Rural Living on $1,000 a month in Malad, Idaho.
Thanksgiving 2010
According to Globest.com columnist Michael Coletti, In the next decade, all new projects will be environmentally friendly. “What distinguishes green property from traditional office space in marketing is that it does not initially cost more to lease there is no premium to rent an environmentally friendly product and, more importantly, it will cost the tenant less over the long
When Jeff and Kathy Campbell’s daughter awoke coughing one night, her parents stumbled into a dark kitchen for cough syrup but returned instead with a spoonful of Dermaton, a tick and flea killer. The pesticide contained a substance that can cause severe breathing problems, fluid in the lungs, and congestive heart failure.
ìIt was amazing how much the bottles were alike,î said Jeff Campbell. When Rachel complained about its taste, the Campbells recognized the pesticide smell and rushed Rachel to the hospital.
According to a news release from the Home Safety Council, 92 percent of all poisonings occur in homes. Although cleaning solutions are the most common cause of poisonings, overdoses of medicines and mistaken identity also cause numerous poisonings.
Many times accidental poisonings involve overdoses of seemingly safe over-the-counter medicines. For instance, an overdose of iron supplement is potentially fatal and swallowing an eye drop bottleís contents can produce low blood pressure and comas.
The storage of poisonous materials can also lead to potential poisonings. Using soft drink bottles to hold paint thinner, turpentine, or gasoline invites children to taste them. Containers for pesticides, solvents, and cleaners can easily be mistaken for bottles of mouthwash and cough medicine. Sweet-smelling or good-tasting products, like perfumes and antifreeze, are particularly attractive to children.
The Safety Council recommends:
* Evaluate where hazardous substances are stored and eliminate situations that could lead to a poisoning incident.
* Store products in their original containers with the manufacturer’s recommendations.
* Store harmful products away from food and medicines.
* Make sure all medications have child-resistant caps.
Post the telephone number of a poison control center near the phone.
Save a bundle on projects
How to build ‘sweat equity’ in your home
Homeowners usually have a mental list of projects and improvements they would like to make.
Some are still in the dream stage. Others would be possible if the costs weren’t out of reach right now. There might be one or two under serious consideration, projects that would improve the value of your home.
Sweat equity is a term usually used when you help with the finishing of a new home. It works just as well for a home improvement and could save up to 75 percent of total costs.
On some projects, you can assume labor cost would be about equal to material cost. On others, labor could be up to twice material cost.
A few vacation days would give you the time you’ll need. You also need tools. Once you have them, they can be used for other projects.
Say you want to remove a wall between the kitchen and dining room. You’ll need a circular saw to cut through wood and wallboard. You could work on a sawhorse, but a Black & Decker Workmate, $95, would be better.
A rotary cutter is a palm-size tool that uses a spinning bit to slice ceramic tile, wallboard, or laminate flooring. It can cut a notch or a curve. Rotozip at $60 is a good choice.
For this and other projects, you may need a cordless drill and hand tools. They would include your basic hammer and three sizes of screwdrivers in both Phillips and slotted heads, and a putty knife for spackling compound.
There are many people who have mulled the idea of creating a log home. Maybe they saw some pretty log homes in a magazine or were vacationing in Colorado and stayed in an old log cabin getaway and now they want to build one. There are the kit log homes and then there are the real log homes. The kits most people buy and build with are quite ugly and the posts resemble the form of a flower plant box then an actual log. The pricier log home kits that are hand crafted start to look better but the price dramatically goes up. The most rustic and beautiful looking log homes are the ones that are cut down by the owner, allowed to season and erected by the home owner. This hand crafted log home using pioneering techniques looks like a genuine log home and is extremely affordable to build.
Some have said that a log home like the one described above can be built using tools that can fit in the trunk of a car. A log home like this is built with a set of block and tackles which is simply triple block pulleys attached at the top and bottom with rope at each corner of the house foundation. The ideal log home foundation for a project like this is a pier and beam foundation. Four corner posts are erected into the ground inside the pier and beam foundation. The pulleys are attached to a hook at the top of each post and then the rope and pulley on the bottom hangs down to allow for them to be hooked to the logs to be hoisted onto the foundation. The log home is erected with logs cut down from the property until each log has been placed at least 8 feet high. The logs are stacked catty cornered where the taper of the log reverses as you stack them. The logs are held into place by drilling and hammering steel re bar every 2 feet down the top of each log as you add more logs on top of another. The steel re bar allows the whole structure to stay together without a worry that the structure will fall. Steel re bar is also drilled and hammered at the corners.
Most people run into an issue with trying to find property to even build a log home on. There is a thing called “I don’t want it syndrome” that has run rampant among land owners. These land owners may have inherited land that they must pay taxes on each year but don’t do anything on the land to justify how much money they spend in taxes each year. You can pretty much drive down a county or farm road and find land just sitting without a single cow or crop and find out through the tax appraisal office who owns the land. You call the owner and work out a payment plan for some of the wooded acres on the lot. Or you could even work out a deal where you take 1 acre and are allowed to cut down enough trees for your log home. You then work out a payment plan for this arrangement. The land owner will be happy to sell a portion of his property and the money you are giving the land owner will probably give him enough to cover property tax on the additional acres he has. This is a win win and is easy to do. Not having enough money to buy land is not an excuse when using this technique. A self built log home allows you to be self reliant in regards to your home and the materials you need to build your home. A log home like this is one of the most structurally sound homes you could ever build and will surpass any city inspection requirements in regards to the main structure of the house.
To learn more about log homes, kit log houses, and how to build a real genuine log home we recommend you check out the log home builders association of North America. This organization has years of knowledge and history on what does and doesn’t work when it comes to planning and building a log home. They can teach you the most affordable way to build a log home using the very ideas and techniques I brought up in this article.
Tired of maintaining a big house and yard? Got empty bedrooms, a huge family room and utility bills that make you feel like you’re being robbed?
You’re not alone. Today, mid-life couples and individuals of all ages are scaling back to more convenient living arrangements. That can mean fewer square feet, but an exciting new home design.
In order to visualize your “rightsized” life, visit some of the popular-sized homes designed for people with small families or homes and condos designed for people looking forward to retirement. When you understand the square footage involved and the room arrangements, you will have a better idea of how much you could keep and what you would get rid of.
Sometimes you have to sell the program to yourself, especially if you and your spouse have spent decades making your present home beautiful. A person’s identity, however, should not be tied to an oversized home that is difficult to maintain.
Rightsizing doesn’t always mean going to a smaller place. It could mean going from two homes to one, which creates a big need to cull possessions. Or it can mean adding to a home in order to make room for parents or grandchildren. The important trend today is a shift to well-planned living quarters that suit a person’s age, stage of life and situation.
Discussing your wish to rightsize will help others accept it. Talk about it with your spouse, your grown children, and your parents, recommends Ciji Ware in her book Rightsizing Your Life.
Paring down a lifetime of possessions, and furnishing a new home with things that have meaning, will not be easy. Depending on the size of your home, the process could take from a few weeks to a couple of years. If rightsizing is in your future, better start now.
Whether you ultimately move or not, your home will be better organized and have less clutter