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Summer is the time that most of us feel like entertaining. Casual parties are suited to the outdoors. What better way to increase your casual living space than with a patio. There are many different types of materials that can be used for building a patio. Brick, specially designed patio blocks, natural stone products, or gravel.

Gravel is one of the easiest for the DIYer, requiring no special skills other than a strong back. It is also the least expensive. Depending on the size of the patio you choose to build it can be started and completed in a single weekend.

1) You will want to determine the size of your patio. Dig down and remove 4 inches of soil.

2) Using a hand tamper, tamp the soil down before filling the area with pack, a crushed stone and stone dust mixture.

3) Rake the pack level and tamp down until it is two inches deep.

4) Lay landscape fabric over the pack. This will prevent weeds from growing up through your new patio. Most of us have enough weeding to do in our yards and gardens without adding the job of weeding the patio to it.

5) Decide what kind of edging you are going to use for your patio. After all your hard work, you do not want your patio stone drifting into your lawn. And trust me, neither does your lawnmower. Many people chose stainless steel which is available at any of your home improvement center. It can follow gentle curves and could be the right material should you decide to have any shape other than rectangular for your patio. We opted to use wood.

6) Shovel the gravel gently onto the landscape fabric. Rake level.

7) Bring out the patio furniture and pour yourself a cold one. You deserve it.

What improvements should you make to help with the resale value, especially in a slumping real estate market like we currently have?

The NAR (National Association of Realtors) releases a report every year on what the top projects are for home values by analyzing a complicated formula of how much things cost and how much of a return the person saw on the value of their home. I read through the list and thought even if you can not afford to do these larger projects they are great guidelines for showing you what things are important to a buyer.

The top 5 projects to boost a homes resale value are:

1. Upscale siding replacement: This project gives a full return dollar for dollar on your investment. The problem here is that it is very costly to replace your homes siding. Unless you really need this done, I would suggest working with what you have and concentrating heavily on theside that is visible from the street. Scrape, paint, hang some new shutters.

Stand back from your home and asses how your home looks. I am talking about your home now, not your landscaping. Remember that this is what a potential buyer will see first. This is what will determine if they even set foot in your home. You want them to want to come inside.

2. Midrange bathroom remodel : Yes, you might like those fancy imported faucets, but if you are looking to turn your house over in the short term, don’t buy them. Go into your bathroom and see what you think looks out of date. What will tunr buyers off? If it is an old vanity top with a harvest gold sink, well you should definitely replace those. Is the floor an old ugly vinyl? Tear that up and put down some simple tile.

If all of the big things in your bathroom look good, then maybe it is time to break out the paint and maybe replace some fixtures. If you have a wallpaper border up, please take it down. Even thought you love it it screams 1980’s and most people don’t like them.

3. Minor kitchen remodel: Kitchens, along with bathrooms, are the smartest places to invest your home improvement dollars. A minor kitchen remodel is one in which you take a functional, but dated kitchen, and give it new life. Look at the countertops? Are they dated or worn? What about the sink and faucet? The hardware on your cabinets? Your lighting?

I like to think of the faucets, light fixtures, and cabinet hardware as jewelry for the kitchen. Step back and give your kitchen a critical eye. ANd then scrub it clean like you have never scrubbed it clean before.

4. Midrange siding replacement: I think the same advice I laid outfor the upscale siding replacement follows here. If you don’t need new siding, you don’t need it. But you can make sure that the siding on your house looks the very best that it can look.

5. Attic bedroom remodel: Adding on an extra bedroom is always going to increase the value of your home. Especially now that so many people are working from home and trying to carve out some extra space for an office. This is not always a possibility, for many reasons, among them maybe you don’t need another room or want to spend the money for another room.

But what does this really say about the home buyer? It says that they are looking for additional space. Make sure that your home is not cluttered. Peoplecan not see past the clutter. I have heard a good rule of thumb is to remove half of what is in your home.

I would add a sixth project here: paint. Honestly nothing makes your house look fresh and clean like some new paint. It is inexpensive and sets the tone for your home. If you painted one of your rooms a really bold color, go over it with a neutral. Even though you might love the shocking yellow walls in your dining room, or the bright purple in the living room, other people will not.

Last month I posted about the conundrum of dealing with plaster walls that have seen better days.

This past weekend we hung sheet rock over the plaster ceiling in our kitchen.

Hanging sheet rock over plaster on the ceiling is much easier than the walls. First we used 1″ x 4″ boards spaced at 16″ intervals. We shimmed the boards where necessary to make the sheet rock as level as possible. Then we were able to attach the sheet rock to the new boards easily.

The sheet rock lift? THAT is a wonderful invention and well worth the rental fee.

Oh it is inevitable. If you have children they will at one point push their hands through the screen door. Or attack it with a stick. And all those bugs that you are hoping to keep out of the house will be flying right inside. But what do you do to fix the screen?

If it is more than a small tear, you will probably be better off replacing the entire screen.

Step One:

Remove the screen door from the door frame and lay it on a flat work surface. I like to lay it down across two sawhorses so that I don’t have to remove the handles.

Step Two:

If you have a wooden screen door, as I do, you will need to gently pry off the thin wood trim that covers the edges of the screen and then pry off the staples or small nails that hold the screen in place. If you have a vinyl screen door you will need to pry the spline from the track that runs the perimeter of the screen.

Step Three:

Remove the damaged screen and discard. If your door is wooden and in need of touch up paint, you might want to do that now while you don’t have to worry about getting unsightly paint on the screen itself.

Step Four:

Place the new screen over the opening and trim away the excess making sure to leave a few extra inches around the perimeter.

Step Five:

Now you will need to secure the screen back to the door. If you can grow a third arm right now that would be extremely helpful. If not, enlist a helping hand or two to hold the screen steady while you push the spline back in on one side of the door, or use your staple gun if you have a wooden framed screen door.

Make sure you pull the screen taunt while you are securing it. You do not want to go through all of this work only to have a sagging screen. That will happen soon enough when one of your children decides to lean on it rather than use the handle.

Step Six:

One you have replaced the entire spline, or stapled it into place, you will need to trim away the excess screen. On wooden doors you will now need to nail the wood trim back into place. You really just need to tack it on with some tiny finish nails.

Step Seven:

If you are like me and tired of having to repair the screen in the door, buy and install a screen door grille. They sell them to protect your door from dogs, but really they should say protection from children.

Step Eight:

Rehang the door. Sit back and enjoy your new handiwork. Practice saying, “What, do we live in a barn?” Because your children will never shut the door anyway.

A whole new level of DIY.

Tonight I came across this post on the IKEA hacks blog. When my children were small they had a Duplo building table that was the same basic idea, though not nearly as nice looking.

This is one of the ideas from the IKEA hacks blog that I would actually attempt as a weekend project.

From there I was sucked into the swirling vortex of the internet where I ended up at this website, Instructables. There you can find instructions for making anything. Yes, I believe anything. The homemade simple telegraph particularly captivated my children. Or maybe you want to turn your paper clip into a safety pin. Perhaps some self watering plant containers are more your speed.

I am always amazed by the creativity of people.

In all of our years of home renovation we have discovered that some plaster walls with cracks can be easily repaired. Some require a great deal of skill and finesse to bring them back. Some are just lost causes.

If you can repair and patch the plaster, this is the easiest thing to do in the long run. Knocking down plaster and removing the lathe behind it is a messy, time consuming job. Not to mention that hauling all the heavy plaster out of the house and into the dumpster is back breaking work.

Many people advocate just hanging sheetrock over the damaged plaster. We have done this. There are benefits, especially in a house like ours where the insulation has been blown in. Removing the plaster and lathe (the wood or metal mesh behind the plaster) causes the insulation to come out of the walls. Then new insulation will also have to be installed.

If your home is not insulated I would hands down take the extra time and effort to removed the plaster and insulate. The added benefit is that once the walls are open you can easily redo the electrical wiring and plumbing inside the walls. This is what we have chosen to do in most rooms where the plaster was not able to be salvaged.

The major problem with sheetrocking over plaster is what will you do with all of the trim work in your home? If your home has beautiful wood trim you will want to think about how you are going to remove it and replace it on top of the sheetrock without damaging it. This will require a level of carpentry skill that is above most novice DIYers. Even if you do not care about the trim from a preservationist point of view, replacing all of the wood will be quite costly.

If you have windows and doors on the walls you are going to run into additional issues. You will need to increase the depth of door jambs and rehang any doors that have been displaced. This is not an easy task. The doors never seem to fit back in exactly right. You will also need to find a creative way to address the increased depth in the window casing.

This wall has just been replastered. There had been numerous cracks in the wall, a couple of them deep, most on the surface. All of the plaster was still firmly attached to the lathing behind it, another important factor to consider before you attempt to salvage the plaster on your walls. Will you need to use some large screws to secure it into place? or will you need to chip away some areas and patch.

Up next for my wall, primer. I can hardly wait.

Have you ever noticed that once you finish projects on your house it is time to start back at the beginning and redo it all? When we first bought out house we had it repainted. Almost as soon as we closed on our house painters descended and began scraping and painting.

Now it is five years later and the house, most especially the front of the house where the sun bakes it all day, needs to be repainted. You start to wonder if there will ever be a reprieve from the work.

Last weekend I worked on painting the steps that lead from our patio up to our sun porch. They get a lot of use during the warmer weather, the kids use it as their primary access into and out of the house. And kids are, by their very nature, dirty little creatures who scuff and muddy up every surface they come near.

I sanded the steps and the railing. I primed and then painted. Everything needed a second coat of paint, but it was looking good. I was more than halfway done I reasoned.

Then it began raining. And all of my hard work washed off.

All week long the skies threatened to open up whenever I even thought about pulling out the paint and paint brush.

Finally my husband had the brilliant idea of dragging out the tarp and tacking it up over the newly painted areas in case it decided to rain. You know it didn’t rain then, right? But in any event, I am well on my way to being finished with this one home maintenance project.

I even tackled a smaller stoop area that is off of our family room. This one was not in as bad shape since I don’t allow the kids to use this an entrance and exit. But it is still amazing how a fresh coat of paint can make things look so much better.

Now to begin tackling the other five gazillion projects that need my attention. One of which is to replace the screen in the storm door that my children have put their hands through. I suppose pushing on the wood frame, or GASP, using the handle is too difficult.

Built-in cabinetry add a nice touch to any room. When we were redoing our family/breakfast room we decided to build some benches to go under the picture window and wrap around the L shape. This would give us seating around the breakfast room table without taking up as much room as traditional chairs.

Turns out my favorite thing about the benches is the storage that is available inside of them. We made a hinged lid on top and the inside is perfect for storing things that you don’t use every day, but still would like to have somewhat convenient.

We started by building long rectangular boxes out of finished plywood, as you can see in this photo.

Lowes has instructions for building their built in window seat.

The plans that they suggest follow the way that we built our bench. You can vary the dimensions to suit your needs and also change the type and size of the face molding.

Note sure you want to build a bench from scratch, This Old House has instructions to build a window seat using stock cabinets.

It is inevitable. That brand new wood floor you installed will get a scratch or two. Most of them you can shrug off as “character,” but what do you do about the ones that are deep and perhaps unsightly?

Right in front of our television in our family room we have a deep 4 inch scratch. Making it even worse is the fact the the light from the windows shines right on it, like a beacon, making it obvious from anywhere in the room.

If the scratch was only on the polyurethane layer, the scratch could be touched up by applying matching polyurethane to the area with an artist’s brush. Before you do this, however, you will need to “rough up” the area so that the polyurethane will have something to adhere to. Mark off the area that you will working on with some painters tape. You don’t want to accidentally rough up more of the floor than you need to. Using a fine gauge steel wool, lightly sand the scratch. Lightly being the key word.

You will then apply polyurethane to the scratch with your small artist’s brush. Then with a cloth slightly dampened with mineral spirits, the excess should be wiped off and blended before it fully dries.

If the stain has also been scratched, you will need to touch that up before your apply a new finish. Many floor manufacturers sell repair kits that you can order which will match the stain exactly. I know my kitchen and laundryroom cabinets came with such a kit. One which has sadly already been put to use. If this is not an option for you, you will have to try and match the stain yourself.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a furniture stain marker. Color in your scratch and then quickly wipe the excess away. Let it dry and repeat as many times as necessary to achieve a match. Remember, it is better to do this slowly with many light coats, than to put a heavy layer on that is too dark and makes the scratch even more unsightly.

Once you have matched the color, follow up with the polyurethane.

Should this not blend well enough, you may have to refinish an entire strip of wood. Depending on your level of expertise this might be something better off left to a professional.