New York Renovator

I wandered through my local improvement store last week. Well, honestly, I wandered through three of them! (Yes, we have loads of home improvement stores around here– five at last count and that doesn’t include the hardware and specialty tool stores). I was looking through the dishwashers and washing machines. My eyes almost popped out of my head when I saw that pedestals for those new-fangled front-loader washers and dryers are $180. ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY BUCKS for a plastic box with a drawer! And that was just for one box! You needed TWO if you were to have one for your washer and one for your dryer. So that would be $360 for the two pedestals– you could get a top-loader washing machine for that price!

So the cost-saving way is to make your own wooden pedestal. As with anything, do your research– use 2x10s and 1/2-inch or 3/4-inch plywood for the boxes, as a washing machine filled with water is very heavy. Here’s an informative forum board thread I found that may help. It’s important to make sure the machines are level on any surface. I also plan to install brackets that hold the machines on the pedestal (my house is so crooked that our appliances just bounce away when they run). Of course, this means that I must buy a front-loading washer and dryer… all in good time, heh heh.

With the money you save, you can buy a shed or a new couch or something. Now if I can only figure out a way to make my own gorgeous homemade Danze faucets…

I’ve found some really great home blogs, thanks to the marvels of Entrecards. I’ve been enjoying them so much, I wanted to share them. There seems to be no end to the creativity found on blogs! From walk in tubs to winter composting, there is something for everyone! I am most impressed with the economically-minded home blogs.

The Compost Guy: Yep, a real blog. I don’t know if I could find enough writing matter to blog about composting, but this guy can. Great tips! I loved the article on winter composting. I did it two years ago, but quit after heavy snowfall for a few years made it so laborious to haul the bucket to the back. But I think I may pick it up again for next year, after reading his peppy post. And check out this post about aquarium hydroponics!

Home Gardening Tips: This is a nice one, with simple tips for simple people (like me). It has a lot of information on flowers, especially houseplants (I have only two houseplants… I don’t tend them as well as I ought) and herbs. I find the latter interesting, as I have plans for an herb garden in the near future (as soon as I build my deck!).

Clean Solutions: I am a natural gal and I am always looking for ways to live naturally. I like this site because they have lots of information about cleaning stuff. Plus, they like my blog, too.

Back to the Land, Toandos Peninsula, WA: All the way across the continent, there is this blog. I LOVE it! The folks “escaped” the “crush of humanity” of a California suburb to live off the land in Washington State. This kind of living is what I’m trying to do… without leaving the suburbs. :S

If you have a home blog or have found any, please leave a comment and let me know. I’m always looking for creative ideas. (please no spam– that will be deleted).

As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m mulling over my windows and window covering choices. We still have the 100-year-old windows, and I’m hoping these can all be replaced this year. I also need to replace the window treatment style for the living room. Since we restored the room and gave it a different style, the old country-look colors look awful.

Yeah, pretty bad, huh? Remember, we haven’t installed the window trim yet! But the style is completely off.

I do like curtains with my blinds. I have always sewn my own curtains, and probably will do so again with the living room curtains. But blinds are another matter. For years, I’ve bought those cheap little Chinese-made vinyl blinds. Yeah, the ones that fall apart every couple of months. (I just found out that they contain lead, so I’m not getting them any longer). We are considering our options for blinds. My husband loves wood blinds, but I have always balked at their prices. But I promised him I’d look around for pricing.

I came across a blog the other day while looking at websites, and was so impressed by what I saw that you might want to check into it if you’re looking for window blinds. It’s a blinds blog! The information is outstanding. I’ve seen a lot of home improvement and housewares sites, but I’ve never seen a blog where you can actually interact with the company. The company is ShadesShuttersBlinds.com out of Colorado. They are very up-front with their business– there’s a telephone number on the home page, always a good sign– and they have a listing of products made in America. That makes this patriot very happy. This is a good website to bookmark.

So I did some “window” shopping, lol! Tell me, what do you think of these blinds? Wouldn’t this go perfectly with my new laminate flooring?

Or this style? I just love sage green.

Verrrrry classy.

The Hunter Douglas stuff is gorgeous. I’m very, very impressed. And I think hubs would love the motorized window shades, don’t you think? They can come with a free extra remote, lol!

The cellular shades are very nice, too. A fellow blogger friend of mine just filled her new house with them and says they are marvelous. But I think I prefer the faux wood blinds.

Anyway, now that I am making all these plans I am very excited about starting again on the house in the spring! My goals: deal with the windows and finish the final touches to the living room. And finish wiring the house. Planning helps to make the completion seem more realistic.

exp. 4/18

Oh I know I’ve been anti-gadget here lately, but lookie here! I want one, I want one! It even washes dishes! warning: there’s a crude part in it where it’s used as a thermometer. :-p totally spoils the fun.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIOIM6hHBk&rel=0]

I visited my local Lowe’s the other day, leaving behind my trail of saliva as I ogled the kitchen displays and appliances. Someday I’d like to get a dishwasher. A non-human dishwasher. I haven’t run a real, electric dishwasher in… almost three decades…. OMG!!!!!

I was astonished at the all the fancy doo-dads and buttons and bells these modern dishwashers have. I haven’t had a dishwasher in a long time– do we really need hot/medium hot/low hot/medium/fair/average/cool/chilly/freezing temperature settings? Look at this one. This model has eleven different cycles.

OK, we all know that I am very old-fashioned and rather stringent about efficiency. But who needs eleven cycles?? Does anyone out there actually use all those? The dishwashers are $1,000! I did see one I liked– it was the least expensive, of course (but still a reliable name brand). It had two cycles (hot and cool) and a simple dial for three settings. The place-setting size and decibel level was right up there with the big dogs, too. Cost: $200. That’s probably what I pay to wash my dishes by hand every month. Washing dishes by hand is more expensive than by machine, as it generally uses more water.

You know what’s funny, though? What’s old is becoming new again. have you ever seen those 100-year old advertisements, of women bending over their fancy new cookstoves? These cookstoves could boil water AND cook the goose at the same time! lol.

Then “modern” appliances became popular, evolving into the oven/stove top we all have in our homes. Individual appliances were “in” for so long. But look what I saw today at Off Grid Living! It’s called the “Amish Cookstove” and it’s so efficient!

Enjoying the luxury of hot water can cost a family as much as $500 a year. Not so if you own a Kitchen Queen. This stove completely eliminates the need to run a conventional hot water heater, And the real beauty is your water is heated with energy that would otherwise be lost to the environment. You actually get free hot water while your food is being cooked and your house is being warmed.

I think is where we are headed– more efficient appliances that do more with less. It’s about time, IMHO. Enough with the endless gadgets and let’s get practical and functional! Love it!

I am loving Entrecards, in case you haven’t noticed, lol. Where else can you find everything about everything? The kids and I adore the pet blogs. We giggled over this photo.

I can’t remember where I saw it, though! I’ll gladly give credit to the blogger once I find where this photo is. But isn’t that hilarious?! The little legs of the costume attach to the dog’s front legs, and it gives the appearance of walking. LOL!

I’ve also found a ton of great cooking blogs out there. Wow, I needn’t worry about ever running dry on recipes again. Some people have outstanding food blogs. I love this one How To Eat Cheap, and the Day Recipe has something wonderful every day. Gourmeted is very classy, and there’s also Charlotte’s Tips which deals with household stuff as well as the kitchen. I love this recipe called Everything But the Kitchen Sink Beef Soup Recipe at the Cheap Gourmet (that’s mu kind of cooking). But one of my favorite foodie bloggers isn’t on Entrecards. Her recipes are incredible and worth a mention– check out Mrs. W’s Kitchen for a real kitchen experience. Mmm. There’s no reason to starve when you have the Internet to spur you on!

I was looking forward to getting my spring edition of the Lowe’s “Creative Ideas” magazine. In the past, it has been a good magazine to spur creativity with stuff you have around the house to build stuff you need around the house. Like shelves under staircases or dressed-up corkboards.

Wow, has it changed.

I’ve noticed that “home improvement” magazines are less and less about improving the home and more and more about all the doo-dads people can buy at the stores to continue to fill their lives with clutter, and debt.

Here’s what’s new in the “Creative Ideas” mag:

• Install a mega-coffee bar in your bedroom ($750)
• Install a Butler’s Pantry ($2250)
• Build a cabana for your pool ($6,130)
• Build a fancy deck fit for the Rockefeller’s ($14,000)
• Build a 15-foot brick wall divider ($5,600)
• Convert an “unused, extra” garage into a “hobby” room ($3,000)

These aren’t “creative ideas,” these are debt-dunking projects! I’m not against a little marketing, but wow. This is over the top. Where are all those ideas about shoe shelves or gardening space savers? To be fair, the magazine did have some things about coloring plant pots and building a basic 1-foot square wooden box. But most of the projects were for millionaires. Or people willing to spend like millionaires.

I’d really, really like to see a trend toward making do with what we have, not spending more and more of what we don’t have and don’t need. With the housing market and the economy the way its going (and it’s been going in this direction for a good two years, if you have been paying attention), there should be a concerted effort to slim things down and work toward being more efficient. These kinds of “ideas” are just bloatware for the home.

I recently blogged about our (currently) dry basement. I can’t tell you how elated I am that is has been dry all winter. It is NO FUN to have sump pump pipes freeze during the winter, and to have to thaw pull apart the ump and pipes in freezing cold water. Brrrr.

We have had severe water problems on our property for seven of the ten years we have lived here. Much of it is due to negligent over-development, we think. Storm water problems have been afflicting the people of our township for several years, and it is no coincidence that there has been an enormous burst of uber-development of our suburban and rural areas during these same years.

We have two sump pumps in our basement sump well (some people have three now!), and in the past, these two pumps running simultaneously have not been able to alleviate the two or three feet of water that floods our basement. A sump pump is a motorized pump– a very powerful pump– that sucks up water through an opening and pumps it through a hose, where the water is dispersed. Our sump water flows through two flexible plastic pipes that run across the yard to a catch basin by the side of the street. It is an inconvenient system but we do not have the resources or time to excavate half the front yard to install pipes. The catch basin is insufficient for the amount of water we put in it, anyway. It has overflowed many times and spilled excess water onto the street and into our yard… and right back into our basement.

For minor flooding, sump pumps are sufficient to removing excess water. Many homes have small wells in the basement for this purpose. However, if your water problem is more severe, sump pumps are not going to solve the problem. I’ll be blogging about various things to do when a property has water problems.

My town is considering changing the entire townscape (did I just create a new word?). I don’t know what’s going on with the town, and why there is this huge push to develop every square inch of my area…. but it does not bode well for those of us who prefer the small-town life and rural setting.

Upstate New York is going through a transition. A bad transition. Upstate is being eyed by large developers from other areas (New York City, for one), who see our area as a vast, untapped pool of resources that can feed the greed for these resources: Downstate (the area of New York City). It’s hard enough to earn a living here, with the low wages and high taxes; now we have to fight tooth-and-nail to keep and retain control of our own property from the developer wolves. Argh! They eventually want to turn our properties into powerline-strewn, windmill-stricken, highway-plastered parking lot. Argh!

I am concerned that private property means so little in modern America. “The greater good” (whatever that means, and whoever chooses its meaning) is this fascist kind of heresy that is taking over our country. Without property, we really have nothing left to be “free” for in this country. It is a great concern that we are losing our country.

Here’s a good example of what is going on in Upstate NY. This is an excellent article by friend Dan Weaver, titled “Beechnut and Corporate Welfare Queens.” Recommended reading.

In case you haven’t noticed, this blog has now joined the ranks of the Entrecard craze. It’s a terrific invention, and kudos to the guys who invented it. I recommend it. It’s like fitness equipment for the blogosphere– you can get quite a workout, dropping your Entrecards and discovering new blogs! Some groups have a “You Drop, I Follow” network, where bloggers will make a reciprocal hit to your blog if you have visited theirs.

The key is to stay active. In order to continue to get traffic to your blog, you need to drop your cards. You can read more about it here. The gist is that when you visit blogs to drop your card, you collect “credits.” You save up these credits to advertise your own card on someone else’s blog. The credit craze is really taking off. There are groups that will swap credits for ads, let you play games for free credits, there are lotteries and contests for credits, and more. There is no limit to the creative ways of getting and swapping credits.

I found this comic at the Make Money Blogging blog, and it make me laugh.