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How To Build A Stone Paver Walkway
AC Not Keeping Up? Cool Down Your House...
My Troy-Bilt Yard Chipper Vacuum Review
Central Air Conditioner Not Working? Simple Troubleshooting Steps
One of the easiest and quickest ways to make a paver sidewalk for your...
Whether you have a central air conditioner or just window air conditioners in your...
I purchased a Troy-Bilt Chipper Vac (CSV 060 model) about two months ago and...
Our central air conditioner unit is over 15 years old and recently it hasn’t...
Hello! I want to thank you all for visiting and commenting and helping me improve my home over the last 7 years. As you may have read, my family and I have moved into a new home recently and while it’s a bigger house with lots of potential it also needs a lot of...
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I haven’t been working on many home improvements lately because I have some exciting news: we’re moving! After seven years of fixing up this old ranch house we’ve gotten to the point where we needed to begin doing the “big” things like remodel our kitchen, gut our main bathroom and maybe even add on...
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I have several closets in my house which are arranged in such a way that they are almost always fairly dark and difficult to search through. Our main coat closet has a door which swings open and blocks most of the incoming light so that when you’re staring into a closet filled with black...
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The metal hood over most ovens and cook top ranges serves several different purposes in most modern kitchens. Almost all range hoods include a lamp or bulb which shines direct light down onto the stove so that you can more easily see what you are cooking and almost all ranges include a fan or...
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Almost all modern building codes these days, both residential and commercial, require you to have at least one handrail installed along any staircase that’s made up of three or more steps. I’m not sure how our own home ever passed inspection without any sort of railing going down the steps to the basement, but...
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Most bathroom remodeling projects require you to remove and replace most of features in the bathroom during the renovation process. That means that if you’re putting down new floors, painting the walls or replacing fixtures you’re almost definitely going to have to remove the toilet and then reinstall the same toilet or a new...
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One of the easiest and quickest ways to make a paver sidewalk for your home is to lay down the stone and pavers without using any sort of concrete or cement. These dry-laid walkways have a lot of advantages over poured concrete. Putting down stone without mortar won’t work in every environment and yard,...
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It almost seems common for air conditioners to break down and stop working, often at the most inconvenient times and during the longest stretches of extremely hot weather. A broken air conditioner can actually be incredibly dangerous, especially around older people who may not have recognized that the AC has even stopped working. Sitting...
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Whether you have a central air conditioner or just window air conditioners in your house there’s always a point during the summer when the temperatures start hitting the high 90′s and the AC can’t keep up with the rising heat and humidity. If you find that your air conditioner isn’t keeping your house cool...
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I finally got around to picking up an LED bulb and decided to give it a quick review when compared to the CFL and incandescent light bulbs I still have in my house. I’m one of those people who, despite all the logic that says that LED bulbs are cheaper to run and last...
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Replacing an old shower head in the bathroom is one of the easiest, quickest and cheapest ways you can give your bathroom a whole new look and feel. You might also want to replace your shower head if you find that it’s starting to leak or if the water spraying out of them is...
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I finally got rid of the stinkhorn mushrooms in my flower beds, but it took a lot of work and a fair bit of time. If you aren’t familiar with stinkhorn mushrooms, consider yourself lucky. These nasty mushrooms are from the Phallaceae family of mushrooms and there are lots of different types of stinkhorn...
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It’s summer, so that means it’s time to use your weekends and evenings to get outside and work on the lawn or garden. If you have a smaller yard or you’re just interested in using landscaping tools that are a little quieter and more energy-efficient than gas-powered tools then you probably have a few...
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I spent the weekend cleaning out and refreshing all the flower beds around my house and one of the problems that inevitably arises is that after a long winter the dirt in the beds has become uneven and hilly. This then means that when I spread mulch in my beds the mulch will tend...
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One of the best ways to save money on solid wood furniture, and make sure it perfectly matches your decor and other wood pieces in your home, is to buy unfinished furniture and then stain or paint it yourself. This actually saves you a good deal of costs, allows you to pick the exact...
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One way to reduce your home’s energy consumption is to give your house a home energy audit. By taking a good hard look at all the ways your home is not only using energy but also losing energy (through the loss of warm or cold air) you’ll be able to spot places where a...
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I’ve found that one of the easiest ways to really update a room’s look and feel is to replace or at least paint all the baseboard molding and trim around the doors in a room. If I have more time I usually go ahead and install painted crown molding around the room as well....
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If you live in a climate that gets cold, dry winters then your home might be equipped with a whole house, or central, humidifier. These whole house humidifiers are designed to put moisture into the air during winter months when you’re running your forced air heat. The humidifiers are usually added on to the...
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It’s that time of year again when lots of people begin thinking about buying a new lawn mower. Whether you’re a new homeowner who is mowing your lawn for the very first time or your old lawn mower simply won’t start, when you start shopping for a lawn mower for the first time it...
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If you’re going to remodel a kitchen or upgrade a bathroom in your house then chances are that you’re going to be faced with the job of removing the old tile from a floor and replacing it with something more modern. Removing the tile from a floor can be a long, messy and sometimes...
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Below almost every sink and toilet in your home there should be one or two little knobs attached to the pipes coming out of the walls. These are shut-off valves for the water supply to your bathroom and kitchen. You probably go years without thinking of them until the one day when you actually...
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When I wrote about removing wallpaper in my small second bathroom I alluded to the fact that you be in for some surprises under your wallpaper as your tear it down. I mentioned this because I actually found a few different things in the tiny room that were surprising, interesting and just plain weird....
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Removing wallpaper is one of those messy and tedious jobs that nearly every homeowner grumbles through at least once. Most people tend to do it right after they move into a new home and want to remove the wallpaper from a previous owner or they want to do it right before they move out...
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Lawn mower repair is one of those hobbies that almost all home owners engage it from time to time, and no time is more popular than when you’re just rolling the mower out of the garage or shed after a long, cold winter. If you’re stuck with a mower that won’t start then you’re...
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Over the past several years my wife and I have been steadily working on giving our old house a little more curb appeal. There may come a time when we’re going to want to sell it and nothing pulls in potential buyers more than a home that looks good from the road. There are...
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In my basement refinishing project I had the good fortune of already having one room partially framed out from a previous owner. For that room I simply installed drywall over the existing wood framing and paneling. But for the smaller room which would become an office, I only had cold cinder block walls and...
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We always use a live cut Christmas tree in our home, so every year around this time I get mildly obsessed about figuring out clever ways to water my Christmas tree without climbing under the tree, sticking my fingers in dirty water and then trying to pour just the right amount of water in...
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Squeaking doors and squeaky door hinges are common problems that everyone has experienced in a house or apartment at one time or another. We generally have two ways of dealing with these annoying squeaks: we either learn to ignore them or we squirt some sort of grease or lubricant on the hinges and hope...
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I just wanted to let everyone know that I now I have home improvement Twitter account that I hope to begin updating a lot more frequently than I have been. For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a sort of “micro-blogging” site and service that allows you to broadcast out short text messages...
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When you think of large online home improvement and hardware stores you probably think of the big box stores but the one place you may not think of is the infamous Amazon.com! Sure, they sell books and CDs and DVDs and all sorts of electronic gadgets and widgets, but they also have some incredible...
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My basement finishing project is almost done! I took part of my unfinished basement and updated the partially finished room and completely framed out and finished another small room. I have lots of photos and lots of different ideas I want to get down about my experience with finishing my basement myself. I’ve made...
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Okay, it isn’t often that I actually get excited enough about a single hand tool to actually write an entire post about it, but I just wanted to say that my favorite new hand tool from the past year has got to be my stubby hammer. If you don’t have a stubby hammer (or...
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I know, this isn’t the kind of post you would normally find a site about home improvements, but I’ve been giving it a lot of thought lately. My wife and I welcomed our second child, a beautiful little daughter, into our family back in July and we’ve all been slowly getting acclimated to a...
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Last year I replaced most of my home’s old aluminum rain gutters with vinyl rain gutters (some people call them “plastic gutters”). My previous seamless aluminum gutters were at the end of their life, falling off my house and bent beyond usefulness after years of being dented and dinged by ladders, falling branches and...
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Sometimes when you’re working on a home improvement project you need to throw away the rules and get a little creative. I recently had to do this when I was refinishing my basement and had to frame out a room while still allowing easy access to a drain clean out. I could have just...
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Okay, what is the photo on the right? Is it a photo from Africa’s Serengeti National Park? It is the remains of a foolish attempt to grow a lawn in the Arizona Desert? Maybe it’s a farm that specializes in growing hay? Sadly, it is none of those things. It is, unfortunately, my back...
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It’s not often that you get a chance to download a free home improvement book, and it’s even more rare that the book actually comes from a county government office. Yet the Department of Community Revitalization of Henrico County, VA has created a free 140 home enhancement guide which you can download from their...
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One of the best and least expensive ways to lower your utility bills all year round is to replace the manual thermostat in your home with an electronic programmable thermostat. Installing a programmable thermostat is not a difficult home improvement project if you follow the directions for your model of thermostat closely. If you’re...
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As you may have guessed I rather enjoy working on my home and running out the hardware store every weekend to tackle new and different projects around my house. I like having a sense of accomplishment at the end of a long weekend and I like making my 50 year old house a little...
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There are a number of reasons that you could find yourself in a situation where you need to be cutting tall grass that has simply become too thick or too tall to cut or mow very easily. And though you really should strive to never cut your grass more than 1/3 of its full...
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Troy-Bilt has always been a well-known brand when it comes to lawn mowers, but this year they’ve come out with a new line of lawn mowers that feature their new “TriAction Cutting System™” which is a collection of improvements designed to cut grass and mulch grass better than other mowers.
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There’s a long running debate in lawn and garden circles about whether you should ever let the grass in your lawn go to seed or whether you should always cut it before it gets to that point. To paraphrase Shakespeare, “To go to seed or not to go to seed?… That is the question!”
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My favorite home improvement show on TV is now Holmes on Homes featuring the likable, knowledgeable and photogenic Canadian contractor and home expert Mike Holmes. The show Holmes on Homes has been playing in Canada for a couple years and could be found on cable in the United States here and there, but HGTV...
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If you have any sort of forced air system in your home, including a central air conditioner or forced hot air heat, then you almost certainly also have an air filter in that system that needs to be changed fairly regularly. There are actually lots of regular things you should do to maintain your...
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I finally got around to running a somewhat scientific side-by-side review of Scotts EZ Seed Turf Builder product vs my own fast method for growing grass. Scotts EZ Seed is now available from Amazon.com! Scotts claims their EZ Seed product can grow grass on a brick and I’ve even seen a few demonstrations in...
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It was while I was in the middle of framing and insulating my basement that I first found the mysterious leak in my basement. One sunny day I was happily putting up steel framing and when I returned the next rainy day I found a pie-plate sized puddle forming right where the basement foundation...
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Now that it’s officially spring I’ve found myself using my chipper vac more than I ever thought I would. A few years ago I bought and reviewed my Troy-Bilt chipper vac just as the leaves were really starting to pile up. It wasn’t cheap, but the way it sucked and ground up leaves and...
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When you think about cleaning the bathroom you probably don’t immediately think about cleaning your exhaust fan. The fan is usually high on the wall or in the ceiling and difficult to get to, but it’s still a major source of dirt, residue and bacteria in your bathroom. Bathroom exhaust fans are designed to...
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When you think of “essential home improvement tools” I bet your cell phone doesn’t rank up there with “hammer” or “screwdriver” but it probably should! I am a firm believer in using a cell phone or smartphone like an iPhone or Blackberry for small and large home improvement jobs. I started using an iPhone...
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Repairing a shower valve is one of those home repairs that most homeowners find they need to do every few years, depending on a number of factors including how many people use the shower, your faucet brand and even what type of water you have in your home. Whether you have a single handle...
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If you want to a surefire way to start an argument between 10 home remodeling expert, ask them “What’s the best way to insulate a basement?” You will almost definitely get 10 different answers with 10 different reasons for why their answer is correct. Most basement remodeling books offer many different insulation methods. To...
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We have some small room air filters in the bedroom of my home which we run pretty regularly to help cut down on some of the dust in the house that’s generated from an active family, two cats and an old force hot air heating system. The little air purifiers work pretty well, the...
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A caulk gun is one of those tools that everyone can identify, but not a lot of people use on an everyday basis. Caulking guns can, of course, be used for much more than just caulk. They can spread out caulk, sealants, adhesives, and just about any other tacky chemical or material that is...
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My gas furnace is only a couple years old, so I wasn’t real happy when our gas furnace began operating intermittently, sometimes starting when it should and sometimes not. We would be sitting in the living room playing a board game or just walking around and one of us would say, “Hey, it’s kind...
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The sales and marketing of Christmas lights and decorations is only superseded by the even larger sales and marketing of wild and clever plastic containers and gadgets that are meant to be used for the storing Christmas lights and decorations. I’ve tried several different clever containers and methods for storing my Christmas lights from...
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Like a lot of people right now, I have a cut live Christmas tree in my living room right now. It’s decorated and covered with lights and I have a nice little tree skirt and the whole things looks green and great for the moment, though I know that if I don’t water it...
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Trying to find gifts for the man or woman who enjoys doing a lot of his or her own home improvement projects can be challenging. Home improvement can be a very creative endeavor at times (painting, landscaping, planning your next project) and also very exacting and mechanical in nature (electrical work, plumbing, refinishing furniture)....
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Over the past couple years I’ve removed and replaced every shower knob and bathroom and kitchen faucet in my 50 year old home. I’m not a plumber but I’ve watched and learned from some professional plumbers and I’ve done just enough basic plumbing work around my house that I’m beginning to get a feel...
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The Christmas shopping season has begun early this year in most stores, and that can especially be seen in the larger chain stores. Home improvement stores are usually aiming for two holiday markets: the person shopping for that perfect holiday gift as well as the homeowner who is looking for new decorations to be...
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This summer my wife and I spent a fair amount of time and energy on increasing the “curb appeal” of our home and the last official exterior home improvement we’re performed this year was purchasing one of those fancy new metal house number plaques! Our old house numbers sign before we painted our house....
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After putting up the drywall and finishing the walls in my basement room it was finally time to apply some primer and paint. I was going to just use a regular paint roller, but I had a unique chance to try out the new Wagner TurboRoll Power Paint Roller and I’m glad I did....
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After refinishing most of the drywall in my basement remodeling project I decided to try to tackle two little areas of drywall where my drywall tape had “bubbled up”. There was actually a layer or two of dried joint compound over these two spots, but they had popped out from the wall a little...
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Carpenter bees are large bees that are often mistaken for bumble bees and are known for their destructive and annoying habit of burrowing into dead wood. For homeowners around the world this means that any piece of exposed wood on the outside of home could become riddled with small almost bullet-like holes that serve...
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After I had put up the drywall in my basement refinishing project it was time for me to finish my walls with joint compound and tape and make them nice and smooth. I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t an expert in joint compound when I started this, and I’m certainly no...
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Today’s consumer power washers are good cleaning tools but you can also have some fun with them and add a decorative flair to your home. Just about any type of small to medium pressure washer should work for this project, no matter how low the psi might be. With a little imagination and creativity...
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Like many home improvement projects, hanging drywall is one half art, one half science and one half luck. I learned this first-hand as I completed hanging the drywall in my first real full room renovation. I’ve mentioned before that I’m refinishing a room in my basement that was framed out and paneled years ago....
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Having trouble finding a stud in a wall is an almost universally shared problem that most homeowners have experienced more than once. Even people who don’t have any idea how houses are built know that to hang something really heavy you almost always need to screw or nail into a stud and not just...
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One of the many outdoor home improvement projects I’ve completed this summer is a complete painting of a my home’s exterior. If you hire a professional house painting company you can easily spend between $2,000 to $5,000 for a general paint job, depending on the size of your home and the complexity involved. There...
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Now that we’re into some of the hottest days of the summer those of you with central air conditioners might be finding that on the really hot days your home isn’t staying as cool as it once did. Maybe you’re even finding that your central AC isn’t able to keep up with a stretch...
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The Home Depot is offering a new online home improvement service for DIYers called the Home Improver Club. It’s a free service and it seems to be alternative to the Lowes Creative Ideas, Garden Club and Woodpost magazines. You can sign up at the Home Improver Club website and it’s being advertised as “an...
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If you have a home that’s a few decades old and has had multiple owners then there’s a pretty good chance that you have at least one or two rooms that have hardwood floors that have been covered with wall-to-wall carpeting by previous owners trying to save some money on flooring costs. Wall-to-wall carpets...
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If you want to help the environment by saving water and save yourself some money then you should consider checking all your bathroom fixtures for leaks. If they do leak then you’ll want to repair those leaks as quickly as possible. This is one home improvement project that just about anyone can get a...
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One of my home improvement projects this summer is to paint my house and while I’m doing that I figured I would also replace the old aluminum gutters that I currently have installed on my home. Gutters are an essential part of most roofing systems because they collect all the rain that hits the...
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![online-mulch[1]](http://www.homeimprovementsdepot.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/online-mulch1-150x150.jpg)
I’ve been spending the last couple weekends creating some new landscaping around my house and one of the projects I’m dedicated to doing this year is properly mulching my flower beds and trees. In the past I’ve tried other forms of weed control like putting down plastic and even some fancy chemicals, but I’m...
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As part of any lawn mower’s regular maintenance and care, you should sharpen or replace a lawn mower’s blades once or twice every season or so, depending upon how much you use your mower. A sharp mower blade cuts your lawn cleaner while a dull blade can actually “rip” and pull at your grass,...
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Yes, you can plant grass seed in the rain! As I’ve alluded to before, I’m a big supporter of laying down grass seed when it’s raining or about to rain. Whether you’re simply over seeding your lawn for the year or you’re filling in some bare spots in your lawn, I think rainy days...
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One of the newest ideas in lawn improvement over the last couple years has been to create a simple product that includes everything all in one package: soil, grass seed and fertilizer. Scotts EZ Seed is now available from Amazon.com! The latest entry into the “all-in-one” market is Scotts Turf Builder EZ Seed mix....
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I’ve shown you ways to completely hide your flat screen TV, but a lot of people aren’t interested in hiding their entire TV as much as they want to hide the television wires, cords and cables. The easiest and fastest way to get your TV cords out of sight in most cases is to...
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If you enjoy working on home improvement projects like I do, then you probably like tools. I generally buy tools based on the jobs I have to accomplish, but sometimes I pick up a little tool here and there because it either looks pretty darn cool or I really want to find home improvement...
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A lot of people believe that they are destined to have an ugly lawn with bald patches just because they missed one grass growing season or some magical period of time in which to plant grass. Sure, lots of people claim there is an exact window of time when you can plant grass and...
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A lot of people wonder if the home improvements and home repairs they perform on their house over a year are tax deductible or eligible for any money back on income taxes at the end of the year. Most people know that many of the home improvements which improve the energy efficiency of your...
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If the water in your toilet is running intermittently or if it sounds like the water in your toilet won’t stop running, then the most obvious cause is almost always the toilet flapper. I had this happen to me recently and thought I’d explain how I fixed it. The more a toilet runs when...
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I’ve been doing a lot of home improvement projects around my main bathroom lately and most of the work has been DIY plumbing projects, but this time I thought I’d show you how I took out an old dated bathroom light and installed a new light fixture on the wall. The process is relatively...
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It’s the first full weekend of warm weather we’ve had here in New Jersey since about October, and my thoughts are already racing with about a hundred home improvement projects I’d like to get done around the house. On Monday people were sledding on the roads and shoveling their cars out from 10 inches...
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There’s a new free web service available that aims to make the processing of finding a home improvement contractor a much more simple procedure than it’s been in the past. Most homeowners looking for a home improvement contractor follow the same pattern: they call around to the various contractors and describe the project they...
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As flat screen televisions have become more popular, so have the innovative ways of hanging and mounting them. Years ago TV sets were so large and heavy they could only sit on the floor or on specially designed media centers, but today’s flat screen televisions, while being large, are also much thinner and lighter...
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I accidentally learned a valuable lesson about choosing to use pressure treated wood fence in my yard. If you remember, it was about seven months ago that I put up a new wood fence around my yard. In case you’re unfamiliar with buying wood or lumber for home improvement projects, let me quickly explain...
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A constantly beeping smoke detector outside my bedroom recently taught me a little bit about battery-operated smoke detectors that I didn’t realize: In addition to replacing the smoke detector batteries every six months or so, you should also consider replacing the entire smoke detector every so often. This battery powered voice smoke detector is...
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I have a combination bathtub and shower and over the past three months or so I noticed that whenever I turned the knob to “shower” I still had a fair amount of water coming out of the tub faucet. Basically, water was leaking from the shower valve and coming out my tub faucet. My...
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My big home improvement project for this year will be the start of a large basement remodeling project. I’m going to start with a partially finished room we already have in the basement and then slowly expand the finishing to other parts of my basement that are currently concrete and cinder blocks. I’ve never...
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With the arrival of the colder weather comes the inevitable worrying about whether your heating system furnace will actually start up and run this year reliably, or whether you’ll end up being stuck in the cold (literally!) in the middle of the night one snowy January evening. If you have any doubts about your...
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I purchased a Troy-Bilt Chipper Vac (CSV 060 model) about two months ago and I thought I would give you a full review of how well it works. I was always a little leery of the idea of a yard vacuum, but I have to admit they’ve come a long way in the past...
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My son’s birthday is in late September and we always have a party with friends and family coming over to our house, so that’s a great motivator for my wife and I to complete any large home improvement projects before we show off our house from one year to the next. This year we...
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If your home is like mine then the hottest months of the summer are often accompanied with the highest electric bills of the year due to our air conditioner running almost all the time just to keep the house at a bearable level of comfort. Air conditioners are great, but no matter whether you...
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One of the many, many things that I knew I’d have to fix when I bought my forty year old ranch house was the old wooden fence that ran around the border of my backyard. The fence was quite literally falling apart before our very eyes. The grey slats actually blew in the breeze...
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This is the last of three posts about installing baseboard molding. We’re finally ready to install the new baseboard molding. We’ve just removed the old baseboard molding and trim and we’ve installed the new trim around the doorways. Just like when we installed the trim, you’ll want a nail gun or a hammer with...
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Our central air conditioner unit is over 15 years old and recently it hasn’t been working quite as reliably as we’d like. Even though I’ve been doing my best to care for my central air conditioner is appears that mine might on its way out. About once every couple of days now it simply...
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We’ve had a few days of warm weather here on the East Coast lately and my wife and I have been running the ceiling fans in most of our rooms to keep the rooms cool without having to turn on our central air conditioner quite yet. Even though its been relatively mild outside we...
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This is kind of an optional step, but trim around a doorway really helps tie a room together. First you’ll have to read Step 1 and remove the old baseboard molding and you’ll want to use the same methods for removing any trim that might already be around the doorways of a room. My...
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Baseboard molding, the wood trim that lines a room where the walls meet the floor, is an often an over-looked part of any room, but it can really make a big difference in the overall look and feel of a room. Baseboards not only serve as a decorative function, but they also protect the...
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About two weeks ago my wife and I were sitting in our dining room when I noticed that one of our 45 year old original baseboards was cracked. I should have kept quiet, but I mumbled to myself, “Hmm, I guess I should replace that baseboard…”
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Last weekend I found myself standing outside in the pouring rain at 10 o’clock at night while I was trying to spread down some grass seed in hopes of taking advantage of the wet weather in a desperate attempt to give my lawn a jump start for the spring. Grass! I realized as I...
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Like a lot of people I used this weekend to take down the Christmas decorations, take the Christmas tree out to the curb and generally put the house back into “post-holiday” status. It can be a lengthy process, taking all the decorations and lights and putting them back into boxes and packaging so they...
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I have a one year old son now and he’s already running around the house grabbing everything he can put is little hands on. We’ve already protected all the outlets and put up doorknob guards on most of the doors, but our cabinets were still fairly accessible to our son until recently. I did...
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About a month ago my wife picked up a little toddler-sized oak rocking chair at a yard sale for $3.00 and brought it home for our son who is about to turn one year old. The chair looked as though it had been left out in a rain once or twice or at the...
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If your home has ceiling fans, then you know how absolutely disgusting and dirty they can get after running for 24 hours a day for months at a time, especially if your home has central AC or forced hot air heat. Ceiling fans naturally move the air in the room and by doing so...
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Last night we ran a bath for our son and when I turned off the hot water a strange thing happened: the hot water did not turn off. I twisted and pushed and turned, but no matter what I did with the 40 year old shower faucet, the hot water kept running out as...
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Now that summer is in full swing here in most of the United States my thoughts have turned to my central air conditioning unit and how thankful I am that I have it! My central AC unit is about ten years old and I’m going to have to start thinking about replacing it in...
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I don’t yet have one of those super-duper big screen HD TVs for my house yet mostly because I don’t yet have a place to really put it. Right now I just have a 20 year old particleboard entertainment center along a large empty wall in my living room. I’m thinking about designing some...
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A lot of people still think that the secret to a healthy green lawn has to do with all the chemicals and fertilizers you dump on the grass and little else. But you can save yourself a lot of money and keep your lawn healthy in a more natural way with the proper use...
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If you ever walked down the glue and adhesive aisle of your local hardware store you’ll realize there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different kinds of glues, epoxies and adhesives available for almost every specialized application you can think of in home repair or otherwise. The sheer number of chemicals, bonding agents, tubes...
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As I’ve written before, one of the most offensive parts of my ugly backyard is the giant ring of stone and sand I have that has, overtime, become part of the dirt and ground of the yard. My goal for the area is to remove all the stone and sand, leaving mostly sifted dirt...
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You can’t walk into any store selling any sort of home goods these days that isn’t aggressively marketing Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs). By now most people know that CFLs use much less energy than regular incandescent bulbs and give out the equivalent amount of light. And the bulbs are getting more convenient and easier...
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I have an ugly back yard. Really, really ugly. It’s about 75 feet wide and about 50 feet deep and I don’t think anyone has actually done anything positive to the backyard in a good ten years. The entire yard is surrounded by a rickety fence which is lined with piles of rotting wood...
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The Home Depot as introduced a new program called “Eco Options” which attempts to identify environmentally friendly products throughout its store. These products will clearly be labeled as part of the Eco Option program and will have less of an environmental impact than similar home improvement products beside them.
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Though it’s still cold here on the East Coast, a lot of places are warming up and it won’t be long before the grass is growing tall and lush and will need a good cut. One of the most frustrating moments each spring is pulling the trusty Snapper or Troy-Bilt out of the shed...
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After months of on and off paint stripping, sanding and repairs I was finally ready to apply a proper wood finish to 80-year-old dress look like something. Even bare it looked about a hundred times better than it did painted and the maple had such a wonderful natural shine to it that I strongly...
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I get a kick out of improving my home, but I’m not always very creative when it comes to adding some design to what already functions. That’s why I’ve been checking out Curbly.com more and more lately. When you first visit Curbly to look for design ideas for your own home you’ll probably be...
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The roof and gutters on my home are a little over ten years old, so it’s going to be time to have a new roof put on and all the gutters replaced in another year or two. In the meantime, however, I’ve found that because I have a tree in front of my house...
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After sanding the dresser to the point where it was about ready to begin the stain and finish I decided to take a detour from the refinishing and started to repair the dresser so that it was a decent piece of furniture again. This was an unplanned step when I first began, but the...
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When I was putting up my Christmas lights a few months ago it struck me that I have no idea how long of a string a lights I’d really need because I didn’t really know how long my roof line was when I included the peak at the front of my house. I could...
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It’s only gotten cold here on the East Coast in the past two weeks so I really wasn’t thinking about how efficient my forced air heating system was until I really had depend on the heat every day and night. I knew that the previous owner (supposedly a carpenter by trade) had begun to...
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Please see How to Refinish A Dresser – Part 2 – Stripping Old Paint. The most important lesson I learned when sanding hardwood furniture is to take your time and be patient.
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My first real action step in refinishing my wife’s 80 year old dresser was stripping the layers paint off the wood that had been applied in the past. At first I was afraid a commercial paint solvent would hurt the wood, but scraping and scratching with a wire brush got me pretty much nowhere....
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One of the most rewarding and most time consuming home repairs I’ve ever accomplished was refinishing an 80 year old clothes dresser that my wife’s father used when he was a little boy. For the longest time this heavy wooden dresser was painted with several thick coats of white paint and used for storage...
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When I was refinishing an 80 year-old dresser one of the first things I did as I started to remove the paint was try to identify what type of wood it was made out of. I really only had a couple options based on the piece’s time period and style, but I didn’t really...
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I’m obviously all for learning new home improvement skills to save a little money and take pride in my home, but one of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is knowing when to try it myself and knowing when to call a professional contractor. Mind you, I’m sometimes half-way into a...
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Welcome to the Home Improvements Depot, the ongoing home improvement blog of an amateur handyman, demonstrating do-it-yourself home projects, showing what to do (and what not to do) and even exploring links and other great home repair sites! I’ll highlight great home improvement websites, go step-by-step with you through projects I’m working on in...
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