You don’t need a jackhammer, saw, or nails to make a nice room divider.  A little bit of cardboard, some white paper, and a creative streak for the inside design is all that’s necessary!  From Instructables, here’s a Cardboard Shoji Screen,

To read the directions on making this great room partition, click through here.

Lowes has some cool projects on their website and this one I was really digging- it’s a hanging bed for the sunroom. They have all you need to know to build it yourself right here.

I have a friend who just got granite countertops. This one’s for you!

The old joke about buying a Christmas tree that’s too tall for your house is one that has been played out in my own family. How do you know how big a Christmas tree you need? CasaSugar has the answer.

Create You Squidoo Lens On A Shak Subject And You Could Be Featured On Shakadoo! Once you have built your lens, submit it to the group HERE.

Laminate Flooring Guide by JonitasKalimpo

Laminate Flooring, Make a Dream Home

Unlike hardwood, laminate floors will not stain, fade, dent and are far more scratch and water resistant. Warranties range from 10 years to lifetime and cover such factors as mentioned above. Entry level laminate wood flooring is designed for light traffic areas and come with warranties ranging from 10 to 15 years. Most people set their expectations too high and expect that entry level floors will perform under heavy traffic conditions and still look good for the duration of the warranty. This is however not the case, as an entry level floor subject to high traffic will start to show wear and tear within three to five years.

We hope this guide will help to understand better what laminate flooring is and how can improve your home, ALOT!

Everything You Need To Know on Laminate Flooring

Laminate Flooring mimics the look of traditional woods while offering easy installation and lasting durability. At first glance, it can be difficult to spot the difference between hardwoods and laminate flooring. What appears to be a natural wood grain pattern is really a thin layer of decor paper (a photographic image) under a tough-as-nails protective film that is glued and pressed to a high-density backing board. Laminate Flooring comes in an array of wood effects as well as stone and ceramic effects.

Laminate floorings main advantages are that it is easy to install, is very hardwearing and relatively inexpensive compared to real hardwood flooring.

Laminate flooring is a floating floor, which means it does not fasten directly to the sub-floor. Instead the planks are clicked together. This enables the floor to be fitted fast and with no real mess.

Most laminate floors today fit together with a click system with the most common being the UNICLIC system as used by Quick-Step. This is extremely easy and fast to fit. The ingenious UNICLIC-system has a special shape of tongue and groove. You simply place the tongue of one plank into the grove of another at an angle and press down. Their sophisticated and very accurate milled shape makes it possible to create a very tight connection during the installation. The floor can be walked on straight away.

If you are laying laminate flooring over a concrete sub-floor then you will fist need to lay down a damp proof membrane (DPM). This is basically a sheet of plastic usually around 5mm which helps protect the Laminate from moisture. On top of this goes the foam underlay this acts as sound absorption and also helps even out minor irregularities in the sub-floor.

Most manufactories now offer a combined DPM and underlay along with several underlay’s that have better sound absorbing qualities
Most of the leading laminate floor manufactories now also have ranges of flooring that also include built in underlay. This underlay is pre-fitted to the bottom of the flooring and is usually of sound absorbing quality. You do not need to install this type of floor a secondary but if you are laying over a concrete sub-floor you still have to lay down a D.P.M. (Damp Proof Membrane) first.

Laminate flooring has been around in Europe for around 15 years and has seen massive growth in the past few years read the rest……. 

To learn everything you ever wanted to know about laminate flooring, visit the entire lens by clicking: Laminate Flooring Guide

Create You Squidoo Lens On A Shak Subject And You Could Be Featured On Shakadoo! Once you have built your lens, submit it to the group HERE.

Hiring Contractors For Service Work by SemperFidelis

Hiring Contractors for Service Work

A lens devoted to hiring contractors to do work in your home or business.  Avoiding the pitfalls of hiring the wrong contractor.

Lies From Contractors

If you have dealt with contractors, you have probably heard the same lies I have. They erupt from their mouths as rationale for their questionable behavior and unreasonable demands. They are often accompanied by "righteous indignation" that anyone would question this contractor’s forthrightness.

Here, in no particular order of deceitfulness, are four of them.

It’s a standard agreement

Sure it is.  It’s your standard agreement that requires the property owner to give away the store and that doesn’t require the contractor to complete the job in a workmanlike manner or, for that matter, even complete it at all.  The "standard agreement" does require you to pay, though.

One electrician who did work on a property of a landlord I know had a "standard agreement" that didn’t even require him to clean up his mess or repair the wall he put holes in for the wiring.

Everybody does it that way

I certainly hope they don’t, because if everybody did it that way, buildings would be falling down all over the country.  Those are the words you hear when you ask about the corners the contractor cut to get the job done cheaper. Because contractors always "did it that way" we have building codes.  Those building codes were not instituted because every contractor was meticulous in his work.  They were instituted because of the work that goes along with "everybody does it that way."

I need the money up front

Then you don’t need to work on my property.  You get paid when you are finished and the work is done properly.  Not getting paid should not be a problem for a contractor because of contractors’ lien laws, which can result in a lien on the property they worked on if the owner doesn’t pay.  If the contractor doesn’t have the money or credit to buy the necessary equipment to do the job, that should raise a crimson flag.

To learn everything you ever wanted to know about hiring the right contractor, visit the entire lens by clicking: Hiring Contractors For Service Work

As part of the ongoing effort to get the house clean for all the company that is coming to my house over the next several weeks, I have been cleaning out closets. Today, I am tackling the coat closet.

I actually didn’t think this would be as big of an effort as it has turned out to be. In my mind, I was going to look at the coats, get rid of any coats that were outdated or too small, and go on with my day. I quickly realized that my coat closet was divided into three parts, all of which are stuffed with way more stuff than we really need.

First, there was the bottom of the closet. The picture above is maybe a third of the shoes I threw out of there, most of them mine and my daughter’s. I got rid of any shoes that were too ratty or too small. Then I boxed up all the sandals and put them away for winter. Finally, I left one pair of dress shoes and one pair of tennis shoes in the closet for everyone. All other shoes went back in the closet of the shoes’ owners.

Once that was out of the way, I went to the easy part- cleaning the coats out. I got rid of all coats that were too small or outdated and/or ratty. Everything else stayed. We don’t seem to have such a coat fetish as we do shoes, thank goodness.

The top part of the closet was the hardest part. It had become a mish-mash of whatever crap we randomly threw up there. There was an empty box, a truckload of hats, scarves, and gloves, some yoga equipment, and an odd assortment of diaper bags. I haven’t carried a diaper bag in over a year. I tossed all the diaper bags, neatened up the yoga equipment, and used the box to put hats, scarves, and gloves in. I ditched any hats, scarves or gloves that were too small or ratty. Life is too short to wear an ugly, ratty scarf!

Finally, I added in a few hangers for the guests that come visiting. Now my coat closet is ready for both guests and winter!

If your wood furniture has scratches or dings, don’t despair! Frugal Upstate has the solution:

Enter the Minwax stain pen. These puppies only cost around $5 (the one
I bought at Wally World was $5.43-I think they were a tiny bit cheaper
at Lowes) , last quite a long time, and are WAY easier than opening up
a can of stain and worrying about drips etc. I had originally thought
that I might have to sand down and restain certain sections of the
woodwork, but lucky for me and thanks to this gizmo, that is no longer
necessary! Take a look at the difference in this windowsill after I
used the pen:

You’ll have to go over there to see the difference. It’s amazing!

Stephanie at Stop The Ride is thinking about something I have been thinking about lately: keeping the clutter out of Christmas. She has lots of great advice, including this:

2. Start by limiting yourself.
Set yourself a limit, either in
dollars or quantity of toys, you will buy for your children. To see the
system we use please refer to Four for Christmas.

I had been thinking about three toys per kid for Christmas, but four is a nice, round number, too. Stephanie’s advice about keeping the relatives from giving your kids hordes of toys is great, too. I have already talked to my mom- the person most likely to add to the toy mountain- and she agrees that this Christmas should be simpler than in the past.

What are you doing to limit the Christmas toy mountain? Or are you?

It’s important to teach your kids how to clean, if for no other reason that they will need to know how to clean when they are on their own. One thing my mother would never let me do is laundry, because she was afraid I would somehow ruin her washing machine, so when I moved out on my own I had to call my grandma and ask her how to do laundry.

This article in the LA Times agrees with me, and I’m glad to see some validation. All my kids have chores and I have taught them how to do everything age-appropriate that they are able to do. By the time a kid of mine reaches 18, they will be little Suzy or Sam Homemakers, if I have anything to do with it.

For a long time, I was afraid I was perhaps too strict by making my kids do chores- many of my friends didn’t have their kids do any chores around the house and I was worried about whether I was too strict. However, as time has gone by and I see my 13 year old is capable of cooking a simple meal while his friends are still clueless about how to use the microwave, I feel like I have been doing the right thing.

Shak-ers, am I right here or am I right?

HT: Strollerderby