New York Renovator

This is a guest post about a TERRIFIC, environmentally-friendly composite materials for decking and railing, brought to you by Rhino Deck.

Rhino Deck Railing And Decking Materials Help Customers Go Green

One of today’s hottest trends is green construction and home improvement. Rhino Deck listens to its customers and provides a number of green options ranging from composite decking and railing to capstock products. Best of all, our customers can save some green while going green.

High End Home Improvement With Rhino Deck Composite Materials

Decks are versatile spaces that will add square footage to a home as well as increase its value. The extra space is ideal for any living style, including a place to relax, entertain, or barbecue or to set up a space for a children’s play area. Using green materials and helping your environment will magnify your enjoyment of the space.

Rhino Deck has a large catalogue of composite construction materials. This includes a great selection on color and texture. Composite materials from Rhino Deck also require much less maintenance than traditional woods.

Premium Capstock Materials From Rhino Deck

Capstock is a unique green material that combines composite materials with a polymer shell. The end product is durable and resistant to mold, mildew, weathering, fading, scratches, and stains. Rhino Deck carries the latest in capstock materials including the Armadillo line, which has a 20 year warranty.

The Hubs delivers mail from time to time. I never knew how difficult delivering the mail can be. I guess I never really appreciated the mail service much before, never even thought of it before this. Delivering the mail is HARD! It is repetitive motion: push gas pedal, steer to side of road, push brake pedal, open mailbox, stuff mail in, close mailbox, push gas pedal…. on some routes, the mailman has to do this 500 or more times, all within a few hours… and then there’s doing it in the snow, up the hills, and in the dark!

All that mailbox opening and closing is tough on the hands. The mailman can’t wear gloves because he needs to be able to handle endless stacks of junk mail all day as well as open and close boxes. The Hubs says the cheapo metal boxes are the toughest, because the clasp is just a curved tab, and the closing mechanism wears out quickly. By the end of the day, his finger is raw from opening and closing all the boxes. So when someone installs a nice, new mailbox, especially a pretty, roomy one that opens and closes easily, it brings great joy to the mailman.

We have a cheapo metal mailbox. Oops.

Gonna fix that, now that I know what a tough job the poor mailman has. I really, really like the Amco Victorian mailboxes, but they are too ornate for me (I live in town). They’d be so perfect for a suburban area or a city of beautiful row houses! Amco has a lot of mailbox selections and styles, in all sorts of colors. The Amco pedestal mailbox is lovely, perfect for a city setting. You can browse the Amco mailboxes and see for yourself how pretty they are. They are constructed of aluminum, and won’t rust. They are all ornate, loaded with character!

So do your hard-working mailman a favor: keep the mailbox free of bees, hornets, and ants. Keep your mailbox in good repair. Maybe even leave a cookie or an apple for the guy. And definitely get a nice box that is easy on the mailman’s hands. He will appreciate it so much.

The front entry of a home is REALLY important. I had written a post about curb appeal where I sliced and diced some of the basics. I am a house fanatic. When we travel, I don’t like to drive because I’d rather look at every house we pass by. I like to look at the architecture, soak in the details, figure out what makes a home and yard attractive to me, and etc.

The most important elements of curb appeal are the front yard landscaping and the front entrance. Little touches REALLY make the difference. You may have a meticulously trimmed front lawn, but if your front yard is barren of interest, or your front entry is plain, it degrades the curb appeal. Just like jewelery on a woman, a house needs little ornaments to make it shine.

One really nice accessory is a very pretty address sign. I once believed these to be only for the “rich” folks, because they were so expensive; but home address plaques are very affordable. And they are gorgeous!

You can get a very fancy engraved and stylish Whitehall address plaque, or get separate address plaques and numbers and do it yourself. The styles are varied, and very attractive.

Some towns require that the homeowners mark their home address numbers on their mailbox or home, to enable firefighters and emergency crews to easily locate your home. Why use cheesy number stickers from Walmart when you can do it all up with style, and improve the curb appeal of your home?

This tip on home address plaques was brought to you by your friends at justaddress.com. Thanks for reading!

Old houses often have water problems. Mine sure does. Last year, the kids and I worked all summer on building a huge drywell area, to lead rainwater runoff from the roof away from the foundation of the house. You can read more about it here and here and here.

It has helped our water situation, somewhat, although we so still get backup water from the sump well. I think the reason for that is the undergorund water table is very high around here, and there is only so much we can do to deal with that. Nonetheless, I’ve been mulling over more of my options. I cannot really prevent the water from coming up and into my property, but I can divert it. So we are going to build French drains around the perimeter of the house, one side at a time. (we are doing the digging ourselves, with shovels).

Perhaps the best article I’ve read on building a French drain, and understanding water flow, is here at Ask the Builder. I’m not quite sure where to have the drainage area, because there is the chance of exacerbating the water problems if I don’t extend the French drain system far enough away from the house; I’ll just be creating a pond from all that runoff!

So… I’m doing more research and thinking. I may have to tear up a section of the asphalt driveway to do this. The driveway is very old, and was installed much too close to the house anyway (it’s only two feet away from the house walls!) I have some tough decisions to make. But I think this will be our autumn project before school begins for the kids. And we have to go camping sometime soon before then, too!