Before we refinished the hardwood floors, the area near our bay window featured a prominent circular black stain. It was obviously left by a Christmas tree stand and water trapped beneath it, built up over years of happy holidays. It took a good deal of bleaching and sanding to get rid of that sucker, and […]

Guess what came in the mail yesterday? A reward for all my hard work blogging our remodeling and renovation adventures. My very own, light-weight, small-enough-to-comfortably-grip 18 volt Master Mechanic cordless drill. This is the first power tool in our whole arsenal that is all mine. I can put my name on it in magic marker […]

The other day I wrote up a Gift Guide for handy men… but realize as I write this today that I would like just about everything on that list too. It was actually quite sexist of me to put all the cool “big boy tools” on the men’s list. That’s because at our house, the […]

One of our readers, Natalie, asked an excellent question a few days ago. She wondered what type of paint you use on radiators, and what special brushes you might use. Thus far, we have only painted one of our radiators. We spray painted the upstairs bathroom radiator with Rustoleum’s High Heat spray paint (found at […]

Have you heard of this “Cyber Monday” phenomenon? Apparently it’s an attempt to grab all of us techies who refused to storm the stores on Black Friday. They’re luring us with online deals these days, and apparently they named the day in 2002, but up until last night (when I saw a feature news story […]

My Grandma sent me a newspaper clipping the other day with a great, super simple idea in it. When you’re painting, glue a paper (or better yet, styrofoam) plate to the bottom of your paint can. That way you can move it around and not worry about leaving paint can rings on the floor. Because […]

Here’s a snapshot of what I’ve been reading this week: This Old House got a major website facelift full of pretty pictures and a little more white space. It makes me want to surf the site a little bit. Except that when I do, I’ll find all sorts of projects that cost $3.4 billion dollars […]

We have a one-pipe steam heating system, which is highly efficient when it’s running properly but requires quite a bit of fidgeting & futzing. We spent many a night falling asleep to the clangs, gurgles and pings of radiators that were not well-adjusted before we figured it out all. What we’ve learned about steam heat […]

Now that we’re not working 24/7 on our house, the blog is getting a little lackluster…. time to branch out a bit and start moving beyond the “here’s what we did, ain’t it great?!” posts I guess. So unless you all hate it, I’m going to start a weekly “Worth a Look” post with links […]

We’re working hard to earn a black belt in frugal winterizing. Living in Central New York, it’s a necessary skill – unless you’re willing to sell a kidney to keep the pipes from freezing. Everyone has their tactics. There’s the “layer-up” method, whereby you force everyone in the house to wear 3 pairs of long […]