Haint Blue

...sting insects — and restless spirits (“haint” derives from “haunt”) — from making themselves at home in our living spaces. Haint blue is not a single shade of blue, but refers rather to a blue used for this purpose. The actual color could run from soft powder blue to true sky blue to bright teal. While the cool, airy white porch with a blue ceiling speaks to elegant Victoriana, I’ll note that the practice probably does originate in the traditions...

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Grief is the pathway to action

...ut these things because we don’t want to be a downer. Nor do we want to be labeled morbid, pessimistic, impractical, oversensitive or even (gasp!) a tree-hugger. (FYI I was reprimanded in kindergarten for repeatedly arriving at school covered in sap because I’d been hugging trees all the way to school.) But the grief is there, the endangered elephant in the room, which we walk around and talk past, and do our best to ignore by making our lives eve...

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Ikea Karlstad Couch Hack

...pf noted, I would have been better off just getting a sheet of plywood and making the arms from scratch, which is what I ended up doing. To make the new plywood arms I put the project in Sketchup to figure out the dimensions. I’m a big believer in Sketchup. It has helped plan a lot of projects and prevented waste. It took just a few minutes to figure out the arm dimensions. I don’t have a table saw, so I used my circular saw and some guides to cut...

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Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities

...category: fun to read about but I’ll probably never do. I’d include igloo making, boat living and camouflage here. But you never know . . . And, thanks to Cool Tools editors Elon Shoenholz and Mark Frauenfelder, you’ll find a few Root Simple reviews tucked into Cool Tool’s 463 pages. And, yes, one of the first items mentioned in Cool Tools is a book on decuttering, perhaps as a caution to use Cool Tools as a guide to what is useful, not an invita...

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An Early Resolution

...come in disposable cups. If I try to imagine how many disposable cups I’ve used in my life–say the earth (justly) vomited them all back at my feet–how high would the pile be? As big as my house? So I’m making a resolution. Instead of berating others, I’m declaring a personal moratorium on to-go cups–all disposable cups for both hot and cold drinks, actually, because why not? I banned plastic water bottles from my life long ago. Why it took so long...

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