As the economy continues to plummet into the shitter, everyone seems to be looking for ways to trim from their budgets. Some restaurants have seen a 50% decrease in customer traffic. Eating out is an obvious place to trim expenditures. But another place hits closer to home – literally. The article below has some great tips on ways to minimize wasting energy in your home.

18 Things a New Homeowner Should Do Immediately to Save Money

Amanda and I tackled a fairly big home improvement project this weekend – installing a tumbled marble backsplash across our kitchen and over the course of about 8 hours yesterday and into this morning (past 1am), we got it all installed.

I’m really impressed and satisfied with its look, our workmanship and the wonderful aesthetics it’s added to our home’s kitchen. I’ll write up a full post about the project and its process, etc. once we’ve sealed, grouted and taken photos of that. In the meantime, check out a few photos of the installation process below.

Backsplash Project Photos

I’d been anxious to do today’s tasks for quite awhile – every time I mowed the lawn and saw the patchy spots, every time I battle with the weeds in the front and back yards and every time I looked down on the backyard from our second floor.

Well today, as the official last day of summer and the temperatures cooling off, we bit the bullet and did our annual lawn reseeding. I did a tight mow yesterday afternoon in preparation for today. We rented a core aerator and I fought with that thing for close to two hours, pulling plugs of dirt (clay). Simultaneously, Amanda put down some pulverized limestone. After returning the aerator to the hardware store and having some lunch, I spread the fertilizer and then put down a ton of grass seed.

Exciting stuff? No, not at all. But I am anxious to see some real progress this autumn in the filling in of our front and back yards. The drought this year kind of screwed over last year’s seeding, but hoping 2009 won’t be as dry. Plus, with us having the little automated sprinkler system, we’ll be supplementing the watering on a regular basis.

So as you can see – absolutely nothing too exciting going on here – just domestic maintenance in suburbia, and hopefully some exterior progress to the homestead.

 
Someone please remind me of this project when I attempt another one… Though I really had a lot of fun and I think the end result is exactly what I had imagined, it was A LOT of work and it was extremely time consuming. That said, I can definitely say I’d do it all over again….being creative is always rewarding.

Check it out! What do you think?

So we bit the bullet and finally did something with the soil bed we setup oh so long ago.

We got 10 cubic yards of shredded mulch from a local garden center delivered yesterday morning and Amanda went yesterday and got 30+ plants from a nursery out in Apex where she could get her dad’s discount applied.

The initial setup is in and done. Let me tell you, moving ten cubic yards of mulch to that back bed and various other places around our property was a lot of work in the heat and sun of the day. But man, Amanda and I are really happy with the end result. The brown of the mulch is great contrast, and I think the initial set of plants we put in are really going to spread and setup that bed nicely.

Eventually, we want to put a bench out back there, with a stone pathway, along with some larger trees. But for now, we’ve got a great setup that’s a wonderful upgrade, with room for incremental jumps forward down the road.

So last night I finally decided to push forward on my project. I hadn’t really touched the project in a week or so, other than puttying a few seams. Anyhow, Last night I primed the plank wall and tape the rest of the room for paint. I am pretty pleased with the “white” effect. I think it does exactly what I wanted it to do. Some had suggested leaving it the natural wood, but I just didn’t like that idea.

It’s definitely beginning to shape up. I am hoping to be done with this project and have it all put back together by the end of the weekend. That may be too ambitious, but we’ll see.

So we decided to take a few days off after the 4th of July Holiday to make it an extended holiday. It’s been a very productive 4 days thus far and I during this time we’ve gotten lots done. Inspired by the success of my couch project, today I decided to start my “Plank” project in the guest bathroom upstairs. So here’s where I am at day 1. On the left is the before picture of the guest bathroom.

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We’re DONE!

Before:
 

 
So here’s the deal: We began this little adventure yesterday morning and made good headway on disassembling the couch–removing what seemed like 200 old stapes and upholstery nails. We removed all the old fabric to use as templates for the new fabric, replaced batting on the seat. Recovered the seat and cut out the the seat back. Yesterday we had to make a run to two fabric stores, so that ate up a lot of time.

We started our second day of recovering this morning by covering the seat back and the arms. It was tedious, as we had to be carefully to line by the pattern on the seat with the seat back. I’m extremely proud of the result and I know my Grandmother is looking down smiling tonight.

I discovered lots of little surprises–horse hair batting (it’s a 100 year old couch) and old flour bags used to hold the batting in place. It was quite ingenious in my opinion. My Grandmother reupholstered the couch with the pink fabric over 30 years ago. It’s a special piece of furniture, not only to me, but to my entire family.

I am also hoping to get the accent wall painted by Tuesday evening. I am sure I’ll post a final picture once the wall is done.

What do you all think of the new look?