Finding good help for home improvement projects can be a risky endeavor. After finally realizing our “mow, blow and go” gardener wasn’t up to snuff, I joined Angie’s List with the single hope that I would find a new gardener. Within a couple hours I had several candidates picked out. And within several days we had a new gardener that 1) I could talk to 2) showed up when he said he would 3) actually picked weeds 4) used tools other than just the lawnmower and weed-wacker 5) did not bill me for days he was not here. . . .you get the idea. In fact, he even emailed me to give me a heads-up that part of our lawn was looking a little dry. Angies List is a subscription based service (low monthly rates, or anywhere from $45 to $65ish a year on yearly plans). You can search the list for your particular area (see their web site for regions they cover), and find service providers. The wonderful thing is subscribers review the providers themselves and provide theoretically unbiased reviews about the provider. It is a great tool, and one that I have come to rely on heavily already. So don’t settle for second-rate service, check out Angie’s List and find the true “gems”. If you’re in San Diego, check out Down Under Services for your gardening and landscaping needs. To find gardeners and other providers in most major metropolitan US areas, visit AngiesList.com

If you’re extremely busy, and yet still have hours to spare mindlessly surfing the Internet, let me highly recommend Craigslist FixIt Forums. Many of you may already know and love Craigslist as an amazing source of free classifieds. In fact, I love Craigslist so much, I’ll probably be writing another post about the site soon. It took me about a year before I realized Craigslist offers forums covering topics from weddings to ecology. Most importantly, Craig has a thriving forum for FixIt and home improvement. One disclaimer: you will need to be willing to weed through some fairly neandrathallic comments in some of the posts. But if you’re willing to surf patiently, you can definitely find some FixIt gold nuggets. I’ve lost track of how many useful bits of home improvement knowlege I have picked up here, but it’s more than six. This means I have more than doubled my existing home improvement knowlege all at one site.
Visit Craigslist FixIt Forums here.