Your architect has just presented you with the first draft of the blueprints for your new home. Now what? An initial reaction may be to count the bedrooms and bathrooms. Make sure nothing was left out. After all, the architect probably asked you upfront how large of a house you were looking for and how many bedrooms and bathrooms you wanted. So, you count the rooms, stare at the blueprints and nod your head accordingly. Here are some items you may want to consider when reviewing your blueprints.

1. Shape. If you have spent your entire life inside a suburban track home, you may believe that all rooms must be rectangular. No, I’m not advocating an octagonal room for cage matches. Instead, rooms can have bay windows, recessed walls and other architectural details to make the room more interesting.
2. Light. Focus on your sources of natural light. Make sure you have enough windows to illuminate your living space. If your design permits, consider large, expansive windows to open your room. Also, consider which direction the sun rises and sets relative to your house. This can affect both the lighting and temperature within your rooms.
3. Noise. When we think of noise, we sometimes only focus on external noise, such as an overhead plane, street noise, or a nearby school. However, you should also consider the noises created within the house, such as kitchens and bathrooms. If someone in the family is an early bird or a night owl, noises from a shower, faucet, toilet or microwave and easily awaken others with rooms near a kitchen or bathroom. In a two-story house, most designs place the bedrooms upstairs to shield them from such noises. In a one-story house, focus on your layout. Try to shield the bedrooms away from the kitchen, living room and bathrooms, if possible.

LG wants me to believe that “Life’s Good.” Me? I’m not a good marketer. I would say “Life’s Good for one year from the date of purchase.” Not as sexy a message and a tad bit long-winded, but it does carry more of a truth in advertising ring to it. So, I’m 419 days out from the date of purchase and I notice a puddle of water under the LG Tromm SteamWasher (WM2487HWM). Is life good? No. Not even close.

So, I schedule a service call. For the second time. The last time a repair person came to visit the LG washing machine, life was good since the warranty covered the labor and parts. After replacing the load balancer, the washing machine stopped jumping around the laundry room. Cool, but I was without the use of a laundry machine for three or so weeks until the part came in. This time, the repair person identified a leak in the steam unit. So, 54 days after the one year warranty expired, I have to pay the repair person $125.00 to fix a leak. Life’s Not So Good. This LG front-loading washing machine better save me a lot of water and energy to offset that $125 repair bill.

Sometimes, a traditional hot water heater is overkill. If you need near instantaneous hot water, an electric tankless water heater may fit the bill. Works great in a small office kitchen or bathroom setting, unless you provide shower facilities. However, once you install several of them, they can cost as much as a traditional water heater. The advantage is that if you ever need to replace the tankless water heater, you don’t need a couple of plumbers to remove and haul away the heavy metal beast. Tankless water heaters are compact and convenient.

Previously, I had discussed grante kitchen counters. After you have selected your counter material, the color/pattern, and the finish, you will need to select an edge style. The first time I saw a kitchen counter with a 1 1/2″ mitered edge, I fell in love. The kitchen counter had simple yet elegant lines, and looked absolutely solid. I don’t like excessively ornate styles, and I am not an ogee fan.

I love the mitered edge because the counter and the edge do not appear as two separate pieces. Unlike other edges, the seam in a mitered edge is hidden along the top edge and is not noticeable. For other edge styles, the seam appears in the middle of the edge where the edge was glued to the counter. You may not notice it now, but after you’ve seen a mitered edge, you will notice the seam every time you see a granite counter with a non-mitered edge.

Selecting kitchen counters can be an exhausting process.

• What material shall I use?
• What color/pattern shall I select?
• What finish shall I use?

Consumer Reports actually ranks the different kitcen counter materials. For me, I wanted an attractive, low maintenance solution. So, the toss-up was between engineered stone and natural granite. I really liked many of the colors offered by CaesarStone, a manufacturer of engineered stone. However, most showrooms only display a small sample block of the engineered stone, usually in a binder. I found it difficult to visualize how an entire slab would appear based on a small square slab. In contrast, granite is easier to visualize since you can pick the actual slab that will be used to fabricate the counters. However, granite offers a lot of different colors and patterns, and each slab offers some variance from the others. I ended up picking granite over Caesarstone mainly out of price considerations.

A designer suggested black honed granite, which is more of a grayish black instead of a true black. Honed granite has a matte finish instead of a polished, glossy look. Granite Gold works great at cleaning polished granite. For a honed surface, I find that hot water and a microfiber works well at removing the shine when some cooking oil splashes on the counter.

I never understood the Itsy Bitsy Spider song when I was a kid.  What the heck is a waterspout?  Nowadays, children have it easy.  Everything is spoon-fed to them.  You sing the spider song and see the nice colorful drawings of a rain gutter and the downspout.  Oh, that waterspout.  Well, it’s been raining quite a bit as of late, in contrast to last winter.  And, because of that, I’m hearing that drip, drip, drip sound more and more often.  Enough to actually do something about it.  Actually, the dripping sound was so noisy that my neighbor asked about it.  So, I head down to Orchard Supply Hardware and pick up “The Silencer.” OSH is selling them for $2.39/unit. With tax, my total cost is $2.59/unit. The Arkco website has them for $14.00/6-pack, or $2.33/unit, and this price includes sales tax, handling and shipping. Could have save $0.25/unit if I had first checked online. Basically, this product is a sponge with a magnetic backing. You can probably fabricate something like this on your own. I opened the package and placed the magnet on the lowest bend of the downspout. I don’t have any technical sensors to measure the decrease in decibels, but I can say that this product made an appreciable difference. It did not completely stop the dripping noise because water dripping on a sponge makes some noise. However, the sound level went from very obvious to barely perceptible. It’s worth the two bucks and change.

Out of the box, the Black and Decker LawnHog come pre-assembled. Put away your tools because you won’t be needing them. All I had to do was

1. Straighten the handle and hand tighten the nuts and bolts;
2. Assemble the rear bag, which entails slipping a mesh bag over a metal frame;
3. Replace the mulching attachment with the rear bag.

That’s it. Oh, also, I had to adjust the clipping height which was remarkably easy. However, to get started, you need an extension cord. So, measure out the distance from the further corner of your lawn to the electrical outlet and add about 10 feet. You need some slack to turn the lawn mower around. You also need an extension cord with the correct gauge; i.e., not all extension cords are the same!

This mower just pushed my rake into retirement. With the manual push reel lawn mower, I had to spend way too much time raking up all the grass clippings after I was done mowing. The LawnHog sucked up all the grass and leaves, so I didn’t have to clean-up afterwards. The lawn was pretty clean except for some pine chips that my cedar tree has been shedding since Fall. Not too sure what to do about that since these slip through the rake too.

Lived with the hand push reel mower for 8 months, and now it’s finally time to set it to rest. I had no problem cutting grass with a manual lawnmower. I can zip around the front yard and back yard quickly in no time. However, raking up all the grass just got to be a drag. Clean-up took longer than the actual mowing. So, I could either hire a gardener or try out an electric lawnmower. I got some quotes from a few gardeners and their price was much higher than I had expected. Gulp. I followed Consumer Reports lead on this one and picked up a Black and Decker LawnHog. I also checked out the mixed reviews on Amazon, with most complaints focusing on the durability of the lawnmower. Without much other choices to pick from, I went ahead with the purchase. Now, the box that the lawnmower came in was big and heavy. That’s as good a reason as any to order from Amazon. The UPS guy dropped off the box at my front door, and the lawnmower has been waiting for some action since then. If I have some free time this weekend, I’ll unbox the lawnmower and test it out.

How do you rearrange the furniture after moving day? Without the able assistance of movers, we tried to move a heavy Toshiba television. Not one of those modern slim plasma TVs mind you, but a 5-year-old CRT. That big and bulky 200-pound monster was designed to sit in one place. We managed to ease it off the television stand and onto the floor. However, after we moved the television stand, we couldn’t get the television back off the ground.

After a few days of meditation, I headed down to the local U-Haul for a Forearm Forklift. I could have gotten a much better price via Amazon, but I didn’t want to wait another 3-4 days. So, with the Forearm Forklift in hand, I headed back home. This time, the television just floated off the floor, much to my amazement. Here’s the big secret. (1) Instead of lifting the television with my fingers, my much thicker and stronger forearms supported the weight of the object. (2) I didn’t have to search around for some non-existent handle or crevice to grab ahold of the television. The lifting straps make it easier to lift heavy objects without obvious places to grab onto. (3) With the Forearm Forklift, I could begin lifting from a position higher off the ground. So, instead of crouching down completely and being unable to generate any lifting power, I started the lift while seated. I didn’t have to lift using any upper body strength. Standing upright was enough power to hoist the television back onto its television stand.

I no longer fear the television. With the Forearm Forklift, we could move it again if we wanted to. It’s also much cheaper than a hydraulic lift table, which was the other solution I was contemplating.