house on the water. He found a killer two for one deal on off brand screw in fluorescent bulbs or CFLs. He couldn’t resist. What he ended up with is a disaster. In his beautiful palatial living room with an extremely high ceiling, he now has a polka dot effect with his mix of warm and cool colors. (more…)

Before I go in detail about how poor some of the “how to” knowledge is at my nearby home improvement store, let me praise them for having the tools and supplies that I need 99% of the time. I’ve chosen this story as my opening post partly because I think it’s helpful, partly because I think it is a good story, but mostly because I don’t want to sound like a darn Home Depot spokesman in my future posts.

With that said, my bother owns a few rental houses (the poor guy). One night he calls me up and says that he’ll pay me to help fix a bathtub leak. Sounded like a good deal to me until I found out what I was really getting paid for…crawling under the house. (more…)