Mary Anne Carter » Home Improvement

Some things you just take for granted

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:10:00 +0000

I hate to admit the fact that I was probably a little bit like the “spoiled rich kid” when I was younger. I really don’t like to think that I was, but the other alternative would be to admit to simply not being very observant of the world around me as I grew up. For example, I can remember many times hanging out at a swimming pool during the summer, and flirting with the lifeguards. Heck, I even dated a lifeguard for a while! The pool just seemed like a care-free place where chores and work did not exist.

So when my first hubby and I bought our first house together and had to go to the store and buy winterizing pool chemicals and replace the missing pool filters for the in-ground swimming pool that we fell in love with the entire idea of the work involved in keeping the swimming pool so nice and crisp and clean came as a bit of a shock to me! Fortunately my hubby said that he was happy to take care of all of the chores related to the pool because I was not going to be able to take care of the house and work my full-time job and take college courses and raise the kids AND deal with the upkeep of the swimming pool!

That’s not Texas!

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:37:14 +0000

When Michael called last week to let us know that he had landed a job with some Toronto contractors and one of them had taken him in to let him rent his basement apartment I was completely shocked. Last I had heard, he was on his way to Texas, because that is where he said that he had heard all of the good construction jobs were! He said that he was busier than a one-armed paper-hanger working on a lot of Toronto home additions and Toronto renovations that he was probably going to be staying there for at least six months or more.

When I asked him if his compass had broken, or if his GPS unit had been hacked, he just laughed. He said that he did, in fact, go to Texas and traveled all over the state looking for work and simply could not find any work at all. And apparently he had run into some trouble that ended up in a fist fight with some local men at a nightclub and decided that it was in his best interest to get out of town. So he went back to his folk’s home in North Carolina for a few weeks and then was given some job leads in Toronto, so off he went!

Modern furniture gaining popularity

Mary Anne — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 02:22:54 +0000

My hubby has suggested that the next time we shop for furniture, that we look at modern furniture. He likes the clean look of the modern styles, and I have to admit that they look like they would be easier to keep clean when compared to many of the other styles of furniture. When I look at modern furniture, it makes me think of Scandinavian countries, and of a Danish friend that I had when I was a child.

My sister’s basement floods

Mary Anne — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 23:31:01 +0000

My sister called me today and told me that she is sick and tired of her basement getting wet every time it rains. A few years ago she noticed some cracks in her foundation and she has been asking her hubby to fix it. Well, it hasn’t been fixed yet, and she is frustrated.

She told me that she is at the end of her rope! I told her that what has worked for me in the past was to tell my hubby that if it was not done in a certain period of time (usually 30 days) that I would call in a professional to have it done and tell them to send him the bill. Works like a charm! Admittedly there were a couple of times when I DID call a professional and my hubby wasn’t too happy about it, but the job got done, and now hubby pays a little bit closer attention to my repair requests.

Home improvement stores

Mary Anne — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:12:30 +0000

There was a time when I hated to go to home improvement stores like Lowes and Home Depot. If I happened to go there without a man in tow, it was almost completely impossible for me to get the attention and assistance from one of the sales people on the sales floor. The customer service was terrible! In fact, there was a period of time when I signed up for a mystery shopping company and they assigned me some home improvement stores to do the “mystery shop” so they could evaluate the customer service and when I took on that shop I was supposed to walk around the store and time how long it took for a store associate to acknowledge my presence. If after ten minutes of walking around no one acknowledged me I was supposed to approach an associate and ask for assistance in finding a particular product.

Well, no one came and offered me any assistance and when I approached the associate and asked for help that associate blew me off! Needless to say that home improvement score got bad marks on that mystery shop!

But that was another time and another place. A completely different state than where we live now. Now when I go to the local home improvement store with my hubby I like walking around different parts of the store, looking for things that I might have never known existed before. Sometimes I feel like I have led a very sheltered life when I walk around a store like that! When I see all of the different beautiful light fixtures and ceiling fans I just stand in awe and try to imagine which room in our house would benefit from some of those being installed. For example, I would love to have a new ceiling fan in the master bedroom – especially one that is quiet so it would circulate the air but also provide some white noise to sleep by.

The fan we use right now is one that takes up space on the floor, and although it does what it is supposed to do, I really would prefer a pretty ceiling fan in there; I think it would make the room look more like a luxurious retreat. Whenever I find any great deals from lowes stores I am more than happy to accompany my hubby there so he can buy whatever lumber or pipe or cable he needs while I go and fantasize about my dream bedroom.

Wrought iron

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:17:07 +0000

My sister knows how much I am enamored by things that are made of (or look like they are made of) wrought iron, she has sent me the link to a website that makes a variety of wrought iron items. The link is www.wroughtironhaven.com. I have just gone to the website and found that they sell just about everything imaginable out of wrought iron! I especially like the curtain rods that have shelf brackets built right in! I have ALWAYS wanted to have shelves above my windows, and have begged my hubby to install them. But my pleas have always fallen on deaf ears! Now I see that I can buy curtain rods with shelf brackets and install them myself!

Wouldn’t you know it

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:24:03 +0000

When I was younger I saw a really pretty spice rack for sale that just “spoke to me.” Now, you might think that is rather weird, that I am a person that speaks to spice racks, but what I really mean is that for some crazy reason I simply fell in love with it. It was a wall spice rack, and it had a country look to it that just made me feel “at home” for some reason. I don’t know, maybe it reminded me of the spice rack in my grandmother’s kitchen and I never realized it. But the thing is I bought it on a crazy impulse and brought it home with me. Wouldn’t you know it my hubby hated it and told me that he did not want it in our kitchen. So it was relegated to the basement for a very long time.

When my hubby and I split up and I moved out i brought that spice rack with me, intended to mount it on the wall of my new kitchen. Wouldn’t you know it, all of the kitchen walls were completely filled up with cupboards so there was no space to put that rack on the wall! I did find space for it on the counter, though, beside the stove and there is where it stayed for a good number of years.

Eventually all of the original bottles from the spice rack broke and I could not find replacement bottles that fit, so the little rack got “freecycled” away when I moved again. Now I store my spices in my pantry, and have tried various methods of storing them, but I really have not found a suitable system for the spices. I miss that rack!

Address plaques add a little personality and a lot of visibility

Mary Anne — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:18:52 +0000

One of the things I enjoy doing when I go to a home improvement store is to go over to the area where the store displays mailboxes. I like to take a good hard look at all of the different custom address plaques and mailboxes that they have to choose from. I squint my eye and imagine how the bronze address plaques would look on our house and at the end of the driveway. Having personalized address plaques both street side and on the house are very important steps to ensure visibility to rescue services, delivery drivers, school bus drivers, and they add some personality to a property that helps to make a statement about who it is that lives inside.

For the past couple of years I’ve been wanting to design a pattern for an address plaque that would complement the painted mailbox that we have. My hubby brought a plain plaque home last fall and told me that he wanted to use it but I’m not quite sure exactly where he was planning on putting it. At first he said he was going to put in on the mailbox but I really don’t see the need for that since the mailbox is already hand painted and numbered quite well. It will be interesting to see what exactly it is that he does with it!

I’d like to do a reverse painting on a clear vessel sink

Mary Anne — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:40:37 +0000

When I go to visit Tom, I always end up having to use his restroom when I arrive because it takes over an hour to get to his place, and often I won’t have the chance to find a restroom for quite a while later. The guest bathroom features a very pretty clear vessel sink with gun metal gray vessel sink faucets.

Whenever I go into that bathroom, when I wash my hands I always look at the sink and think about how much I would enjoy doing some reverse painting patterns on
vessel sinks and I wonder if I bought some and painted them whether or not I would try to sell them or keep them. I have found that when I do some decorative painting on objects that I sometimes have a hard time “letting go” of the object when I’m finished with the job. Do you think that is normal or do you think that is odd?

Making the best decision

Mary Anne — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:03:12 +0000

The article written by Alonso Kramer

I was trying to use thewww.texaselectricityproviders.com/ website to figure out what the best options were for my energy utilities. I really need something I can rely on. At my one of my old houses, we had some problems with the provider. My husband and I always felt like we were being overcharged and it seemed like the electricity would cut out randomly for what seemed like no reason. We both decided we really wanted to do our research for the next house and avoid the same problem. We are set to move into our new house next month. We are both really excited. It is a lot bigger and a lot nicer than our first house together. However, since it is so big, I am a bit concerned about the price of our utilities and if we can handle it. My husband told me that he really thinks we will be fine. I just get a bit concerned because electricity is essential. I do not want to be strained for money so making the decision for the most cost-efficient and reliable source would be ideal for me right now.

Maintenance plans/extended warranties

Mary Anne — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:40:15 +0000

A lot of people tell me that maintenance/extended warranty plans are a gimmick and a waste of money, but I have found that when I pay for when, I usually end up using the service and it ends up paying for itself several times over. In this day and age of “planned obsolescence” I find that most products die within a week of the warranty period being over! So, I buy the maintenance/extended warranty if it is available and the item is expensive.

Setting up my home office

Mary Anne — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:24:33 +0000

For years I have been “making do” with hand-me-down office furniture in my home office. Nothing is ergonomic, nothing looks nice. In fact, it looks horrible! I have a very old student desk that I was given when I was in 3rd grade that I put an old wooden desk top on top of that I use to put my computer on. My printer is on a plastic shelving unit beside that desk. My chair is an old bar stool with casters on it. Nothing about it is comfortable at all!

I would like to buy new office furniture to set up my home office, I’m sure that I would be a lot more productive if I was comfortable!

Time to replace the sofa

Mary Anne — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 18:31:57 +0000

I bought our sofa back in 1973, when I worked in a furniture store. It was a floor sample and marked down, and I needed a new sofa for my apartment, and bought it at a great employee discount on top of the floor sample price! It was a top of the line queen sized sleeper sofa, and it has served me well. I have had it reupholstered once since then, but it is showing signs of wear again. I really don’t want to reupholster it again; it was more expensive than buying a new one! But I hate to throw it away; maybe I’ll donate it to a local thrift store.

I like wood, my hubby likes metal

Mary Anne — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:57:29 +0000

There seems to be a tug-of-war going on at my house regarding decorating styles between my hubby and myself. I’m very much attracted to older furniture; the “country” feel of wood makes me feel “at home.” My hubby is all about the sleek modern look of metal and glass. I find it difficult to reconcile the two, and I try very hard to keep my hubby out of the decorating duties of the house.

He is always trying to bring something decorative into the house that just does not look good at all with the rest of the things already here. I admit that much of the house is “eclectic” but his tastes are simply the total opposite of mine! When I have the money to redecorate the house, I would love to concentrate on mostly wooden products.

Mailbox or PO box?

Mary Anne — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:54:37 +0000

When we first moved here we weren’t quite sure whether we wanted to deal with getting a post office box or put up one of those big rural residential mailboxes that you see at the end of the driveways when you are driving through the country. My concern about going with the rural mailboxes has always been surrounding mail theft and vandalism. There have been quite a few times when I’ve driven up and down the country roads and seen many mailboxes and address plaques knocked down.

My first husband was always worried that someone might steal checks out of our mailbox and we had a post office box for many years because of that. When we first moved here I decided to get a post office box too, for the same reasons, but then it became a real chore having to drive into town to get the mail. When I was working and going into town everyday anyway it was no big deal, but once my trips into town were only once a week or once every two weeks that made a big difference! So we went ahead and put up a rural mailbox, and thankfully so far it has survived. (Knock on wood!)