Recently in Home Improvement Category

Toward the end of the summer we are going to finally be remodeling our master bedroom and bath as well as some of the stuff in the kitchen. I have been talking about it for over a year now and we've been saving for it for quite some time. It will be nice to have new furniture and some appliances as well. We will wait for the rest of the house until the girls get a bit older though. We both want hardwood floors throughout the house but it doesn't make sense as long as the kids are so young.

Anyhow, I think we are going to work in the kitchen first as we aren't redoing the entire thing, just counter tops and sinks. I still haven't picked out the faucets yet although I've been looking at Delta Faucets. I want granite counter tops though. We just have to go pick out the colors first...

Since my mailbox was recently smashed by vandals I am going to have to replace it. The only place that has my house number is the mailbox itself and along with putting in a new one I've been considering picking up one of these address plaques like the one to the left. I just think that they look pretty tasteful and as far as address signs go something like this would fit in very well. It's been quite awhile since I've created a new garden area at the house and this would be a nice centerpiece to an area right off of the street. Of course with the drought that we have had to contend with over the last few months I will have to make sure and only get drought hardy plants, otherwise I will end up with a mulched area and a boulder stuck in the middle of a bunch of dead plants.

I was also looking at house signs and considering putting one in on the side of the house as well, perhaps right over the porch underneath the gutter. It's easy for people to find the place when I have given them directions, but for delivery guys coming to the house it can be a pain. My street is a circle but the name of it is Amy Boulevard so it can be confusing when they see the Amy Blvd address but don't know which way to go once they get into the subdivision.

In addition to doing some work in the kitchen as well as our bedroom, both the wife and I really want to put in hardwood flooring throughout the house. I love really nice looking hardwood floors and in areas where it might get chilly or I don't want stuff to get scratched up I can always put down throw rugs, like in front of the television for the kids.

Floormall.com has some really nice selections such as this Appalachian Pre-finished Yellow Birch Excel Paprika at pretty decent prices.

They offer free shipping on their flooring and their prices are around 75% below normal retail price. Why would I want to go to one of the big warehouse places to purchase it when I can get it much cheaper and have it delivered straight to my house for free?

Hardwood floors are environmentally friendly and manufactured from a renewable resource rather than synthetically created using plastics like some carpeting. They are much easier to clean and maintain and last quite a bit longer than carpeting. As a matter of fact, some of the old flooring I have seen only gets better with age, unlike the carpet that my kids have been running on for the last seven years.

The wife and I were talking earlier about getting new furniture, which is a topic she never grows tired of. We are actually going to get a new bedroom suite and completely redecorate our bedroom next spring. We've been married almost twenty years and we have never had new furniture in the bedroom. Ever. Thus the decision to get new furniture. Along with redecorating we are most likely going to get new appliances as well. TV, lamps, etc...The ceiling light that is in our bedroom is the stock light that came with the ceiling fan and I really want to remove it and put in a couple of pendant lights instead, maybe a couple on each side of the room. They would look great there and give off plenty of light as well.

With the proper tools and explicit directions I can fix just about anything I need to. I am not particularly adept at carpentry, plumbing or anything like that and if I had to fix something without directions I would be at a loss as to what needed doing. Proper tools are a necessity as well. I know some people can rig up stuff and it works great but I am not one of those people, therefore I go to DoItYourself.Com to find directions to get things done.

When I removed part of the porch railing and added in a new set of steps to our side porch a couple of years ago I hadn't a clue as to how to proceed. The first two times I put the steps together and attached them to the porch they looked awful and I pretty much destroyed the first set of steps. My neighbor at the time was a carpenter and normally I traded out with him. He helped me with things around the house and I kept his computer running properly. Knowledge is power and when there are thousands of articles and links to help you out you become the most powerful person around. Once I was able to sit down and actually figure out exactly what it is that I was supposed to be doing they turned out pretty well.

If I had been able to go to DoItYourself.Com and buy their DoItYourSelf DVD I never would have found myself in that boat. Don't get me started on when I replaced the kitchen faucets. That was even worse. I would hate to see what my bathroom would look like after replacing a toilet.

One thing I can do is electrical wiring, although I am not a certified electrician. When we moved in to our house I ended up getting most of the do-it-yourself directions off of the Internet and taught myself about electricity. It's a great feeling to be able to finish a project yourself without having to hire someone to get it done.

Originally I was going to be making quite a few improvements to the house as I had originally planned on working in the area until I retired. Lately though we have talked quite a bit about the possibility of promotion, so I am holding off on making too many changes to the house. I still plan on installing home theater lighting in the basement though, as I have no idea how long it will take before I am promoted and I would like to finish the home theater.

I just don't want to make too many improvements because the stuff I want to do just doesn't increase what the house is worth enough to spend all of that money.

One of the things I have talked about here recently and the wife and I were just discussing is redoing the kitchen and bathrooms. We both want lots of tile and granite countertops but I also want to move the sink. We have a bar in the center of the kitchen and I really want to eventually move the sink to it. A nice chrome bar faucet would be really cool and it would make cooking much easier having the sink in a central area. This Moen is about $150 and would look really sharp.

Moen makes a really nice product and as their blurb says "Buy it for looks. Buy it for life". This is a nice piece of quality construction and would look great in the kitchen.

I was really hoping that I would have my new pond up and running last night but the guys I am getting the fill dirt and mulch from couldn't deliver until this afternoon. Unfortunately I have to go spend several hours in one of my stores tonight due to it being a holiday weekend. Contrary to what some of my managers think, getting a promotion does mean more money but it means quite a bit more work, including working quite a bit more during holidays.

Taks Christmas for example. As a manager even though everyone works Christmas, I could usually scoot out the door at Two PM and then only come back for Nine PM shift change. As a District I will end up working from about Seven in the morning until at least Midnight on Christmas day. All of the days surrounding it are blacked out so we will end up having our Christmas several days before or after. What sucks is that the way the holiday falls this year the wife and kids don't start their Christmas break until the 23rd, well after my last day off until the first of the year.

It's kind of funny. Although I talk a bit about housing and real estate over here for some reason I reserve my home/garden/do-it-yourself projects for one of my other blogs. Mainly that is because I have had that site up longer and have always posted about projects over there. Right now I am in the middle of building a new pond but most of my info is being posted there. I think perhaps I will cross post the info once I get finished.

Anyway DoItYourself.com is a site that has a ton of DIY articles that you may be interested in reading if you prefer to get things done yourself rather than hiring someone. Need to get ready for Winter (as in Winterizing your house)? They've got a couple of articles on getting ready for the winter!

How about repairing damage to plaster walls? There is a link for that as well, and the list goes on. This is the kind of site that the wife loves. We do most of our own stuff here at home and I am good at certain things and she is good at the rest. For instance, I can design and put together a pond or garden that is just beautiful but I can't paint worth a darn. It's a good thing that she can.

DoItYourself.com also has a DVD available with these and more topics that will be of great interest if you find that there are several projects around the house needing attention, or perhaps you are into real estate investing but you want to fix the houses up yourself in order to save money. Either way Visit DoItYourSelf.com for more and buy the DVD.

I mentioned a while ago that the wife and I want to redo our master bathroom. One of the things I want to do is to put in marble countertops, but we would also like to have marble or tile flooring as well. This is one of my ideas for the walls in the bathroom.

This Iridiscent Black tile is sold by the Glass Tile Store and comes in sheets of 12" by 12" mesh backed sheets. We have thought about making it sort of a sea shore motif in there and this tile would fit perfectly. I wouldn't mind having something like this for the kitchen backsplash as well, but perhaps in a slightly lighter coloring.

The Glass Tile Store has all kinds of tile for walls, kitchen backsplashes, bathrooms and even for the swimming poole. All of their prices are below wholesale cost and they ship everywhere in the United States as well.