Just got back in the house from walking the dogs and they were very upset during the walk. I couldn’t tell what was bothering them until we got around the back corner of our property and there was a black bear up on the edge of the woods. I only saw it for a brief moment, as the dogs barking must have scared it off. I’m rather glad that the barking didn’t agitate the bear into charging us.
It’s unusual to see a bear this close to the house. I am going to have to be more vigilant while outdoors from now on.
The new issue of Popular Mechanics has a list of essential tools for homeowners who work on common household repairs and do it yourself projects. Here is a good checklist of tools to have on hand:
- Sledgehammer (8 or 10 pounds)
- Center Punch
- Putty Knife
- Safety Glasses
- Adjustable Wrench
- Pipe Wrench
- Socket Wrench
- Combination Wrench
- Jigsaw
- Crosscut Saw
- Snips
- Needlenose Pliers
- Power Drill with Drill Bits
- Circular Saw
- Measuring Tape
- Hammer
- Machinist Vise
- Extension Cord (12 or 10 gauge)
- Screwdriver Set (or Multi-bit Screwdriver)
Something that is an actual bargain for the dollar is the washer and dryer that we buy for home use. They get used several times each week, in some homes they get used daily, and rarely break down or have any maintenance issues.
I have an older washer and dryer that I have been using for over 8 years. There is nothing wrong with them, but they are not the most economical machines. There have been a lot of advances in technology over the past 8n years.
The newest machines seem to be front loaders, that mount above a deep drawer unit that holds laundry detergent and other laundry supplies. The front loaders use less water, less electricity and hold larger loads than the older machines.
I really need to get a universal remote control, one that works on and for everything electronic. There are way too many remote controls laying around the entertainment center, it is easy to get confused on which one works with what. And trying to explain to someone not familiar with our system is just a road leading to no where.
When we lived in New England, I had a video security system hooked up at the shop. Since the shop was left unattended for hours at a time, Iwanted to be able to see who was on the property in the event anything turned up missing or vandalized! I had a lot of expensive equipment on the grounds, and expensive tools and equipment inside.
Before I bought that system, I asked Joe for some tips about what kind of system he liked the best. He’s had several different systems in the past, and I trusted his judgement.
Joe actually gave me one of his used systems that he didn’t need anymore, and he helped me with the installation of the system too. When we moved down here and sold that shop building, I brought the system with me. I haven’t hooked it up yet; I haven’t decided whether to hook it up to the house or to the storage shed out back!
This last weekend I was happy to finally be able to burn the brush pile that I have been building for months. There has been a drought in the area, which resulted in a burning moratorium. We’ve had a few days of rain, and they lifted the moratorium, so I burned the pile and got her done.
I was truly in my element, out there, rake in hand, tending the fire. It burned high and quick. My wife was nervous about sparks setting the nearby woods on fire, or even our roof, but I had everything under control. She is such a worrier! It’s all good!
Today was a great day to get the much needed yard work started. There is always so much to do this time of the year, but it’s all good. It feels good to outside with the sun shining, along with a nice breeze and absolutely no humidity to deal with even though we hit the 80’s. You just can’t beat that!
I’ve noticed that whenever my wife tags along with me to a home improvement store that she heads over to the department where they have address plaques on display. She’s been wanting to buy a new address plaque for our place ever since we moved here. The address sign that was already on the house was very old and corroded and my wife gets aggravated about how bad she thinks it appears to people who come to our front door.
I try to reassure her that most people don’t even notice address signs when they go to someones house, but she naturally disagrees with me. She would like to get a customized one that has our name on it as well as the house number. I’m not so sure that I want our name on it. In this day and age, sometimes a little bit of anonymity is a good safety precaution to take. What do you think? Name, or no name?
My wife and I are trying to do a little bit of repairs around the house. Money is tight, so we have been doing some comparison shopping between the two biggest home improvement stores in the area. You know the ones I’m talking about – the big blue and the big orange. We frequently get coupons in the mail from the big blue, and we are frequently seeing commercials on television that claim that the big blue has the cheapest prices. Yet when we went to compare the prices of 2×4s we found that the big orange price was almost $1 lower per 2×4. When you have to buy 100 of them, that makes a big difference! So my advice to all of you out there – don’t believe the hype. Use your head, and your phone and call around for prices! You’ll be amazed at how much money you can save with some shopping savvy!
My wife and I have been trying to figure out some storage solutions for our basement and garage areas. My sister-in-law and her 14 year old daughter have moved in with us and we are trying to accommodate the sudden increase in “stuff” in the house! My wife has suggested that we could bring in some shelving units and some lockers.
She’s thinking that maybe we could put in some Wood Lockers and shelves in rows down in the basement, creating walkways between them. I’d like to consider getting a foot locker to put at the foot of each bed. So now I’ll be taking a look around for Lockers for sale to see what kinds of prices are out there to help us make a smart decision about where to put our money for the storage situation.
As I look through the landscaping books and magazines that I own, I find myself thinking about where on our own property would be a good place to put some landscaping architectural structures such as gazebos, arbors, and pergolas. I used to have quite a few clients in New England that had me install such structures as part of their landscaping plans. My wife always told me that she would love to have an arbor over the front walk with either climbing roses or clematis growing up over it.
When we lived in New England I did buy her an arbor but never bothered to plant anything to grow on it. I don’t really know why I did that – I think it would have looked much nicer with something growing up on it.
I’ve been thinking about putting a pergola in the sunny part of the yard and plant some grapes on it. I know that this is a good area for growing grapes – there are a lot of vineyards in the area! I’d like to plant some sweet seedless red grapes – those are my favorite.
There has been a big push in our community to get people to purchase and install good quality mail boxes. The city is having the street numbers painted on the curbs in front of people’s residences, but they are also asking that the Residential Mailboxes and Commercial Mailboxes have the street numbers printed on them so that our emergency personnel can locate the proper address in a timely fashion.
At a time when every second counts, in the event of an emergency it is best to have everything in place to make the most out of what our taxes are being used for. There has been several times lately that our emergency personnel have not been able to get to where they need to be due to Mailboxes not having the name and proper address on them.
A mailbox can make a difference and I’d like to get the word out here in hopes that more people will take note and possibly save a few lives in the mean time. I’m very glad that our city council has stepped up to the plate and is taking action in this area.
One of the things that I’ve noticed about houses that I fee drawn to is that so many of them have window flower boxes full of trailing petunias on the side of the house that faces the road. I think that having a window box full of flowers makes the house look very welcoming. I guess it all goes back to my childhood when I would go to visit my aunt and uncle in the country on their farm.
Aunt Janet had window boxes on every window – even the ones in the upstairs dormer windows! She grew these wonderful cascading petunias that trailed all the way down to the ground. She had them massed in different colors so it was very eye=catching. I didn’t much care for the scent of petunias, but I think that they are one of the prettiest flowers. I have been thinking about putting some on the windows in our house but my wife thinks it would be better to hang them on the porch railing because they would be easier to reach.
Even though we are the dead of winter I can’t help but start thinking and planning on some things that I want to get done come spring. I really liked the stone benches that my mother-in-law purchased last year online at stonebenches.com so I’ve been checking out their site as of late to see if they have any that may be suitable for around our house, yard and garden areas. I think some nice garden benches would look great in a few choice locations.
My mother-in-law discovered this site when she was looking at memorial benches to place by her late husband’s grave site. He is buried in a VA cemetery, where they only had a flat marker for him and the family really wanted a nice bench to sit on when they visited the grave site. Their stone work are hand made in the U.S., they are made from cast stone and are shipped to you free of charge, which is a huge savings considering how heavy they are. Can you imagine how much you would have to pay for the shipping if they charged you for that?
Anyway, I’m sure that I will find some nice looking stone garden benches that I’ll end up ordering. Spring can’t get here quick enough as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never been a fan of the cold and wet weather that we experience each and every winter here. I’m all about the sun and all the activities that go along with the nice weather that spring and summer bring us.
I’ve been spending a lot of time lately watching a television show called The Man Cave. It’s a good show about designing a room into a room specifically surrounding the interests of a particular man. Naturally the show has been getting me to think about how I want to set up my own man cave. I already have the slate pool table that I bought at the thrift store. It’s in great shape!
I’ve been trying to decide whether to buy or make the wet bar for the room. As part of the process of designing that I’ve been looking at a lot of different bar glass racks, stemware racks and wine glass racks for sale. I need to decide if I want them to hang from the ceiling, or under a cabinet, or inside the cabinet. Or if I want them to be free-standing on a counter or table. I really didn’t realize that there were so many different styles and types to choose from!
I’ve been talking to my wife a lot lately about putting some Covert Cameras around the property. I’ve been getting a little bit nervous about the rising crime rate lately. I’m sure that it is directly related to the sad state of the economy; more people are losing their jobs every day around here! And there are not very many job openings locally for these folks to be able to just start work right away.
I found a great website (www.spycameracctv.com/) that sells equipment such as the CCTV Camera and Wireless CCTV that I think I’d like to get to put around the house. There is a system that they sell that is designed for home security that fits the bill perfectly. The camera is about the size of a tennis ball, so it is not quite as visible as the big commercial cameras. I was looking around the website earlier today and was quite impressed with the selection of day and night outdoor cameras that they sell. Of course they also sell the cables and connectors needed to hook up the system. Now I just have to figure out how many cameras I really want for our place!
When we lived in New England, I made my living doing landscaping work and grounds maintenance in the summer. I took great pride in how nice my clients yards looked. Although I did basic work such as lawn mowing and shrub trimming, my favorite work was with the flowers. In New England, the growing season is very short, so flowers are dearly appreciated when they bloom!
I especially enjoy working with planters. One of the advantages of working with planters is that if you are planting something that can’t survive the winter up there it is easier to bring the plant indoors for the winter! I think my favorite window box planter was one where I filled it with cascading petunias and they cascaded all the way to the ground. That was simply breathtaking! Lining the edges of a deck with a variety of decorative planters filled with dinner plate dahlias added a great dash of color to an otherwise stark deck. And I like being able to move the planters around to mix it up a little bit, get a little variety.
When we first moved in here, I saw that there was a whole-house attic fan up in the attic, but I never got around to seeing if it worked or not. Well, last week my wife starting asking me about how to turn it on because she was concerned about using it to help lower the cost of cooling the house this summer. So I went up into the attic to check it out and found that it needed a new motor. We happened to have brought a new attic fan with us when we moved, and I considered whether to remove the old fan and install the new one, but decided it would be easier to just swap out the motors. It didn’t take very long to do, and now it is working just fine. It is set up on a thermostat so it will come on automatically when needed. I sure hope it will help keep the cooling costs down!
When we first moved into this house, my wife started talking about hooking up a Home Security System. She pointed out to me that the house had ADT stickers on all of the windows, and she took it to mean that the previous owner had a Security System installed, and that perhaps that meant that there were some issues in the area with burglaries. So she said she would like to talk to the neighbors and see if any of them had any problems with burglaries or thefts.
Well, we’ve met the neighbors and so far everyone assures us that no one has had any problems with break-ins, so my wife has stopped talking about being afraid to live here. But a couple of weeks ago I thought I saw some people snooping around and peering in the windows, so now I’m beginning to think maybe she’s not so crazy after all! I don’t want to scare my wife, but I think maybe an alarm system is in the near future for us after all.
Well the contractor came back and finished fixing the doggie door. The dogs have learned to use it pretty quickly, but they aren’t going out through it much yet because it has been raining all day. It sure has been a relief to not have to get up and let them in and out and in and out every five minutes! I’m glad we got it, and the contractor that put it in charged us a very fair price. I was expecting to have to pay him more because it took longer than he expected; but he charged only what his original estimate was. I’m thinking maybe it’s because I baked a batch of my famous peanut butter fudge cookies and let him have a few! One interesting thing that came out of this is that he has offered me a job, and I’m thinking about taking it!
A couple of weeks ago we bought a doggie door. We’ve hired a contractor to install it, with the theory that he would be better qualified to put it in than I am, and if anything goes wrong with the installation, he is the one that has to deal with fixing it. Well he was supposed to come last Friday but called and rescheduled for today. He came out today about 11am, and expected to be done by 2pm. Well, he made a few mistakes and was still working on it at 6pm when he called it quits for the day. He said he’ll be back out tomorrow to fix it. I hope so! I’m looking forward to having the dogs enjoy the convenience of letting themselves in and out!
I enjoy going to trade shows. My wife and I especially enjoy going to the shows regarding home and garden, recreational vehicles, manufactured homes and boats. My wife enjoys the garden shows the most. She likes to take lots of pictures of the sample gardens that the landscaping companies design to bring home for inspiration. Some of the fantasy gardens are absolutely fantastic!
We also enjoy going to the other parts of the show where the vendors have booths set up to sell their various wares. We see some fantastic trade show exhibits at the shows that we go to. Some of the best looking trade show exhibit booths we’ve seen are at trade shows that feature kitchen and bath ideas at the home shows. I’ve asked a few people where they got their exhibits, and they told me that they got them from the http://www.gilbertdisplays.com website. I can remember many years ago that the booths were fairly crude, but now they look very sophisticated and seem to be an art form in themselves!
Over the past few weeks there have been several tornadoes touching down in Tennessee near where one of my wife’s sisters happens to live. She has been fortunate to not have been a victim of the tornadoes, but it certainly is nerve wracking to both my wife and her sister that the tornadoes are touching down so close. From what my wife has heard from her sister, one of their favorite restaurants is on a block where a tornado touched down and several of the businesses were destroyed but the restaurant itself was spared. I have never seen the destruction first hand of a tornado, and we live in an area where tornadoes DO happen. My wife gets very worried when tornado warnings appear on the radio and television and talks about going down into the basement until the warnings are over. I guess that is another good reason to get our basement finished – even if no one ends up living down there we could at least be comfortable staying down there until the storm warnings pass!
One thing that I’ve noticed as I drive around this area, exploring roads that I’ve never driven down before, is how many great looking Personalized Mailboxes there are around here. Where we used to live in New England, practically no one spent the money on Custom Mailboxes because in the winter time the wicked and most dreaded snowplow driver would frequently damage or destroy so many mailboxes that it was a cause of great frustration to many homeowners.
But now that we live in an area where snowplowing is not done frequently, I have noticed a lot of nice looking Whitehall Mailboxes lining the streets. It actually is quite pleasant to drive through neighborhoods where the mailboxes are not all rusty and dented. A nice mailbox gives the casual observer the feeling that the occupants of the house actually CARE about taking good care of their home and yard. They make a really nice first impression.
I really like wearing hiking shoes when I’m out working in the yard. Unless of course I need steel-toed shoes when I’m working with my power equipment! But for the most part, hiking shoes fit comfortably and give me the support I need when I’m out there tending to the chores that need to be done, such as raking and weeding and picking up the brush. We have a three acre lot that I’d like to work on clearing a little bit more. Cut down a few trees and clear out the underbrush. My wife keeps telling me that I should leave it alone because that is where the deer hide and sleep, but I keep telling her that they will like it better cleared out. It doesn’t really matter who is right, I’m planning on clearing it out anyway!
The hiking boots that I have been wearing over the past couple of summers have pretty well worn out. They’ve certainly earned their way! I’m hard on boots, but the regular “work boot” just isn’t comfortable enough for me to wear when I’m doing yard work. I was looking out the window at supper time tonight and was realizing that it is time to drag out the lawn mower and start the yard work for the season. So I’d better get cracking and buy my new hiking shoes this week!
As I mentioned in a previous post, my wife and I are trying to fix up our basement. We’ve started spending substantial time looking at craigslist and freecycle to see what people are giving away that we might be able to use. So far we have a toilet, a pedestal bathroom sink, a couple of kitchen cupboards, some Formica kitchen counter-tops (with kitchen sink,) an electric range with hood, and a refrigerator. Everything is in good shape. Things are going pretty well, I’d say! I was really worried about how much money it was going to cost to fix up the place, but I’d say that with this “smart shopping” the costs are going down steadily!
With the economy being in as much trouble as it’s in, I’m sorry to say that we have several family members who are in danger of losing their homes within the next year. I’m sure hoping that we dodge that bullet ourselves, but it’s going to be a rough road ahead! My wife and I have been talking about fixing up part of our basement to accommodate some family members that might need it in the future. We are planning to put in a studio-type apartment – just in case. We are going to need to buy a lot of things to do that. We’re hoping to get some things for free, but in the meantime we are pricing items as well. It’s amazing how many things you have to get for a project like that.
My wife is especially concerned with the amount of lighting fixtures that we are going to need down there. It is a dark place; after all it IS a basement, and we only have a few of those little basement windows down there. Pretty poor lighting, for sure! So my wife is trying to find good deals on attractive ceiling light fixtures for the kitchen/living/sleeping areas, and something charming for the bathroom light fixtures. She wants to make sure that anyone is is staying down there does not get the feeling that they are second class citizens! It could be depressing down there without enough light!
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot more time out in the workshop in my garage. I’ve been checking over my tools and accessories; seeing what works and what doesn’t. What needs to be repaired or replaced. Organizing, cleaning, getting ready for warmer weather when I can spend more time out there tinkering.
I’ve noticed that over the past couple of months a lot of my hand tools have been used and simply “put down” and not “put away” in the tool chest. I wish I could say that someone else is to blame for not putting them away after they were used, but I know that I’m the one that used them last, so there is no one to blame but myself! I hate when that happens!
I’m glad to say that most of my tools and hardware are in pretty good shape! I’m going to have to buy some new tubes of goop and a few rolls of duct tape; mostly minor things. Oh, and I did find a hammer that had lost it’s head! So I’ll need to replace that one! But for the most part, I’m fairly pleased with my workshop tools for now.
Last night I caught my wife looking on the Internet at some Hydrotherapy pools. I asked her what she was doing. She told me that Sally, a good friend of hers had recently bought a Swim spa. Her friend has fibromyalgia and her doctor suggested that Aquatic therapy would be a good idea for her to get some relief from her condition.
Sally told her that she loved her pool, and that it helped her with her pain enormously. My wife started to think about getting something like that for our house because we both suffer from arthritis from time to time. My wife has been reasoning that as we get older our arthritis will probably worsen, and that a hydrotherapy pool would be a good way to slow down the progression of our arthritis.
I went to Wal-Mart this morning with my wife to do the grocery shopping. I went into their garden department and was glad to see that they were getting it set up for spring flowers! They were already selling some early spring primrose! I wanted to buy some, but I resisted for the moment because I’m not going to have the time this week to plant them. I’ll try to buy some next week instead! I know my wife loves primroses; I want her to help me pick out which ones to get.
