You can keep weeds out of your lawn with a good healthy properly cut lawn. The height of your lawn is the major factor. For the most part keep it tall unless your like me and have grasses similar to bermuda which needs to be cut low. Also you can apply corn gluten meal(CGM) as a pre-M for your lawn. It is high in N so you want to watch it unless agian you have bermuda which is a N hog. I went by the local Lesco Dealer to look at one of their sprayer rigs and asked if they had any organic materials. They baulked at me and said that organics was too expensive and to much work. Thats your retailer of synthetic lawn care. They aren't going to support anything that will keep them from making money. Good Luck,

Dear Lauren ~ Looking forward to reading about your "Autumn" garden! It reminds me of the time our GWA colleague Sally Williams spent a year (or two?) in Australia. It was always so much fun to read about her horticultural adventures during the seasons opposite from ours.

"Apply shellac sealer to cat-affected areas of subfloor." If your goal is to remove the odor, shellac won't make it go away. You need to replace the subfloor underlayment in that area (which they can do) just as you are going to replace the damage baseboards. Cats CAN smell any of those spray odors that you are trying to cover it up. If it's soaked into your drywall underneath the baseboards, you will need to replace that drywall also. Wood flooring installation prices in our area run $2/sf to install, $2/sf to sand, $2/sf to stain (if needed) and $2/sf to finish. So about $6/sf. BUT this is in our area of the country, the Mid-South. If you live out east or out west, I would think those prices would be higher. Others can chime in... Our flooring contractor charged me an extra $20/room to install the new baseboard (which I had painted and all ready to go.) Removing carpeting and padding is really easy to do if you have one or two people to help you. That can save you some $$. Roll it up and take it out to the curb (or call the city to come pick it up - some will.) WHen we took up our old carpeting, some of the padding stuck to the subfloor so I had to scrape it off. But a $6 scraper from HD did the job and I did it myself with ease. (female) If your hearth boarder is the same wood as the rest of the flooring, there shouldn't be any extra charge for that. My last comment is to be careful about filling in gaps in your wood flooring. We are coming off the heating season which causes wood to contract a bit. Come summer and higher humidity, it will expand. If you fill in the gaps now and it expands this summer, you will have cupping or possibly the floor may buckle. A flooring pro might be better able to explain this. Wood floors move - that's just the nature of wood. The carpentry work along the wall and subfloor would be extra and replacing drywall is not a difficult job, nor is sanding,priming,or painting it. And I wouldn't pay any contractor for anything except materials until the job is finished. What kind of warranty does he provide on his work? You don't pay for half of your house before it's built so why would you need to give him half of his money before he's even started the job? I would not hire any contractor that insisted on pre-payment except for materials. So looking at your quote and figuring what I would be charged here for all of that, it does seem a bit high especially since you might be able to do some of that work yourself. Does that quote include the cost of the hardwood flooring??? That will make a big difference. And if it were me, I would go buy that flooring myself so that I knew I was getting good quality wood and not some LL rejects. Is there any specification as to the grade of wood he is going to use in the quote? If you have any leftover pieces of your old flooring, you should be able to match it up easily - just take it along to the flooring place or lumber co. Do some test pieces without any stain - just the finish. You may not need to stain your flooring. It doesn't look like it has any stain on it. Good luck - hope that helps!

Go to Home depot and get some BIX Stripper. Apply that to get the paint off the soapstone. Just follow the instructions and make sure your basement area has some air movement. Be generous with the stripper, slop it all over the sink, inside outside upsidedown. When cleaning it off, use lacquer thinner with steel wool, but not coarse steel wool. Once everything is dry sand it down with a random orbital sander with 150 grit sand paper. Or you may want to try a lower grit first. The old soapstone tends to be pretty soft so doing it dry will be doable. If you don't have a random orbital sander try a regular palm sander, but you will fight against little swirly marks when the sander gets clogged up with paint residue and random particles. Around the top take a block with the sand paper and round off the edges to make everything smoother. After years of abuse it will need some attention. Oh yeah it will take alot of time and effore, I hope your up for the challenge! !