Several months ago, a pesky mouse caused a small water leak in a PEX water line that supplied water to a second-floor bathroom in my home. A new hump in our master bedroom hardwood floor foreshadowed what I’d discover hours later at dawn.
Ceilings are usually the forgotten, fifth wall -- kept white and bare, even if the rest of a room has been meticulously decorated. But to professional designers, neglecting the ceiling amounts to leaving a space incomplete.
Adding loose-fill insulation to an unfinished attic is a gotta-do-it project for even the unhandiest homeowner. Blow-in insulation will create a sound barrier and add insulating power to your home, and installing it an ideal job for a wannabe DIYer. The job requires no-brainer skills, with a nice payback in a quieter and better insulated home that’s cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.
I have a lot of wonderful perennials in my garden. Every spring, it is a treat to watch them emerge once again from the soil and add colorful flowers to the landscape.
Chanel Boeve-Roth was browsing an estate sale near her home in North Bend, Washington, when she spotted some emerald, hanging lights and a celery-hued chair in the shape of a hand. The combination sparked the entire vision for her front room.
Maybe it was a flyaway baseball that sailed through a window, who knows or will admit to it? The job of repairing a broken glass windowpane in a family home is a common one. And a broken windowpane is an open invitation to bugs and breezes, not to mention intruders, so the job should be tackled as soon as possible. If the damage is in a removable sash, you can take it to a glass repair service, but if it’s in a permanently fixed window you have to work on it in place.
Do you have a wood deck? How much time do you invest in cleaning and sealing it? How many gallons, currently priced around $55 per gallon, of high-quality sealer do you use to make your deck look fantastic? I pretty much know all the answers because I’ve dealt with cleaning and sealing outdoor decks, fences, and other wood for decades.
Charcoal is the wild west. Those black, lumpy chunks people throw into their backyard barbecue grills all look more or less the same. What’s inside the bag often is not.
Are you about to build a deck by yourself? Perhaps you’re going to hire a professional. My guess is you don’t know as much about the process as you should know. Add to the mix the cable TV shows that go on and on and on about how simple it really is.
Most walls in a house are made of wallboard, also called drywall. It’s compressed gypsum covered with a paper facing that is vulnerable because the material appears solid on the outside, but it’s really quite fragile if it’s struck with a blow. Two vulnerable areas are the wall behind a door where there’s no doorstop or the wall behind a frequently used chair that’s pushed back from the table. The gouge or dent left in the wall is an eyesore that needs repair because it will only get worse over time.
Spokane residents love Manito Park. It’s where we bring visitors, have picnics and enjoy its peaceful setting. Some favorite areas include Duncan Gardens, Ferris Perennial Garden, Rose Hill, Mirror Pond and the Nishinomiya Tsutakawa Japanese Garden.
It sure is frustrating when challenges arise in the vegetable garden. They might come in the form of damaging insect pests, unusual disorders that impact a crop’s growth or plant diseases caused by pathogens.
We Inland Northwest gardeners should take a moment to reflect on how lucky we are. Why? We have Garden Expo, the biggest and best annual garden event around. Sponsored by Spokane’s largest garden club, the Inland Empire Gardeners, it takes place at Spokane Community College’s Lair Student Union building on Saturday .
