Shortcuts? Nah, no way, not me. Well, OK, I throw my weeds onto the lawn, along with spent flowers and various other garden refuse. This morning I was out with my camera at 6 AM and noticed one (of many) tall mulleins was clobbering a nice lacecap hydrangea. I yanked it and dropped it on the lawn, and noticed about 12 hours later that it was still there, and even more unattractive laying dead on the grass than it had been alive in the shrub border. It's still there ... I use under-cooked compost when building a new bed. It's always full of sticks and clumps of gawd knows what. Anything that sprouts through the mulch will be pulled up later; I just don't have the time to sift the stuff, plus I can't bear to see the worms getting beaten up in the sifter. Here's my worst sin. The area I fondly call The Woods was partly cleared out of some short wide blue hollies last year, and the disturbed ground is now covered with garlic mustard and various other nasty weeds. Instead of spraying or tilling, I used quarter sheets of plywood (left over from a big project) to cover the whole area. When I have my new plan ready, hopefully this fall, I'll pull up the plywood and (I hope) everything underneath will be dead. I was able to position the pieces so that the few salvageable plants in the area are still exposed, and it's a small fraction of the ground that now needs weeding. It doesn't look very nice, but it can't be seen from outside that area.

jim73, whether it's an inside corner or a wall grout line, here is what you do to make it look straight: Use grout as your friend to make it look right later. Use a router blade to sand the edges of the grout line tile edges prior to that. More detailed description is next: When using large tile: before cutting each tile, its space has to be measured individually. As a woodworker you already know how to measure... During cutting you will make cutting errors of 1/16' to 1/8" and this is normal because the wet saw blade cannot make it more precise that that. Just keep laying tile, as you only have X minutes per tile before your time is up and your thinset is too old... If you try to sand down each tile to perfect size you spend time on an operation that in the end was a timewaster, unnecessary. OK, so you end up with an ungrouted tiled wall that has some tile "seams" looking wobbly, to everyone, whether they are a perfectionist or not. The next step is to rectify the seam, i.e. to get a straight looking grout line. To do this you kick up some dust. Using a router blade, run it up and down the seam. This widens the grout line very slightly. Nothing to worry about. You only need to remove the portion of the tile that is visible to the eye, not the whole depth down to the wall. It might take a few seconds. Or almost a minute. Not minutes. Then, finally, later, when grouting, you pack in enough grout that it grips around the tile edge and that grout line becomes the new reference point for people viewing the seam. After grouting, the grout compensates very well for whatever remained of the visible wobbliness of the line. When a wall is ungrouted, and you view it face on, the imperfect nature of the tile "seam" lines to be grouted are most obvious. Don't sweat it. It's something you learn to see beyond instead of looking at it. There is another thing to work at, if you are a perfectionist. The big thing to strive for is to get the flatness perfect so there is no lippage from tile to tile across the wall plane. This requires you to use the same amount of thinset underneath each of your large tiles, and this is hard to do even with a trowel that measures out the amount of thinset, but there are ways to do it... and this is a new subject. Eric pretty much already answered your Q about mitering. You don't need to miter inside corners. One column of tiles will go into the corner and then the perpendicular wall tiles will butt onto them. You can also router this line later if you want to want a visible edge that the grout line will follow, and this makes it appear as though you did indeed miter the inside corner. Good trick if you want to impress your woodworking friends. If on one wall you are laying a column of whole tiles at the corner edge and IF they are not the ones going inside the butt, then you would see a difference with the tiles on the perpendicular wall because its first column of tiles will be cut. There is always a visible difference between tile edges, that are the whole tile edge and a cut edge. So, shave down the whole tile (cut off its edge) and the inside corners will look consistent. Same applies to wall edges. Either a whole tile meets a whole tile or a cut edge meets a cut edge, when you have floor-to-ceiling lines. B.T.W., As a general rule, corners are where you place the tiles that are cut down a little in order to have whole tiles everywhere else. hth

This may seem easier said than done, but take your time. You need time to research and search for options. Take time to form different ideas about how to approach things, and take time to resolve one problem and let your head clear before you try to make a thousand decisions on another one that can get overwhelming even under the best of circumstances. If you are doing a whole house reno and it's more than paint and flooring, your timing is ambitious and then some. Many folks doing things DIY are in for 4-6 years, not months. Giving yourself more time can be stressful, but it eliminates other stresses, can spread out the finances and give you time to make decisions that might avoid hasty mistakes. Clean the place and make it functional, but I'd wait until you can get the right foundation for any reno before starting, whether you plan to save up and do it all at once or work a plan to phase in changes. This house wasn't a whole house reno, but we knew the kitchen needed new appliances and counters when we bought it. We planned to take 6 months to make sure everything else was good, life happened and it was at least 4 years before we got to doing the kitchen. In that time, our plans evolved and I am so much happier with the result. I haven't looked at IKEA cabinets for some time, but they did have some wood doors -- those can be painted. Also do some searching for threads here and elsewhere (isn't there an IKEA kitchen forum somewhere?) to see what others have done to use IKEA boxes and other doors. Scherr (possibly a wrong spelling?) is one I know folks have talked about being able to order drilled to fit IKEA boxes. That opens a host of other options -- styles and colors that are still a good quality, budget option. If that doesn't work for you, you can shop for recycled cabinets, for furniture pieces that might allow you to make even part of the kitchen unfitted -- whether you go for the look as a style choice or as a transition so you can phase in the kitchen you really want. An armoire can be a pantry, storage for dishes, pots and pans -- lots of things. Cabinets, desks, dressers or tables can become islands. IKEA butcher block, salvaged counter remnants, preformed granite and laminate are all budget choices for counters -- and some folks have used a sheet of plywood (you buy the better furniture grade -- not the rough stuff that goes under a roof, etc.). Second, don't get penny wise only to be pound foolish. Get your layout right and keep the choices that effect the layout. If you are going to be in the house a while and if you would really use them, the double ovens and cooktop are not choices you can change later without some pretty significant changes or another reno. How you cook is one of the most fundamental choices going into a kitchen. If that's what you really want and need, that's not the first thing you cross off your list. Fight for it. If it were my kitchen, I know I'd always regret that decision. So would all the family that come for holidays, etc. If you put in a counter that you plan to change, plan for the removal so you make it easier. Also, if you do that, don't tile a splash. Use paint - one less thing to take out or get damaged later. This post was edited by lascatx on Sun, Apr 21, 13 at 13:10

I used to save some change and stuff but it was annoying to count and roll it and then the bank would usually machine it anyway. Now, even many grocery stores have coin counters out so you can dump it in there and get a receipt to take to the cashier. But I don't do that anymore. I prefer to USE that change whenever possible. I do keep a few dollars worth of change in the vehicle so I have a little stash. There's been a few times I wanted to grab a couple dollars worth of gas or get a sandwich or have it to keep from piling up more change. I like keeping the folding money in my wallet rather than change in a bucket somewhere. I find it much easier to refrain from spending the money than many people do though. Just like on income taxes. I don't look at a tax refund as a "forced savings account". I don't LIKE paying in at the end of the tax year but I'd rather not give free use to a large amount.