by Alison Moore Smith | May 17, 2010 | Design Your Own House, for Home
Craftsman style is known for its simplicity, function, and clean, straight lines. You won't find many round shapes or curves in our home design. No arched windows or doors, no spiral staircases, no swirling stair rails. But an abundance of hard lines can seem harsh...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 16, 2010 | Design Your Own House, for Home
The windows and shingles were delivered last week. One more step to drying in the house. Brad says the 4-way should happen next week. There's a lot of work to do, so I suspect we'll have heavy action going on.
by Alison Moore Smith | May 13, 2010 | Design Your Own House, for Home
We have spent the past week looking for the exterior doors for our custom home. The variety and selection of doors is enormous and it can be difficult to compare from one product to the next. Make sure you know precisely what each manufacturer is bidding on, since...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 13, 2010 | for Home, for Money, for Spirit
We've all heard about the state of real estate in these trouble economic times. Foreclosures are everywhere. Yesterday I read that now lots of people who can afford to pay their mortgages are walking away from them—allowing the banks to foreclose—because the values...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 12, 2010 | Design Your Own House, for Home
Nice surprise today! Consumer Reports rated the 1 horse power Waste King Legend 8000 as the best garbage disposer on the market. With excellent ratings in speed, fineness of grind, and handling of vegetable scraps—and a good rating on noise—it outranked the other...
by Alison Moore Smith | May 12, 2010 | for Home, for Money
The rebate system for energy-efficient improvements is a baffling array of governmental nonsense. No surprise there. If you do exactly what the EPA tells you to do, when they tell you to do it, while living where they want you to live—and presumably with the...