Who knew that taking your German Shepherd to the local lumber yard on a Saturday morning is a great way to meet guys?

I visit the local lumber yard regularly and take my dog whenever possible.  It is a good socialization activity for him, but I never realized that bringing him along had the potential to be a great conversation starter.  Usually I go there during the week in the course of my work day to pick up supplies for jobs.  I went last week on a Saturday to get some stuff for my personal use and discovered that Saturday is amateur day at the lumber yard.  It was me and 7 guys standing in line at the sales desk and every one of them struck up a conversation with me about my dog or their dog.  The conversations were light and fun with no awkward moments.  If I were single I could probably have walked away with several phone numbers!

This past winter I was asked by a new client to help her organize her garage.  She envisioned some new shelving to get stuff up off the floor.  I strongly suggested she start by working with a professional organizer to determine what she really needed and wanted to keep, and the best way to store all those items  The client hired Judith Guertin of All Ways Organized.  I returned this past week to help Judy and the client install her new ELFA garage organizing system.  If you have never seen an ELFA system, check it out on line or at a Container Store.  The system is very well engineered and manufactured.  It is expensive, but you get what you pay for.  In less than 3 hours I had hung all the parts and pieces on the walls and left Judith and the client to finalize placement of all the objects on the shelves.  I will be returning this Friday to install a few more items on an adjacent wall.  I’ll take some pictures and post them here for you.   If you would like to work with Judith yourself, she can be reached through her website at::

The sunshine has returned to Massachusetts, the water is receding and with the Spring comes a familiar feeling of hope.  Hope that this year I will, in fact, complete all the items on my own personal “to do” list.  I start each spring season optimistic that I can get a long list of outdoor projects completed during the warmer months.  I hope that by next November, I can proudly report to you that this year, I was successful!    My list this year looks like this:

1.  Finish painting exterior trim (started 4 years ago)

2.  Repaint railing and floor of front porch

I am often asked by clients about cleaning their dryer vents.  I tell them it is a great habit to get into at least once a year, but lets get real here!  How many people actually move their dryer, get the little round brush from the hardware store, a good shop vac and spend a Saturday morning cleaning the accumulated lint out of their dryer vents?  Very few that I know personally.  My own dryer vent was made of the accordion aluminum that is about 2 feet long when it is purchased and it stretches out to be about 10 feet long when extended fully. Mine had been in place for many years and I had not cleaned it out.  It had gotten crumpled and bent in several places from being moved around during washing machine installs, and I don’t really know what else, but it was pretty sorry looking.  Also, I felt that my dryer was working at less than its optimal efficiency,  which is a sign of a dirty or clogged dryer vent.

Fifteen friends and family were expected to celebrate Thanksgiving dinner with us so something needed to be done.  My existing dining room table fitted with two leaves still wasn’t going to be big enough to seat everyone comfortably.  One of my favorite parts of big holiday dinners is having everyone seated around the same table.  I always hated being put over at the “kid’s” table when I was younger and I wanted to keep that from happening at my house.  What could be done?  Well I could become my father, and build a temporay table just for the day.  My father has two versions of his temporary table one medium sized and one huge.  I decided to go with the extra large variety.

Tell the truth now, when was the last time that you cleaned out your refrigerator coils?  If I am going to be honest, I must admit that I can’t even remember the last time.  It is even easier to ignore this job than the gutter cleaning job.  At least with gutters you can see the water overflowing the clogged downspouts.  With dirty refrigerator coils, you can’t really see any damage being done.  Dirty coils make it harder for the cooling system of the fridge to do its job, which eventually takes some time off the life of your fridge.  So, how hard is it to clean the coils?  Not hard at all.

Yes, the bugs do need to eat and if you make your home an inviting place by ignoring wood rot you are laying out a full buffet for carpenter ants and termites! Yesterday I did some work at a home where carpenter ants had done serious damage to a window sill, window trim, and wallboard. That damage was all visible from the outside.

Once I removed the sill and the wallboard we were able to see the real damage. What you see here are the remains to two two by four’s laid on their sides that were supposed to be supporting the window sill. This is all that remains after carpenter ants ate their fill!

A beautiful warm day here in Massachusetts so I decided to do a couple quick jobs around my own house before it is too cold to work outside comfortably.

My husband has been asking me to install a new exterior sensor light above the door to his home office, which is above the detached garage.  When all goes well, this job takes about 20 minutes to a half hour.  The hardest part of this job was removing the old light because my husband (the lawyer) had originally installed it.  The wire nuts were screwed on so tight I could not get them off and had to ask for his help and he had looped the white and black wires around the installation plate in a rather unusual fashion. But, once I got the old light safely removed I was ready to install the new one.  Did I mention that I turned the power off at the circuit box before I started?

So many doors so little time!  As winter fast approaches, several clients asked me to get a coat of paint on their exterior doors before the snow flies here in Massachusetts.  In order for exterior paint to adhere well, the air temperature needs to be 50 degrees or above.  This may be the last week we can count on that temperature level so yesterday I was painting six doors at three different houses!