First home. Decorating and/or renovation tips
Emma Ewing
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
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Comments (10)Update: There's an utterly gorgeous crop of lettuce growing in the system right now. Most other plants aren't as far along; the lettuce got an early start. Some lettuce roots stick out the bottom of the pot, but rather than those exploratory roots dying off like I expected, they still look white and healthy. I guess they're getting O2 somehow. Well, I'm not going to complain. :) Germination was poor in several pots, although almost all of my seeds are old. My spouse dropped our (non-waterproof) pH meter in a bin. It shorted out. She took the batteries out and let it dry out, then put them back in. It behaved very strangely -- not only was it off on the pH, but it still ran when the meter was turned off -- just with a dim screen! Thankfully, this latter symptom has gone away, so I think all we need to do is recalibrate it. Tip #1: When suspending the light fixture with a taut hitch, tie an additional half-hitch at the loose end of the rope. This will prevent the taut hitch from accidentally pulling undone over time. We lost a taut hitch and our light fixture fell down (thankfully, it didn't break any bulbs, since what it ran into was the floating trays, which absorbed the shock). Tip #2: Silicon gel should not be used to patch leaks. It seems to work at first, but it doesn't last; the leaks will just open back up in time. Instead, use "3M High-Strength 90". It's one of the only adhesives in the world that your average consumer can readily acquire in small quantities which can get a good polyethylene bond (I should have gone straight to it the first time, as I have dealt with polyethylene film before for different purposes and came to the exact same conclusion). And it's really convenient to use, since you can just spray it out in big swaths across the plastic, and it'll foam up a little and fill in the gaps. Tip #3: When making homemade nutrient mixes, a spare coffee grinder will work *wonders* for dealing with the pelleted nutrients. Tip #4: When dealing with calcium nitrate, never leave it exposed to air for more than a few minutes. It'll absorb moisture from the air until it liquefies itself! Tip #5: To get dilute mixes like lettuce to have a proper (read: very low) EC, you'll want to keep all of your cations down to the bottom end of their normal range except potassium, which you should have below the normal range (lettuce doesn't like it much). Try to hit the minimum sulfate (~60ppm), then make the rest of the anions nitrate, since lettuce loves nitrate. High-EC plants like tomatoes are easy, but tomatoes also don't like much nitrate (~80ppm); for the most part, use sulfate salts in a tomato formula composition. Remember that (from what we've read) seedlings like to start off with extra-diluted macros, but micros should always be at full strength. Also, to keep EC reasonable, we found we could only manage 30 ppm silicon in the dilute and semi-dilute mixes, but we were able to manage 100ppm silicon for the tomatoes. Apart from all of that, it's all pretty noneventful. :) Plants just sit over there growing....See MoreTips for decorating the cheap and architecturally lacking house?
Comments (61)I've been skimming quickly, and have a few comments based on my quick read. First, everyone's work on their ranches - fabulous! However, and apologies if I've misread or misinterpreted, but cathleen has or will have a relatively limited budget and is not a DIYer. pirula's gorgeous reno looks like one that had a nice-sized budget, and joanneemb, you've said you and your DH did all the work yourselves. mtnr is 100% correct IMO that if cathleen has the budget to do all that kind of thing herself, she also the budget to get a nicer house from the start. "Built ins, higher baseboards, solid wood doors, new windows, custom moulding, new kitchen and bathrooms...... All of that is very expensive, especially if you are not DIY, and if you were you probably wouldn't be asking us. It kind of begs the question, if you can afford to do all of the above, you can afford a nicer house to begin with (especially since, often, all of the above are cash expenses and a nicer house you pay for over 30 years)." That list above - baseboards, wood doors, and so on - those are just the things you can see. Sometimes (not always, of course, but it could happen), there is basic work you have to do first, or you may have to do it in order to make the changes you envision. We had to have lots of electrical work done before we even got to the good stuff. Our electrician is great, a true artist if you will, and reasonable, compulsively careful and concientious. He told us that for what he had to charge to do the work on our house, he could have rewired an entire new house. We did everything we had to for safety plus some things we wanted to do - and there is still work we decided not to do because of the cost. We were so lucky to have found an excellent, very reasonable contractor. By our calculations, had we gone with anyone else, our total reno costs would easily be two-thirds higher than they've been. We would not have been able to do this work; it simply would have broken the budget, so badly damaged as it is anyway. That leads to: if you are not a DIYer but will want to make many changes to a house to transform its look and style, you will need to be confident of your ability to hire the right people. Our contractor has great taste and an aesthetic sense, as well as technical skills, and he has worked on many old houses. The guy before him, let's just say the work was perfectly competent, but he would have done only and exactly what we told him to do. That means we would have had to have been thoroughly informed and completely educated before starting anything. Through word of mouth, including our contractor's own recommendations, we now have competent, trustworthy people to work on every conceivable part of our house if necessary. The last find - finally - a great plumber. We just paid him ~$400 to fix a kludged-together mess with the kitchen plumbing.... That leads to another thing: cathleen, even after you've bought what you hope will be your perfect house and have budgeted for molding, wood doors and all the rest, you will still need to have plenty of funds available for fixes and problems that could pop up over time, things you might have failed to account for in the beginning. "If anyone knows where to find detailed cost breakdowns, please let me know. I have not been able to find this information." Can anyone steer cathleen to some websites or other places where this info is available?...See More*Real* home decorating tips!
Comments (57)Kudos to teacats and bbstx. We are renovating a very old house and have been taking pics before,during and after every room project.(down to the studs and everything in between). We use a "cloth" crafters measuring tape-looks like a tailors tape-that is 10' long in all of the photos,very convenient to find studs,electrical and plumbing later when it is all covered up. Also, with all of the finished room measurements it is easy to bring along the pictures when looking at furniture and other "stuff" for it.Tapes are cheap too about a buck at Micheals. Also we use a nifty program from Benjamin Moore that lets you insert your room photos into it and "paint"the room and trim from their colors-Note,the colors will not be exact to the true colors due to monitor variations-but we have found it very handy.You can also hang fabric swatches in the room and work around them with color combinations.Think it was around $10.00 several years ago for the download but has saved us a lot of time narrowing down colors and or fabric. Cheers...See MoreHelp! Renovations done but I need some truly professional decor tips
Comments (12)There is already a pretty strong french country vibe in the kitchen eating area…moving into a very contemporary start in the living room…maybe the fireplace screen should be smaller and more contemporary…the tiny ledge removed…your perfect size tv ..over the fireplace …and more attention to modern tables that work for people seated on the sectional…it is difficult to go into more detail without complete pictures of the tv wall and the other walls in full shots…...See MoreEmma Ewing
5 years agoEmma Ewing
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoEmma Ewing
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoEmma Ewing
5 years agolast modified: 5 years agoHWALMAY
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5 years ago
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