I had a heat pump in the town house I used to live in and it heated really well and since we didn't have access to natural gas, it was the only affordable option. But it did have one major drawback, it made the air incredibly dry. I woke up a few times gasping for air my throat was so dry before we got a humidifier. We had to get a powered humidifier to remedy the problem, which cost about $250 and took me around 4 hours to install, since the cheaper drum humidifiers were not effective enough to reach the floor where the bedrooms were.

hmm interesting. what area of the country do you live? we have our fair share of humidity in our climate, and our bathroom fan is horse shit so i wouldn't mind it too much if it drew some of the moisture out of our air

Anyone ever skim-coated an entire wall? Gonna be undertaking that soon, didn't know if there were any tips/tricks

Good luck. 'Finishing' large areas of drywall is the one thing I will happily pay for. It's an art and I am no artist.

We're redoing our kitchen and basement and putting on a new roof this summer. Home ownership is fun!

In the past week we've had the following go wrong;

Kids' ceiling fan light stopped working (it's not the bulbs)
one of the bathroom fans stopped working
doorbell stopped working
kitchen sink having hot water issues
one of our front living room windows cracked

I know this is all relatively minor, but stuff adds up as far as the money. Other than the window, this is all stuff I will fix myself, but goodbye weekend!

Home ownership is fun!

I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to working in on our yard, specifically for growing grass. Its an endless cycle of blood, sweat, but mostly tears.

After Hurricane Sandy knocked down or dangerously tilted several trees in our yard, we had a tree service remove them all last November. A costly project and quite messy too. But, necessary. The machines they used all over the yard destroyed much of our lawn. So, for the past couple of weeks I've had yards of topsoil dumped in my driveway. I've toiled in attempting to level out some of the lopsided areas, and did a mass spreading of grass seed and protective straw.

Then, it rained - hard, for much of the 5 of the last 7 days. I haven't seen any indication that the seeds are germinating yet. Its possible much of the seed got washed out. And, too add insult to injury, it looks like the topsoil contained a lot more rocks than it should have - and decent sized ones too. Not good for growing grass.

I'll wait another week before I decide if I have to redo this process, and or complain to my topsoil guy.

Sounds expensive.

I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to working in on our yard, specifically for growing grass. Its an endless cycle of blood, sweat, but mostly tears.

After Hurricane Sandy knocked down or dangerously tilted several trees in our yard, we had a tree service remove them all last November. A costly project and quite messy too. But, necessary. The machines they used all over the yard destroyed much of our lawn. So, for the past couple of weeks I've had yards of topsoil dumped in my driveway. I've toiled in attempting to level out some of the lopsided areas, and did a mass spreading of grass seed and protective straw.

Then, it rained - hard, for much of the 5 of the last 7 days. I haven't seen any indication that the seeds are germinating yet. Its possible much of the seed got washed out. And, too add insult to injury, it looks like the topsoil contained a lot more rocks than it should have - and decent sized ones too. Not good for growing grass.

I'll wait another week before I decide if I have to redo this process, and or complain to my topsoil guy.

Time is money. And for all the time you probably spent on that, after figuring out the value of that time (not to mention the amount for the soil and seed) you'd probably find it cheaper to hire someone to do the work (and lay sod).

In the past week we've had the following go wrong;

Kids' ceiling fan light stopped working (it's not the bulbs)
one of the bathroom fans stopped working
doorbell stopped working
kitchen sink having hot water issues
one of our front living room windows cracked

I know this is all relatively minor, but stuff adds up as far as the money. Other than the window, this is all stuff I will fix myself, but goodbye weekend!

Home ownership is fun!

Rodents chewing electrical wires?