home improvement

Too Much Inspiration

January 18, 2012

EDIT – just discovered the fitness and food sections on Pinterest.  I might have to up my time limit from five minutes to fifteen. I have been purposely avoiding Pinterest for quite some time.  From what I had heard, I knew that it could be the sort of site that could suck me in and [...]

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It’s OK To Stop Improving

October 27, 2011

Last week we got a sale flyer in the mail from Lowes.  The front page has a big picture of a beautiful wall that is made entirely of huge windows, with the words “never stop improving.”  As far as life lessons go, that’s a good reminder.  But context matters.  When it comes to ourselves, our [...]

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Free Building Blocks

October 25, 2011

For the past several weeks, my husband has been spending his weekends building stud walls in our basement.  He’s making great progress and should be finished in plenty of time for our framing inspection (it has to be completed by the end of the year). Building stud walls means lots of 2×4 offcuts.  They were [...]

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I’m Still Here!

March 20, 2011

My apologies for the dust on the blog lately.  Our baby is due in just over two weeks (and our son came ten days early…) and we’re in a mad dash to try to get all of the loose ends tied up on the various projects we have going on.  We’ve been spending every weekend [...]

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Getting Started Is Half The Battle

January 31, 2011

Last night, we measured our basement and drew out a rough sketch of how we want it to look once it’s finished.  I got all the information from our town regarding getting a permit, and we’ll be submitting our permit application this week.  We have to provide them with a drawing of the plans, so [...]

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Starting On Our Basement

January 20, 2011

We’ve been in our home for more than a year and a half now, and have finally decided to tackle the basement.  We kept going back and forth on whether we wanted to put money into the basement now, or wait until we have the mortgage paid off.  Eventually we decided that it would be [...]

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Vinegar As An Herbicide

June 30, 2010

In addition to our awesome backyard, we also have a really big front yard.  We started getting rid of some of the grass last summer, putting down weed blocking fabric and using a wheelbarrow to spread out existing areas of gravel (happily, the former owners had ordered more than they needed when they put in [...]

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New Furnace Trumps New Shoes

June 22, 2010

Last weekend a good friend stopped by to visit us.  And she had fantastic shoes.  I wanted some too!  I knew that they would be expensive, but I figured that I could fit them into the budget and after a few months we wouldn’t even remember spending the money.  But then I thought about the [...]

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Free Wall Mirrors (Craigs List Is Awesome)

January 5, 2010

Sometime later this year we’d like to start finishing our basement.  For now, it’s just a huge storage area, but we have big plans for it.  Our first financial priority this year is our HSA and our IRAs, but after that, we’re planning to start putting some money into the basement.  We’d like to use [...]

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Kitchen Decluttering

October 11, 2009

I don’t particularly like cleaning.  I love to cook, do laundry, work in the garden… but cleaning is pretty far down on my list.  But I love living in a clean house, and having lots of wide open, clean space around me.  And therein lies the conundrum.  Lately I’ve been on a mission to purge [...]

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