Home and garden

Erin Shuford was driving home when she spotted a coffee table on the side of the road. The piece was scratched up and poorly painted, and she was about to drive on when she noticed its boomerang-shaped silhouette. It was a Biomorphic Coffee Table by Lane from the 1960s. Shuford, a Florida-based content creator and furniture flipper, knew it would be valuable if restored.

As wildfires rage across the country, smoke plumes from scorched structures pose a major health threat. Sneaky particles can creep through vents and other home openings, but buying high-quality HEPA filters can be costly and inaccessible for many.

The heavy mist dripped from my jacket hood as wisps of low fog drifted through the tops of the trees.

Good design does not have to be expensive to look expensive. In fact, there are several low-cost designer “hacks” that will help ensure that your home will look like you splurged when you really saved.

Some gardeners consider peonies to be the queens or divas of the garden. Not because they take a lot of fussing over but because they add bold and color to the late-May garden and herald the start of summer.

It’s easy to love succulents. They’re decorative, compact, inexpensive and readily available. But it’s their reputation for being low-maintenance that makes people want to bring home one or three – or a dozen.

Whew, it’s been a mad dash in my garden the past few weeks. That included starting and caring for vegetable starts, cleaning up winter debris, fixing up the sprinkler system and planting a new garden bed with plant sale finds.

Ceramic floor tile has a rich legacy as a durable flooring material. You’ve undoubtedly walked across it in countless public buildings. Hotel lobbies, commercial buildings and even my own previous parish church sported this artificial stone product. The tile in my church was more than 100 years old and it looked perfect. Do you recall ever seeing a cracked tile or missing grout in all of the tile you’ve seen in public buildings? There’s a reason why.

If you’ve been feeling sunny-side up lately – at least when it comes to your paint color choices – you’re not alone. Yellow is having a moment. “We’re going to start seeing yellow in the next year and a half, two years,” said Jordan Slocum, co-founder of the Brownstone Boys, a design and renovation firm in Brooklyn.

I’m guessing you log onto the internet each day. I travel the information superhighway all day long as part of my business. Fiber optic cables have now been extended throughout my small town in New Hampshire, and I’m ecstatic about their arrival. I remember using a 300-baud modem back in the 1980s. It would transmit text via telephone lines at about the same speed as you see headlines crawl at the bottom of your TV screen.

OK, gardeners, get out your wagons, carts and wallets. The 24th annual Garden Expo is Saturday at the Spokane Community College campus.

Color – how and when to use it – is one of the more challenging dilemmas faced by many homeowners. For designers, education, training and some experimentation often yield the ideal result.

Melanie Priehs says her job as a part-time concrete artist kind of “fell into her lap” in 2019, when she purchased a neglected statuary in Michigan and began learning how to use the various molds and equipment to make animals and other figures. In the last couple of years, sales of one animal have gone through the roof: Everybody wants a goose.

Do you get frustrated when the expensive exterior paint you use peels, flakes or cracks in just a few years? You’re not alone. I’m about to survey my thousands of newsletter subscribers. I’m willing to bet you a two-step mocha-chip ice cream sundae that a majority of them suffer as you do.

Plant sales are blooming all over town. Here are a few coming up this next week for your gardening pleasure.

Have you ever struggled attaching some heavy object to a wall or a ceiling? You may use a stud finder, hunting and hoping wall studs are exactly where you need them to be. Some just throw in the towel and count on hollow wall anchors to do the job. You don’t ever have to use those when building a new home or doing remodeling.