Category Archives: General

DIY Home Improvement Projects and Why I Hate Wainscoting

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The other day I shared two accounts of friends of mine sharing their first DIY home improvement project. Every home owner has one and I’d be hypocritical if I didn’t share mine.

It’s a cautionary tale of how inexperience can potentially turn to disaster and that DIY is not for everyone. But this tale also has given me a bad taste for wainscoting.

I had done other home improvement projects before. Small jobs that required little skill and mainly just the ability to use a hammer and screwdriver. Other larger projects I had the assistance of my father-in-law who would put Al Borland’s home improvement skills to shame. So my first major home improvement project was to put wainscoting up in spare room that we were prepping for our first baby boy.

My wife loves the look of wainscoting, especially in a baby’s room, and after an initial trip to Home Depot I discovered that there’s actually a wainscoting kit. How hard could that be? As an experienced Lego builder, I felt I was experienced enough to handle a kit with instructions. Turns out the kit wouldn’t be the problem. It’s the circular saw that would be my downfall.

I enlisted the help of my dad who, like me, isn’t an expert handyman but again this was a kit. Surely a guy with a engineering degree and a consumer marketer could tackle this task. So the room was all prepped and it was time to start putting up the wainscoting. What I didn’t realize is just how much cutting was involved. Sure I had a circular saw (given to me by my father-in-law and hasn’t been used since this wainscoting project), but I didn’t have anything to put the wood wainscoting planks on to cut it.

Here we are needing to cut these 5 feet long pieces of wood, but no table to cut it on. So we improvised and used my lone garbage can as a makeshift saw horse. Yes, that was super stable for cutting wood. The Marine men forced it to work and somehow got the cuts done so the wainscoting planks could fit the corners of the walls.

But there was one other detail we overlooked. The window in the spare room came down lower than the top of the wainscoting boards meaning we needed to cut the boards around the sill of the window. Now that may not sound like a big deal but go ahead and look at the shape of the sill on your window. You don’t realize just how many crevices and corners there are and trying to cut a piece of wood to fit perfectly against the window sill and not leave any gaps is no easy task. Never mind the fact that you have two novice DIY’ers trying to do it.

Somehow using a mini hand saw on our garbage can sawhorse we muddled through and got the wainscoting to fit around the window and used caulking to cover up the gaps we couldn’t cover up.

This wainscoting kit project took the better part of 8 hours to do. I now hate wainscoting. When my wife and I moved to our current home and she wanted to put wainscoting up in one of the kid’s rooms and promptly told her, “Get your dad to do it.”

The lesson to be learned here is that no DIY home improvement project is ever simple, but it can be done. If two non-handy guys with zero craftsmanship experience can somehow do it, you can to. I just choose not to as much as possible.

Let us know your favorite DIY home improvement story in the comments. Feel free to be open and honest. As you can see I have no room to judge.

 

Household Items Every Engaged Couple Should Register For (and a few things to skip)

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register Household Items Every Engaged Couple Should Register For (and a few things to skip)

My Husband and I Scanning Away in Macy’s

Setting up a wedding registry was one of my favorite things my husband and I did together when we got engaged. We walked into Macy’s and were overwhelmed with excitement once our consultant handed over the scan gun.

Our only problem…we didn’t know where to start! Did we really need a rice cooker? How many decorative pillows would our bed really need? And what about that mixer everyone always talks about…which model was the one everyone says is a must have?

Of course I did my homework before hand by scouring TheNest.com and other wedding websites. However, as an only child and one of the first of my friends to get married I felt a little lost once that woman handed us the scan gun.

Now that I am coming up on my second year of marriage I have a pretty good idea of what items were smart choices and which I could have done without. Originally I planned to base this list on my own registry but then quickly realized many of my friends and family read my blog posts and I wouldn’t want to insult anyone by telling them I returned or (cough) re-gifted their presents. Instead I polled my own friends and our friends on the Coldwell Banker Facebook Page.

This in no way covers everything a couple will need but it certainly gives some interesting insights. Here is what I learned:

Must Haves

  • KitchenAid® Mixer (Most suggested Item!)
  • Coffee Maker
  • Good Vacuum (Believe me, a good one makes cleaning much more enjoyable! I highly suggest bagless)
  • Pots & Pans
  • Multiple Sets of Bedding
  • Glass Bakeware
  • Knife Block Set
  • Everyday Plates
  • Toaster
  • Crock Pot
  • Serving platters & bowls
  • Drinking Glasses

Will You Really Use?

  • China (Most debated item. Some say it’s still packed in boxes and others said it was their favorite item)
  • Ice Bucket
  • Crystal
  • Ice Cream Maker: As my coworker Anna put it so eloquently “Too much work. You know what’s easier? Picking up a pint of Haagen Daz.” PS while on the subject of ice cream…skip the scooper too. A spoon works just as good :)

Interesting Ideas

  • A Meat Slicer
  • Hot Dog Griller (Yes, I chuckled too but Ashley Houseman, an agent with Coldwell Banker Morris Realty, Inc., said this is one of her most favorite items!)
  • Cordless Drill (Bonus if it has screwdriver attachments)
  • Wok
  • Vacuum Sealer
  • Air Mattress (This has been a lifesaver for us)

Some Final Advice

1) Register early

A common question many engaged couples wonder is when they should register. Joe and I registered before our engagement party. Family and friends were happy to bring an actual wrapped gift instead of writing a check.

2) Register at multiple stores

It is perfectly fine to register at more than one location. It is wise to register with at least one store that has a brick and mortar store as some people may not be comfortable shopping online.

3) Don’t be afraid to think big!

You may think registering for a big ticket item sounds greedy but it will provide your loved ones an opportunity to buy a group gift, so shed that fear and $can away!

Thank you to all who helped with this list!

Cover image via Flickr user the queen of subtle

Did we leave something out or do you disagree with one of the items? Leave a comment!

Welcome Home: A Freedom Tower Worker’s New Appreciation of Home

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welcome home logo Welcome Home: A Freedom Tower Workers New Appreciation of HomeChris and Jennifer Marron had found the home they were looking for. It was a fixer upper that they planned to make their own over time as they tackled projects one at a time. They fell in love not just with the home, but with the neighborhood as well.

Then the unexpected happened. Chris worked on the construction of the Freedom Tower in New York City and sustained an injury to his spine while on the job. The injuries left Chris in a position where he could no longer do the physical labor that was not just required for his job, but also to turn that house into the home they dreamed of.

That’s where contractor and designer extraordinaire, George Oliphant, comes in as he and his crew from NBC’s George to the Rescue came to help the Marron’s finish what they started by completing the renovations they hoped to do themselves in their fixer upper home.

Home is a safe place, surrounded by love.

You can watch the full segment of the show on the George to the Rescue site, but the video above gives you some insight into just how much the idea of home means to the Marrons. What I love is how Chris talks about being at the closing table and just itching to get home so he can mow the lawn. Why? Because to him that was the thing that made the home his.

Watch the video of the Marrons above talking about home and notice how Jennifer describes what home means to her: “Home is a safe place, surrounded by love.”

Welcome home Marrons.

That First Home Improvement Project

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We live in an era where DIY has become a badge of honor. It’s lauded on television, encouraged in magazines and books, and Lowes & Home Depot have made a nice living off of it.

For me, DIY is a dirty word. It’s not just that I’m not a huge fan of home improvement project, but more the fact that I’m not very good at them either. But when you become a home owner for the first time, a home improvement project is not really optional. It’s an eventuality.

That first home improvement project you undertake is often a memorable one. Often times it’s not a small one either as you have big dreams about how to make your new home even greater with a little sawdust and elbow grease…not to mention 32 trips to the hardware store. 

I asked some friends on Facebook about their first home improvement project and got some pretty interesting and diverse tales. My buddy Mike shared this:

I bought a home in WI that featured a small bathroom that felt smaller due to a large vanity/sink. I wanted to change the vanity for a pedestal sink. The only smooth part of the project was removing the old vanity. Once that was gone I discovered the floor underneath was soft and the steel pipes were constricted to roughly half their original diameter due to corrosion. I pulled out the entire floor and called a friend to change the pipes to copper (which meant opening the walls). I replaced the floor and put up new drywall. At 11pm on a Saturday, after working all day, I was drilling in the last drywall screw when I heard a loud noise and then a steady trickle of water behind the wall. I found and punctured one of the new pipes. I called my friend back after opening the walls. He replaced the damage and I replaced the ruined drywall. One week later the project was done and I will never tackle a room with plumbing ever again.

Sometimes a man’s perspective on projects can differ from a woman’s…ok most times it differs. So here’s another home improvement tale from my friend, Vera:

Our house in Shreveport was built in 1940. At some point in the past, some genius previous owner had painted all the windows shut. So my husband’s first project was to make the windows in the study operational. He read up on it on “This Old House,” then started taking 2 of the windows apart piece by piece. He stripped down the frames and re-glazed the glass on one of them, replaced the old ropes and weights with chains and got it all assembled. And it worked! It was great! However, it took him three months to do one window. So we hired the first of our wild & wooly contractors to finish the remaining three windows, paint the room, and install crown molding. I think it took the contractor something like three or four months because he only worked on our place in the evenings. As I look back at it, I don’t know what we were thinking. There was no peace in the evenings because we had Bobby the contractor tromping through the house spitting his tobacco chaw in my window box. After that we hired a different contractor to finish the rest of the windows. He did a decent job – except for the dining room window where I caught one of his helpers painting over sills that were so rotten you could stick your hand through them.

“Wild & wooly contractors” is my new favorite phrase. I’m pretty sure every homeowner can relate to that in some way. The point of these stories is not to scare you, but to show you that every one has some growing pains when it comes to home improvement projects.

What was my first DIY home project? I’ll save that story for a post later this week, but for now I want to know your home improvement project stories. Share your tales in the comments.

The ‘Radley House’ from To Kill a Mockingbird

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This Sunday is American author Harper Lee’s 87th birthday. While she may not be a household name to most, her first and only published work is one of the most significant and widely read novels of the 20th Century: To Kill a Mockingbird.

Harper Lee published the novel in 1960 and while it quickly rose to the top of bestseller lists and became part of most High School Literature curriculums, the 1962 film adaptation with legendary actor Gregory Peck quickly elevated it to a cultural iconic status. For those who have read or watched this film set in a fictional Alabama town during the Depression, you know that the community and the homes within it play a huge role in propelling the story forward and capturing the innocence of childhood.

One of the story lines that resonate most with people is how afraid the children in the neighborhood are of the ‘Radley House’. The children congregate during warm summer nights and hide behind trees as they pass on made up stories about the crazy man Boo Radley who lived in the rickety home across the street. It was said the mere mention of the phantom who lived there would be enough to make the kids behave for days on end!

“The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front “swept” yard that was never swept-where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.” – Harper Lee from To Kill a Mockingbird

If we all think back to when we were children running around our neighborhoods, I’m pretty sure we’d all be able to recall a home similar to the ‘Radley House’ that scared the living daylights out of every kid in town! I remember in my hometown of Jersey City, there was a boarded up old farm home that was built back in the 1700s that always had cats coming out of the spaces between the boards. My friends and I would trade horrifying stories of what could be behind those walls and some of us (not me!) would work up the nerve to run up to the porch to take a peak in, only to run faster than Usain Bolt as soon as they got close to the front door.

What are you stories of homes in your neighborhoods that scared you as a kid? Were they as scary as the ‘Radley House’ in To Kill a Mockingbird? Let us know in the comments!

*Featured Images are courtesy of: Please Note Paper and The New York Daily News

*The Second and Sixth Images are Courtesy of: Retro Web

*The Third and Fifth Images are Courtesy of: Any Clip

*The Fourth Image is Courtesy of: Martha Hackmann

*The Final Image is Courtesy of: Movie  Maniac

The Ornament of a House is the Friends Who Frequent It

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This quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson is a telling one. We may describe our house as being of a certain architectural style or having a certain type of decor to it, but the truth of the matter is a home is defined by those who pass through its doorways.

While the primary residents have the most to say about how a home is described, it also gets meaning from the ones who we continually invite in. I think this is especially true as a child. Remember how exciting it was when you found out company was coming over? All of my boys go rushing to the door even when it’s just the FedEx guy. Our home becomes a little more joyous at the prospect of friends being invited in.

Then of course there’s the sleepovers and parties and who’s home is the one that friends want to hang out in. As you enter the junior high and high school days, a home can be further defined by the frequent additions at the dinner table and the post school event social gatherings.

When you breakaway from your parents’ home and start creating one of your own, you take some of that influence and add to it. Some of those same friends who found themselves at home in your parents’ place may carry over now into yours. While many may gather for your special parties and fun, it’s those that enter your home at the most unusual of hours that will truly define your home.

I love this quote from a book called Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist about how each of us has a “home team.” Here’s what she says:

Everybody has a home team: It’s the people you call when you get a flat tire or when something terrible happens. It’s the people who, near or far, know everything that’s wrong with you and love you anyways. These are the ones who tell you their secrets, who get themselves a glass of water without asking when they’re at your house. These are the people who cry when you cry. These are your people, your middle-of-the-night, no-matter-what people.

My home is decorated with ornaments of friends and family from across the years. Young and old. New and vintage. They are the ones that will help influence the definition of my home over the course of time.

Make note of yours and appreciate how they help make your house a home.

The Origin and True Meaning of Home

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Lord Byron’s quote from Don Juan about without hearts a home not being real is actually rooted in the very fabric of the word “home.” The concept of home is universal, however, we all define home differently. There might be some similarities, but home means something different to each of us.

I wanted to uncover what was the root meaning of home from an etymology perspective. Turns out this idea of hearts and home being connected is a foundation in the history of the word “home.”

The English word “home” is from the Old English word hām (not the pig) which actually refers to a village or estate where many “souls” are gathered. It implies there’s a physical dwelling involved, but the main idea is that it’s a gathering of people. One dictionary I came across online had an interpretation of the modern definition of home that I really like. It states that home is “the abiding place of the affections.” To me, that sums it up like nothing else. It’s not a building or a room, but a place where your love dwells.

Home is the abiding place of the affections.

The Latin root word for home is actually the same word we use for human being, person and people. At it’s very core home is where not just your heart is, but the hearts of those you love and trust. This is why most of our homes are adorned with photos on the wall. It’s a custom that dates back a thousand years and has to do with the fact that people hung portraits on the wall to show to visitors who their ancestors and loved ones were that once lived in that home. Today, we continue this tradition but more so to show the hearts and faces of the people that are welcome in our homes.

My current home started with three hearts and has grown to six that now consistently abide under my roof. While the dwelling itself has changed becoming more crowded and significantly noisier, these are things I would consider to be the best home improvement I could have ever asked for. The walls remain the same but the people inside is what defines my home.

Whether your home is a ranch or colonial, majestic or modest, an apartment or a townhouse, the fact still remains that the hearts that enter it’s doorway or what truly defines it as home.

Is Buying a Home the New Engagement Ring?

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engagement ring Is Buying a Home the New Engagement Ring?If you thought spending a few thousand on a diamond was rough, multiply that by 50 or more and you have what is being referred to as the new engagement ring…buying a home.

In fact many married couples considered buying a home together did more to strengthen their relationship than any other purchase.

On Monday, Coldwell Banker Real Estate will be releasing the full results of a very interesting study that shows a growing trend of engaged couples buying homes before their nuptials. Some major media outlets got a preview of the study this week and the video above from Newsy and this video from AOL Morning Rush teases some of the highlights and findings that will be unveiled this coming week. 

Come back to the Coldwell Banker Blue Matter blog on Monday morning to see the full results. I’m pretty sure a few of the findings will surprise you.

 

Image courtesy of Flickr user base2wave

Redefining a Home Library

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Plato’s quote about a home with a library in it having a soul begs the question, are we on the verge of soulless homes? Think about it. In 10 years will home libraries become irrelevant? My entire reading list from the last 4 years is now stored on my iPad.

But a home with a library should not be looked at as a room to merely store books, but rather a space dedicated to escaping the noise of life. I think it’s time we considered Plato’s quote and redefined what it means to have a library.

Think about it. A library is not the greatest of terms. I spent 4 years in college and never stepped foot in the library. True story. It was a place for bookworms and studious types.A building that had its own smell and density in the air. The library is a place that must be quiet. Silence is expected and no one really enjoys being shushed.

So a home with a library could be conceived as being for the snobbish or the classe supérieure, but a library in a home should be so much more than that. It can be a room for children to study and do their homework in. It should be a place you can relax, grab a cup of Cocounut Mocha coffee from the Keurig and dive into a novel on your iPad. A library does not even require a book or reading to be at it score. It can be filled with music or art.

It can also literally be a place to escape as It was for Batman. The library in Wayne Manor was the place Bruce Wayne dedicated for access to the Batcave.

We often think of the soul of a home being the kitchen as its the gathering place for most households. I think the kitchen is the heart, but the library is really the soul. Don’t think of a library as a room set aside for strictly books and shelves, but rather the space that is dedicated to the enjoyment that life has to offer.

The Most Irrelevant Feature of Every Home

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What do tape decks, doorbells and flip phones have in common? Over time they’ve become completely irrelevant. They all were at one time another a necessity of our daily lives or at least appeared to be. At least tape decks and flip phones possess some utility. You can listen to music on tapes and you can still call someone on a flip phone. But there’s really absolutely no reason to have a doorbell.

At one time, doorbells were actually considered to be a luxury item reserved for those possessing a substantial estate that required a musical chime that permeated the house and notified servants of a visitor. Think Downton Abbey era of homes.

The first electrical doorbell was invented by Joseph Henry way back in 1831 where it was originally just a buzzer sound. Over time inventors tweaked the doorbell to make it more of a melodic ding-dong type of tone. According to DoorbellFAQ.com (yes, that’s a real site) by the 1920′s, doorbells were being advertised as the perfect wedding gift and even a necessity for housewives so they wouldn’t be startled by banging on the door.

Today you can buy wireless doorbells and even customize the tone that is played when someone rings it, but I would venture this is an unnecessary device.

When I bought my home the doorbell was already a wireless one that simply required you to change the batteries every once in a while. At some point in the last two years, the batteries died and I just didn’t replace them. And you know what? An amazing thing happened. People still found a way to let me know they were at the front door. If they didn’t hear the doorbell ring, they just knocked. If I didn’t hear the knock, they called my cell from their cell.

Why do we need doorbells? If you’re in an apartment building or living in a place in the city that requires you to buzz people in, I can fully understand the necessity of having one. But for single home owners, doorbells are just a thing that will eventually break and require you to replace.

There is something to be said about the fact that as a kid when you heard the doorbell ring, it sparked a little joy in your childish heart. You would run to the door with anticipation of who might be on the other side. But as we grow older, we become more jaded and the ding dong of the doorbell makes us wonder who’s bothering us now.

Maybe doorbells are for kids. What used to be a luxury item is now simply a means of childlike entertainment.

In any case, I’m sticking with the idea that doorbells are no longer relevant. Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments.

 

Image courtesy of Flickr user wharman