Does the type of tree or leaves matter for mulching? I have some various huge shrubs and a tree that all drop smaller leaves (some needle like) that are quite dense. Living in So Cal they tend to dry out but not exactly break down. I was planning on doing lava rock in the border of my yard, but since reading this post I'm thinking that that is not such a bright idea. My issue is my long-haired cat will find whatever area of the yard is the most dirty/dusty and cover himself with all kinds of earth and burrs, and then immediately after he asks to come in the house. Half the time my kids just let him in, and then the floors inside becomes filthy and my carpet gets pokey things embedded. I've been worried that if I did anything like bark chips, then my fur buddy is going to bring into the house slivers -the kind that are so tiny you can't get with tweezers. (I tried playing barefoot in the stuff as a kid, and you'd think it would only of taken the first time to figure out that's not something to do again...) Anyhow, with my own kids running barefoot all the time and the cat living like royalty, I worry about using old wood chips or mulch. Anyone have advice?

I bought the seed starting mat off Amazon. I only had a few requirements. It had to be temp controlled and fit my bin size (meaning bottom dimensions). I ended up with this one - Hydrofarm MT10006 9-by-19-1/2-Inch Seedling Heat Mat I should mention that I keep my worm bin inside another bin instead of a tray. I also use empty pill/vitamin bottles in the bottom of the tray bin to keep the two from getting airlocked (stuck together). Meaning there is an air gap between the two on the bottom. This works great - you can also use empty soda bottles or blocks of wood. The empty bottles don't add much to the weight. Before I got the seed mat I used a heating pad but it would shut off after about 30 min. or so. So a heating pad may be also be useful if you have some space between the pad and bin. HTH

I know that the weeds will not be gone forever. That would be a dream come true! :) I have already hand pulled a lot of the weeds out a few weeks ago, and am now in the process of pulling the roots out since the smaller stuff is now growing large. Since the house was built at least seven years ago and no one lived in it until four years ago, the grass in that area has been allowed to grow crazy and native. I wish that we would have started by removing the top layers of ground cover and start fresh! Lesson learned for next time! I plan on doing this massive root removal until the whole area is done and then try to pull stuff as it appears, but no less than once a month. I just wanted to make sure that what I was doing was on the right track for a mistake in the first place. LOL I haven't seen any of the weeds go to seed this season yet. I think y'all are correct about having perennial weeds! I know there is poison something in there (most likely sumac) as I learned another lesson the hard way- wear gloves! I know we do not have the weeds that stick upright with the four strands of seeds at the top (I call them helicopter weeds since they looks like the blades in motion). I have seen what appear to be violets, some type of itty bitty yellow flower (about the size of my pinky fingernail), and something that has long thin seeds that are on needle thin plants. The weed I hate most in our yard is the ones that look like it is in the cactus family. It is spiky, low to the ground, and produces a white/yellow flowerish mass. I have tried Round-up and digging it out with the shovel. The root is thick, white, and extends down really far. Any idea on how to best remove them? Thanks for your tips though!!!! I will make sure to not weed once a year and to get an earlier start on it next year.

Zinsser is neither more nor less effective than the Killz. One coat MAY do it, but two DEFINITELY will. Even if I were using the Zinnser (whichever way that goes, two n's or two s's, LOL!) I would still use 2 coats. It's better to just bear down and do what you KNOW will work than to take a chance thinking one coat MIGHT do it. I have no brand loyalty. Either will work. I chose the Killz because it is easier to find and costs less in my area. Coming along and claiming that "TSP will cause paint failure" and providing absolutely no evidence to back that claim up isn't going to fly. For every "pro" who claims TSP is awful there are others (professionals) who have used it properly and successfully for literally decades. Dirtex, btw, provides absolutely no deglossing whatsoever. I don't think it provides much in the way of degreasing to speak of either. TSP does both. However TSP can damage tile and grout so we'll be using something else in the bathroom once the tub has been hauled out of there. If TSP has caused paint failure for you, it wasn't the TSP that caused it. It was your incorrect application and use of it. Proper use can be finicky and time-consuming from the point of view of a professional who just wants to get in there, slap the paint up, and get out. However it is very effective and well worth the effort when you are the one living with the paint job and you don't want it to peel, blister, or otherwise fail to adhere in a few years. When we get around to doing the exterior, I WILL be washing the entire house down with TSP. It is the best thing I've ever found for getting rid of that chalky residue. I can't use a power washer or any sort of wire brush, nor sanding, because the exterior is clad in 60 year old asbestos shingle. So me, a bucket of rags soaking in TSP, and a regular garden hose will be doing it all. I've seen other houses in the neighborhood that are peeling, blistering, and have the new paint flaking off because the professionals they hired to paint didn't bother to prep, or didn't prep properly. MY house won't look like that when I'm done. I have had well over 50 years of success with TSP when prepping old walls for paint, between me and my father. I'd say 100 years, but I don't actually know how long its been on the market, LOL! @dchall_san_antonio - you did your paint prep with stuff I wouldn't have used nor would I recommend using it, especially for mitigation of cigarette smoke residue, but if it worked for you, great. And OF COURSE you had to prime - even using the correct cleaning methods and substances, you will never get all that stuff off. Any encapsulating primer will do. The 2 with which I am familiar are the Killz ORIGINAL (not the other primers they make) or the Zinsser BIN. You used the latter. I'm not surprised it helped. And I'm not surprised nothing worked until you primed over it with an encapsulating primer. I am surprised you got away with cleaning just the 2 rooms. There is tar and nicotine in every single room in this house, even the one no one ever smoked in because there was a parrot in there. They kept the door to that room closed. There was LESS of it, but it was still there and still not something you want to try to paint over. In the room where the chain-smoker lived (all 3 adults in this household smoked but one was a chain-smoker), I thought the walls were yellow. The same shade of yellow. They weren't. 3 walls had been painted a peachy cream, and the 4th wall was (supposed to be) white. That was tar and nicotine coating the walls, floor, ceiling and baseboards, ever surface in the house has this guck on it. Trust me, you are VERY lucky you got away with doing as little as you did, LOL! Good on you for taking the job on and seeing it through. @jn3344 - I thought that might have been what you meant. Nope - still working my way through this project. My son was too tired to go out yesterday or the day before so we've had a 2 day break, but we're off to the races today. I get tired too, but he's not used to this type of physical labor and we've both got a thing about heights, which makes doing the 10' ceiling kind of nerve wracking even on the scaffolding, LOL! So I'm careful to be extra meticulous up there. The only time I've seen the kind of blotchiness you're talking about was my very first paint job on my own, when I let a sales guy talk me into their one-coat (allegedly) primer/paint combo to go up on brand new unprimed drywall. Sure enough, it soaked right into the drywall like it was a sponge and looked awful. It was pretty obvious it was NOT working right away so I didn't waste much time or material on it, just went out and got a good primer, double coated with that (its a habit of mine to double coat with primer on new or very old walls anyway but this REALLY needed the double coating). Years later the new owners contacted me through friends to find out what I had used because they were just now getting around to repainting it and wanted to know what I had used that held up for over a quarter century, LOL! Hopefully we will finish the washing and rinsing today or tomorrow. Then I'll go around with the orbital sander to get the worst of the paint runs and any other problem areas while my son comes behind me to clean up the dust. Then I'll be stripping trim. Then priming everything. Then we'll be in the homestretch. In some ways this is the hardest job I've ever done, between my general debility these days and having to clean tar and nicotine off (that's a first for me, I've never seen this before, lucky me, LOL!) In other ways, its the easiest. This is the first time I've ever been able to paint a completely empty house. It makes a lot of things lots easier.