This wine rack is made from salvaged 2×10 wood (pine for the shelves and upright supports and cherry for the wine bottle holders), left over from another project. Overall dimensions for this wine rack are 50½” h x 22″ w x 9″ deep, but you can adjust accordingly to accommodate the amount of salvaged material on hand. [click to continue…]
Green
If you’ve been a long-suffering light bulb environmentalist, enduring the ugliness of your pig-tail-shaped fluorescent bulbs in order to save Mother Earth, you’re going to be happy to see what’s new in eco-bulb design. The Plumen light bulb, heretofore available only in Europe and now made available in These United States, adds pizzazz to your high moral standards. It’s amazing how a simple style change turns something ugly into a fashionable feature. [click to continue…]
Exterior Portfolio's "French Country" materials package
Exterior Portfolio by Crane contacted us here at HF to let us know about their revamped online visualizer and see what we thought. They’ve introduced the complete “Dream Designer Program” including the Dream Designer Visualizer, Smart Styles Color Selector, Dream Designer Board, and Exterior Portfolio material samples. As many of you may already know, Exterior Portfolio is known for its maintenance-free building products; everything is made of plastic and plastic composites so it’s not only environmentally friendly, but endures far longer than wood and other traditional building materials. [click to continue…]
Sure, indoor plants are green and pretty. They help stave off that old seasonal affective disorder, the winter blues, cabin fever…whatever. We all are probably aware they improve air quality by sucking up carbon monoxide; but the magic doesn’t end there. “Mother Nature Network” has a website dedicated to “improving your world” and an eye opening article written by Julie Knapp suggesting 15 plants to help make the air quality, and smell of your world a bit more pleasant. [click to continue…]
Back when we first purchased our house, one of my first projects was to strip several decades of paint from a door. I did what most people unfortunately do in that situation, I went to my local big box store and bought a can of typical methylene chloride paint stripper. I observed what I thought were proper precautions: long sleeves, thick gloves, eye protection and a respirator. I kinda admit it seemed like overkill at the time, until I noticed some pain on my arm. That pain turned out to be my burning flesh. It seems a drop of stripper snuck past my long leaves and decided my skin was just as suitable to dissolve as old paint. That was the last time I used methylene chloride, and I vowed to find a slightly less flesh-consuming option in the future.
