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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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