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Save money – learn how to do that home project yourself

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As many of you who read this blog already know, my husband and I are true Do it Yourself people. We’ve yet to hire anyone to do any of the renovations in our home. Instead we’ve done all the work ourselves.

We’ve torn down walls, sanded and refinished floors, painted every room in the house, venetian plastered the living room dining room and our master bedroom, installed a skylight on the roof of our enclosed front porch and we’re currently working on adding a tin ceiling to our living room dining room.

I forgot the biggest and possibly the most satisfying project of all – we landscaped our garden and put in raised beds using interlocking easy stones.

Now I know that not everyone is a do it yourself kind of person, but I also realize that some don’t do things on their own that they could simply because they don’t know how.

Well, I’ve come across a site for those of you who like Do it yourself projects or for people who want to explore and see if they can do a project on their own. It’s the doityourself.com website.

There are thousands of articles on the site with do it yourself projects ranging from learning how to hang wallpaper to restoring a vintage car! You should be able to find just about any kind of Do it yourself project on the site. There are categories for interior and exterior home improvement projects, decorating, painting, electrical, gardening, plumbing, vehicles, crafts and more.

Many of the project articles come complete with photos and even video clips. In fact, if you are more of a visual person you might do well by buying one of the Do it yourself knowledge is power DVDs as they show you how to do each project in an easy to understand step by step way.

There are also over 100 do it yourself forums on the site that cover a range of topics. You can talk to other DIYer’s as your project progresses, compare ideas and possibly get some help if you get stuck in some way.

I really like this site. I’m pretty sure it will come in handy when we begin to renovate both our kitchen and basement! Check it out for yourself.






Tidying up the garden on a nice fall day

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Do you ever just go in your garden and start chopping away at the plants?

Of course you do, most of you are gardeners. Naturally by chopping away I simply mean you see a dead branch on a rose bush or shrub, some dead leaves here and there on other plants, flowers that need to be dead headed and so on.

Sunday was on of those days for me.

I went into the garden in the early evening and it was 10 pm by the time I came back inside! It’s a good thing we have one of those big security lights at the back of the house to light up the yard!

Several of our roses were overgrown and needed pruning. That’s what got me started. As I made my way through the garden beds I found many flowers that had started to go to seed so I got some of the small jewelry bags that I keep on hand and collected the seeds.

I’m keep the little bags of seeds that I collected open slightly so all of the moisture can leave the bag. I’ve also got to remember to put a few grains of rice in the bag to absorb moisture as well. There’s nothing worse than collecting seeds, sealing them up and then having them go moldy because you didn’t store them properly or because they weren’t fully dry when stored.

When the seed baggies are totally dry I’ll take them and store them in a nice cool place. Usually that ends up being the coolest corner of my basement.

Have you been pruning any of your plants? Collecting seeds for next year?

Oh … I overworked myself. I’ve got an aching back. One of the woes of gardening!

You don’t have to haul out that cumbersome ironing board anymore!

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If you read this site regularly you know that I don’t have a very big house or a very big garden, but I make the most of the space that I have. In fact I think I’ve become quite skilled at adapting small spaces to suit our needs. Even the apartment we lived in before we purchased our house was a junior one bedroom. I think it was only about 450 square feet!

wallmountironingboard.jpg Considering that I’m always looking for ways to make my small space more efficient I’m sure you can imagine how thrilled I was when I happened to visit http://www.betterlifestyleproducts.com/ and saw the smallest, most efficient ironing board that I’ve ever seen.

The ironing board is called the Lifestyle Fold-Away Wall Mounted Ironing Board.What a big name for such a compact ironing board.

This ironing board folds away into a small box or cupboard that’s mounted on the wall.

In fact, when folded away, the fold-away wall mounted iron has a profile of only 4 1/2 inches. You can deploy or fold away the ironing board in mere seconds. Oh did I mention that it’s also easy to install?

I’ve been managing to use a standard sized ironing board in our house. We store it in the basement and I tend to do our ironing down there (in the dungeon) while standing between the washer, dryer and furnace. Talk about tight spaces!

Think that’s bad? It was worse in our tiny apartment!

I kept our regular sized ironing board in the bedroom closet and when I wanted to iron something I’d either set up the ironing board in the hallway between the bedroom, bathroom and living room or I’d bring it into our tiny kitchen and iron between the fridge and a small table.

What I wouldn’t have given to have had one of these small fold-away ironing boards when I lived in the apartment!  unfoldingironingboard.jpg

Just look at the photos I’ve liberated from the Lifestyle Fold-Away Wall Mounted Ironing Board description page. You can see for yourself how small it is when it folds away and how easily it folds out when you want to use it.

Just think of what else you could store in the space that you’re using for your standard sized ironing board now if you got one of these instead! Certainly if you live in a small space, like I do, a fold away ironing board would make a lot of sense.

The ironing board, when fully deployed, is a full sized board with a ventilated steel surface. It doesn’t require any extra supports when extended. It’s very durable. Also, the wall cover is detachable and paintable so you can make sure it matches your wall coloring if you’d like to.

I must confess that I don’t really enjoy ironing, but I do think part of my dislike of ironing has been struggling with the ironing board. I think if I had one of these Fold Away wall mounted Ironing Boards I’d find the task much easier, less time consuming and dare I say perhaps even more enjoyable?

ironingboard.jpg

This lady certainly looks like she doesn’t mind ironing!

If you live in a small space visit the betterlifestyleproducts.com website and read all the information about this fantastic little ironing board. Actually, even if you don’t live in a small space this might make a great Christmas gift for someone that does. Oh and if you visit the site take a look at their product catalog. They have some very handy items.

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