Home and garden

I need you to be honest. In the past few months, how many hours have you spent looking for some nut, bolt, screw, wire nut or any other small part that you know you have somewhere in your garage, basement or workshop?

There are plenty of benefits to raising indoor houseplants: They beautify your home or office, they have been correlated with lower levels of stress and anxiety, and they may slightly improve air quality.

And the answer is: Bromeliads.

My start in the construction business happened in Cincinnati in the early 1970s. The knowledge I obtained in those first few formative years doing remodeling work made me, in my opinion, a better builder.

Here we are a few days after Christmas and heading into the dark and dreary winter months. Most gardeners I know will catch their breath until the end of January before the gardening itch begins to reappear. Spring is still two months away. What do we do in the meantime?

Many of us like to fall asleep to the sounds of a white noise machine, but according to TikTok, brown and pink noise may be the sleep aides of the future. The hashtags #brownnoise and #pinknoise have already racked up more than has over 175 million posts.

Eight months ago, a woman hired me to be her virtual general contractor. She was about to start to rebuild a home in remote northern Maine at the south end of Moosehead Lake. She’s the boots-on-the-ground person, and we communicate via email, video calls and texting.

The bird feeder outside my office window has been busy the past few weeks.

It’s been quite a year for interior design. As houses are swept off the market in minutes after listing and new homeowners tackle what they want their home to be like, 2023 was marked with white, clean designs along with minimalism, shiplap and fast furniture.

I’m sure you’ve driven across or seen large steel truss bridges that are made by combining any number of huge steel beams into right triangles that interconnect. When viewed from the side they look like open boxes with a diagonal piece of steel extending from one corner of each box to the opposite corner. Imagine how strong this design is to be able to hold countless tons of concrete roadway, cars, trucks and even giant train locomotives!

I live in rural New Hampshire. When I drive to town, I pass by a house that has a very tall outdoor shed. Every now and then, impressive nor’easters lash us with high winds and rain. We also get our fair share of powerful gales.

Well, the gardening year has come to an end. I squeaked under the wire of last Thursday’s dusting of snow to get the last of the vegetable garden cleaned up and ready for winter.

While major energy savings will come from upgrading windows and doors, improving insulation and ambitious retrofits to replace outdated HVAC systems and ducts, there are simple steps you can take to plug up the leaks in your home.

Water is your friend and your foe. You need it to live, your plants and landscaping need a sip, and if your pets are like my stunning American Dirus dog, they need lots of water.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently issued a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map that has shifted many areas in our region a half a zone higher. This is the map that most gardeners use to determine if a plant is hardy enough to live in their garden. The last update of the map was in 2012.

The joy of a cut Christmas tree is fleeting. All the festive fun is front-loaded: picking out the perfect specimen, bedazzling its boughs with lights and meaningful ornaments, and gathering around it to sing carols and sip eggnog. Then come all the grinchy downsides: the inevitable browning and dropping of countless needles, the begrudging haul to the curb (leaving another trail of needles) and, finally, the guilt of knowing it likely will end up in a landfill – or being mulched by an eco-unfriendly woodchipper run by fossil fuel.

I’ve been a master plumber for over four decades in addition to building and remodeling homes. I was attracted to plumbing because it’s a fascinating three-dimensional puzzle of interconnected drain, waste and vent pipes. Most are invisible behind the walls and ceilings in your home. I also love drawing riser diagrams that show all these pipes. You need one of these to obtain a plumbing permit. Reach out to me if you need me to draw your riser diagram.