When the hot days of summer are upon you, how do you tend to your garden to make sure that it thrives and that all of your hard work has paid off.

1) Fertilize container plants each time you water them. I really need to do this more regularly. My container plants always end up dying half way through the summer. It really is very sad.

2) Don’t over water your plants: The soil becomes waterlogged and plpants can’t survive in waterlogged soil because they can’t get oxygen. Stick to a watering schedule which might be something like every like every four days. In your container plants use water holding crystals or buy self watering containers. These will help you achieve the balance between under and over watering your plants.

3) Measure the amount of water you are actually giving to your plants. If you are using a sprinkler system, set out a small container to catch water. After the watering cycle use a ruler to measure the depth. You want about 1″ each time.

4) Stop pruning, increases new growth and stresses the plants which is not good in heat when your plants are already stressed. I have a hard time with this one because once everything blooms and has leaves out, that is when I really can see where the pruning needs to occur.

5) Stop planting: The survival rate of new plantings drops dramatically as temperatures increase.

6) My children’s favorite: Cut back on mowing the lawn. When you do cut the lawn, set the blades high to prevent stress on grass. Remember the taller grass will survive the sun’s scorching rays better.

7) Keep gardens well mulched. The mulch helps hold the moisture in the soil.

Following these seven tips will hopefully lead you to a more successful garden this summer.

So you walk down the stairs to your basement after a storm and see water everywhere. How do you remedy this so that it does not happen again?

Water in basements happens for several reasons. The easiest way to fix the problem is to search for any cracks in the foundation. Seal them all with cement.

Next apply a high quality waterproofing to the basement walls and floor. Water proofing is different from water repellent. Water proofing is intended to prevent the passage of water under hydrostatic pressure. Hydrostatic pressure is just another way of saying water pressure. Due to hydrostatic pressure, water finds the path of least resistance and causes cracks to form, allowing water to slowly seeps in.

What causes hydrostatic pressure? Several factors contribute to it. Having a high water table is one over which you have no control. Not properly using your gutters and drainage system on your house. Allowing the run off to pool at your foundation instead of channeling it further away. You should make sure that your landscape encourages water to run away from your foundation.

Tonight I am sitting up waiting for my husband to return home from a business trip. Since he is not here I have full access to the remote control. What do I do with it? Watch HGTV with abandon.

I happened upon the show Haulin’ House. I have never heard of this show before. Furthermore, I had no idea that there was enough interest in moving old houses to warrant a television show about it. (Though I have written about this phenomenon twice. Once, about the Harvard Law School moving a house and then about a log cabin that was bargain priced in hopes that someone would want to save it.

It was fascinating to watch. After they had stripped the house down and put the trailers underneath the house they weighed it. And guess what? It was too heavy to safely travel over one small bridge that was necessary to cross in order to get the house to its new foundation. The owner had to go in the house and start knocking plaster off the walls in the hopes of making it weigh a ton less. Yes, literally a ton.

Oh here is a little preview of the show on youtube. That is one huge house to move. As they were winding down the roads it would appear to tip precariously.

I spent a large portion of my holiday weekend doing this:

And then I realized I had made several grave errors.

I tried to tell myself that it didn’t really matter. But it did. It bothered me every time I looked at it.

And so I tore about 1/3 of the tile off the wall and scraped the thinset off the wall and backs of the tiles.

This coming weekend? Back to the drawing board, or more accurately, the wall board.

Many people who buy older homes and embark on massive renovation projects do so as an investment. We call ours a long term flip, a five year plan. We are on year five. Five years seems almost laughable now. On bad days I think we may die here.

What projects improve resale value? For us it was easy. Every single room needed a gutting. The electrical system needed to be updated. All the bathrooms needed new plumbing.

Tops on the list of projects to increase the value of your home is to have an updated kitchen. I can’t wait for mine.

When we first looked at our house we asked our realtor why no one had bought the house. It was priced well below market value. And he said, “People are really turned off by the kitchen.”

At the time it made us laugh, because the kitchen, while ugly, wasn’t that bad. It certainly was not the quality of kitchen that belonged in this particular house in this particular neighborhood, but I was much more turned off by the lack of laundry room, the ugly wallpapers in every room, and the hideous wall-to-wall carpeting. Oh, and the multitude of bathrooms that needed extensive renovations was high on the list of turn-offs. But the bones of the house and the light? Those drew me in. I could see it was a house that wanted to be pretty– the ugly duck that could be turned into a swan.

After we were in the house for a few months we realized:

a) The kitchen cabinets were made of cheap plywood. We promptly broke several by doing nothing more than shutting them. Oh, I may have kicked one in a fit of anger one day, but shhhhhh, no need to go there.

b) While spacious, the kitchen was seriously lacking in usable counter space and had the least functional floor plan possible. It was almost as if they had thought about how to make the kitchen as user UNfriendly as possible.

c) And why was the refrigerator all the way inside of the pantry and not in the main kitchen?

d) We now owned the world’s smallest wall ovens and their cousin the world’s smallest refrigerator, a refrigerator, it should be noted, whose doors could not open all the way because they hit the walls of the pantry.

e) New kitchens are expensive. Shocking, mind blowing, painfully expensive. This one was the toughest realization.

Now, in Year Four, we will finally be finishing our kitchen.

I read through the lists of projects that the so-called experts say improve the value of your home. And I had to take issue with several points. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that vinyl siding and replacement vinyl windows are not considered improvements in an historic neighborhood.

I think the best thing that you can do before remodeling your home is to find out what comparable houses in your market have inside of them. What improvements have been made? Do all the houses in your neighborhood have granite counters and professional grade appliances? If so, you will be doing your home a disservice if you put in laminate counters and bottom of the line white appliances.

Similarly the opposite is true. Do not over improve your house. If your house is in a neighborhood of houses that sell for $100,000 don’t throw $60,000 into a new kitchen thinking that your house will now be worth $160,000. It won’t be. You won’t get the money back.

People are becoming more environmentally aware is recent years and seeking out green products to replace their current non-green products. This desire has fueled a movement of organic foods, alternative fuel sources, and greener building materials. The newest product to dip it’s toe into the pool is paint. Paint manufacturers are all releasing their own lines of low VOC paints. Since, according to the EPA, one of the top 5 leading health risks is indoor air, this movement has been embraced with open arms by consumers.

VOC stands for volatile organic compounds. Paints and finishes release low level toxic emissions into the air for years after application. The source of these toxins is a variety of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). Until recently, homeowners had no choice. The VOCs were essential to the performance of the paint. Exposure to V.O.C.’s in high concentrations can cause short and long-term health problems,

Paint is composed of three different components. The pigment, or color. A binding agent, which ensures that the color sticks to the wall. And a solvent, which keeps it all liquid until exposed to air. The solvent then evaporates, leaving the pigment behind on the wall. The solvents are the main source in paint of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Low VOC paints replace the petroleum based solvents with water based carriers. However, even Zero-VOC formulations contain some small amounts of toxins. Environmentally friendly paint is a matter of degrees.

According the to New York Times:

Not everyone is happy about the shift. Many designers, painters and consumers who applaud environmental responsibility are nevertheless worried about the growing restrictions on oil-based paints (which contain high levels of harmful volatile organic compounds), and even on less hazardous water-based latex ones.

Designers have said that consumers are not yet willing to accept the limitations on the new low VOC paints and erroneously expect them to behave in the same manner as traditional paint. They say that in areas of high use or friction, such as cabinets, that traditional paint is preferable as the low VOC paints do not hold up as well. Painters have also said that they charge more for using low VOC paints since they require more coats of paint to achieve adequate coverage.

I have not used low VOC paints so I can not say how they perform when compared to traditional latex paint. I do know though that if I were forced to coat the wall five times rather than the normal two coats, that I would not use it again. No matter how environmentally friendly it is. Not to mention that it is significantly more expensive per gallon.

However, next time I am buying paint I think I will try a gallon of the low VOC paint and see how I like it. I certainly have enough experience with traditional paint to make an informed comparison.

Once upon a time there was a woman who lived in a shoe. A decrepit old shoe that needed lots of work to rescue it from a century of bad taste and neglect.

She and her husband did many home improvement projects and fancied themselves quite handy.

One weekend they decided to finally tackle installing the tile floor in their sun room. Tile that had been special ordered two years ago and had sat in it’s boxes, getting dusty from other various improvement projects that pushed it to the background.

The husband took a Friday off of work and they set about working on the project. First they installed the new subfloor. they stepped back and admired their handiwork. And it was good.

Then they set about putting in the tile. Surely the gods were smiling down upon them because the room is such a size that there was no tile cutting required except around the heating vents. They smiled at this, because no cutting is good. Very, very good.

They worked as a team, this husband and wife. He would carry the heavy boxes of tile into the room and cut them open. He would spread the thinset out across the floor with his trowel and she would set the tiles on it behind him.

She would stand back and command the husband, in the nicest possible voice, “move the tile to the right, no to the left, my left for crying out loud… a little more, turn it slightly clockwise.” And the husband did this with minimal audible sighing. And it was good.

Then they approached the end of the project. They were tired and looking forward to having the project done.

The wife commanded the husband to go fetch the last box of tile. There were only four more tile needed for it to be completed.

The husband returned. “Oh, wife of mine, there is no more tile.”

The wife got up and stormed out of the room, “Why must I do everything. Of course there is more tile. Did you even look?”

The husband replied, “Yes, I did look, my wife. And there is no more tile.”

The wife yells, “I know there is more tile. I ordered it myself. I would have ordered more than enough tile. I know how to do simple math.”

The husband said, “Yes wife, I am glad that you remember who placed this tile order. I feel that will be important information in the next few minutes.”

The wife looked for the tile. And she looked some more. And she used words that caused her husband to blush and her children to cover their ears. Still she did not find anymore tile.

The husband said, “I do not think math is your strong point.”

The wife shot daggers out of her eyes and killed him.

But then she revived him when she found out that the tile had been discontinued and she needs him to make a built in bookcase in the roughly 5 foot long area to hide the fact that there is no tile on the floor.

The wife imagines the next owners of the house moving in and deciding to tear out that odd bookcase. And that thought makes her laugh.

And it is good.

The End.

I have always loved the walk in pantry. I have an entire folder of pantry photos saved to my computer as inspiration. So if this one belongs to you let me know. I love it.

My entire adult life I have lived places with a walk-in pantry. When I moved into this house the walk in pantry was where the refrigerator was located and a crazy inefficient cabinet. It was awkward. Who wants to walk into a pantry to get to the refrigerator?

The day I moved in and was unpacking I wandered around the kitchen wondering where to put the cereal and canned goods. Do people put these things in their kitchen cabinets? Where do you put your potatoes?

And more importantly why did the pantry fall out of favor with home builders and kitchen designers? It is so much less expensive then comparable storage you could get in cabinets. And I know, having just sold my arm to buy cabinets.

Now that we have gutted and rebuilt we have moved the refrigerator out of the pantry. And I have begun to obsessively redesign the pantry. With my graph paper. Because I am obsessive about everything. Even drawing baskets to scale. It gives me something to do during the long exhaustive process of renovation.

As of right now my design is simple. Beadboard on the walls, open wooden shelves, some baskets for things that need to basket-ized. Is that a word? It should be. I sort of envision it to be a modern interpretation of the old shelf lined pull chain light light fixture pantries that our grandmother’s had.

People ask me all the time why my husband and I do all of the work on our house by ourselves. Why not just hire someone they ask. Someone who will get it done in a timely manner, professional quality, and get it over with. They of course are assuming that one can actually find a competent contractor who can fit you in before the second coming.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, a certain dead contractor perhaps, but this weekend I was reminded once again why my husband and I became DIY fanatics.

But first the back story. Once upon a time we bought this huge old house and hired a contractor to do some work. It took him forever. It went ridiculously over budget. When I questioned him on being over budget he became angry and defensive. Many things we done shoddily. Our brand new screened in porch did not have the proper supports and within 9 months was literally falling off of the house. In the end we had to fix ourselves. The countertop he fabricated for our laundry room was not sized properly so the sink if way off center in the cabinet that contains it. In the end we just decided to live with it.

Other things were smaller, but the perfectionist in me was bothered by them. And still is.

Fast forward back to this weekend. We are hanging our cabinets in our laundry room. They are balanced on a temporary support and I am holding them in place, while my husband drills hole after hole into the wall. Looking for a stud to screw the cabinets into. To discover that there are no 2×4’s in the wall.

It seemed somewhat unbelievable. There has to be some sort of wood back there, right? Right? Nope. We cut a sizable hole into the wall and there was nothing back there remotely resembling a 2×4.

What the sheetrock is screwed into is anyones guess. Since it used to be an exterior wall, we think that he just out some sort of firring strips up an completely random intervals.

One last photo of my husband knocking on the wall, hoping against hope to find something, anything, to screw the cabinets into.

But what is a homeowner to do? We had asked around. The contractor that came the most highly recommended was booked for at least eighteen months. He was also three times as expensive. Had we known then what we know now, we might have just waited and used him anyway.

A new website has been developed to help homeowners find thousands of unbiased reports and reviews about service companies in 124 cities around the country. With over 650,000 members, Angie’s List is a better resource than just asking your neighbor. I can’t wait until they have a chapter in my area.

Near where I live, there are many towns where people buy the old homes for the land, knock down the old house, and put up something new, and usually hideously large, in its place. Some of the houses, 1960’s era ranches for example, are not difficult to see go. But when people buy older houses and demolish them, my heart breaks a little.

But in all of the cases of tear downs, there is an enormous amount of waste that seems hard to justify.

Nancy Keates from the Wall Street Journal has written about the more eco-friendly option of unbuilding, something which they are doing to their Portland, OR home.

The Building Materials Association estimates that in the U.S., 315,000 to 360,000 tons per year of reused building materials are sold by reuse centers — not even 0.2% of the total waste from building activities each year.

Keates writes about how her house was painstakingly disassembled. Things that were going to be reused in the rebuild were separated out. Once that is done, “the Rebuilding Center will send in their deconstruction crew to take everything else apart. They will start with the hardwood floors, then take apart the windows, doors and even pipes — down to the house’s foundation.”

Doing this does end up costing more money than a traditional tear-down. The unbuilding at the Keates home took an additional 2 weeks and approximately $4000. Not adding to landfills, however, priceless.