Winterizing the Lawn Mowers

In the winter you want to make sure that you winterize the lawn mowers. There is a process for this and if you do it every fall before it gets too cold, it will help your lawn mower to last longer. Add fuel stabilizer to the gas in your lawn mower engine before it gets too cold and you store it for the winter. The gasoline inside of the engine begins to degrade in as little as a month. This can cause clogs in the fuel system in the spring.

Hanging Christmas Lights!

Hanging Christmas lights on your house is a holiday tradition! Sometimes it can be a very taxing task. Hooking up your Christmas lights on your gutters for instance can be hard if you don't have the right kind of gutter hooks! If you are hanging bigger bulbs you will need hooks that meet them;

Usually they tell you the recommended gutter hook on the back of the Christmas light box. Sometimes they don't though, this is where you should really look into it. It sucks when you get home and you think that you are good to go and you realize that you have the wrong hooks. A little research saves a lot of time. 

Garbage Disposal replacement!

This past week I went over to my fiancés mothers house to work on her garbage disposal. It turns out that it has died, probably due to it being rather old. Usually changing out a garbage disposal is a easy process, but when you are dealing with one that is quite a bit older you can find that the fitting are not the same as they used to be. This was the case with her mother's. Thankfully if you follow the directions on the inside of the box it's very much a DIY project. The one thing that would suggest it making sure you work on this project during the day. Many times when you're working on plumbing you will find yourself short one item. It's important that the hardware store is open so that you can get this item without having to be without a sink and dishwasher until the next day. 

Raking the Leafs!

A tradition of fall is raking the leafs! While this can be a very taxing task, there are alternatives to raking. Mowing leaves into your lawn can help increase the health of your grass. It is a misconception that you have to rake all the leaves in your yard. Does it look better? Yes. It doesn't really help though. The nutrients that your yard can receive from mowing the leafs up are better than if you just rake everything up!

Check out this website for more information!

http://www.finegardening.com/improve-your-soil-raking-less

Cleaning Windows!

As with tradition at our house, this weekend we did a little cleaning. The task that we really tackled this weekend was cleaning the windows. The windows in your house can get a lot dirtier than what you would think. Cleaning the windows in your house will help brighten up your home in those cold winter months. This extra sunlight can help keep your home warmer and utility bills lower!

How to Remove Pet Urine Stains From Hardwood Floors

Recently we have been renovating one of the bedrooms in our house. We
have repainted all of the walls in this bedroom and pulled up the
carpet. When we pulled up the carpet we found that there were a few
spots where the previous homeowners pets left stains. This is very
disgusting and usually ends up with a dark spot on the hardwoods. Doing
some research we found a video that really helped us to minimize these
stains! Check out the video! It really seems to working in our house!

Air Filters!

Many times this is something that you don't even take into consideration when you own a house, but every month you need to change the filter in the furnace. A dirty filter can not only cause your allergers to act up, but it can also be pretty bad on your blower motor. When you pull out the filter you just have keep track of which way the filter says air should flow and replace!

Home Maintance that's easy and you don't think about!

There are many things that you can do around your house getting ready for the changing of the seasons! So this past week I worked to get my house ready for Fall. The first thing that we all know about Fall is that the leaves fall...duh! Cleaning your gutters can be an easy task that helps maintain your house quite a bit.


Dirty gutters can be the cause of water in your basement and overtime can cause foundation issues. It doesn't take much to clean them out and usually isn't really the dirtiest of jobs (that is unless you wait till spring to do it...yuck).

Be sure to clean your gutters!

-wn

Day 2-Making an office!

This past week has been a big push on working on the house. Victoria and I are working to make one of the bedrooms a more formal guest bedroom and work had to be done to get to the point. When I first bought this house their was a bedroom that was a young child's bedroom. It had red and blue paint on the wall, with wallpaper right down the middle. To make it even worse the carpet that they put into the bedroom was blue and on one of the far walls the name "Jordan" was imprinted on the wall. Now for years before I met my fiance' it was just a running joke that I had a child's bedroom in my house and when people came over to my house for the first time it really through them off, because they didn't know if I had a kid or not. I just refused to answer anything about the room to these people to make it more interesting. When Victoria and I got serious and she started seeing my house more I had to reassure her that I didn't have a kid. It was pretty funny. Now I found ourselves wanting an office and more room to work.

We started working on the room this past week and it took three coats of primer just to cover up the terrrible paint job that they left in the room. After it was finally covered, we repainted the room and began pulling up the blue carpet. It was a very messy and dirty task but the room has turned out well.

I would say that as of today the battle against working on the house has turned pretty good in our favor:)

DAY 1-Maintaining a House

Sitting here and thinking about what I would write about, nothing came to my mind. I asked my fiancé, Victoria, who is sitting next to me, "What do I talk about all the time?" She instantly turned to me and said, "Working on the house." So here I am! Sit back in your chairs and get ready for a treat.

When I first bought this house four years ago all I could think about is how great of an investment it was going to be. I wouldn't be paying rent anymore and I would have a place that I could call my own! Well you never really think about all the crap you have to do to maintain a house after four years and the best part about working on your house is that it always seems to need something done at the worst moment in time.

This past week I've been working pretty late on a project at work and haven't been getting home till later in the evening. Monday evening I got home about nine at night and came in started getting ready for bed. Usually when I work this late I just want to take a shower and crawl into bed and read. Well, the house gods decided this would be too easy Monday. When I turned on the shower and started washing up, I noticed the water wasn't running down the drain. So I reached down and pulled the plunger up and down a couple of times to no avail. I turned off the water and started staring at the drain. After a few minutes of "willing" it to work again and poking it with my finger, I decided that I probably should go downstairs and check out the drain pipes. If anyone has ever done any plumbing, they know, it can literally be a shitty job. I pull apart the drain pipes and the most foul substance know to man comes falling out onto me...I felt like a shit monster just slapped me in the face. I try my best not to let any of it touch my mouth and I squeeze my eyes shut as hard as I can. I blindly grab a towel out of the dirty clothes pile and start cleaning myself up. After cleaning myself off and giving the bird to the pipes a few times, I finally put back together everything and go back up to continue my shower. I hate plumbing. After my shower I make my way into the kitchen and as I was getting the coffee ready for the morning, I saw an ant on the countertop. I can't stand the sight of ants in a kitchen. I spray down the back lining of the countertops and clean everything. Ants...

I have passed the house gods test tonight and deserve a nights rest.