I fired my pest control company years ago, and you should too!  I DIY pest control and have saved THOUSANDS!  All the pesticides I use and link to in this post are pro-grade that you can legally buy online and use on your property.  In this how-to-do-your-own-pest-control tutorial I’ll tell you exactly what to get, the mix ratio, how to apply it, and how often it should be done.  Do-it-yourself pest control is one of the easiest homeowner tasks out there.  It’s also a fantastic way to cut your monthly budget.

What’s the best battery for a minivan?  The Optima YellowTop!  Our 2012 Toyota Sienna had recently been slow to crank.  It was especially slow after the power doors were opened/closed a few times with the car off.  We’re going on vacation soon, so I thought it’d be a good time for a preemptive battery replacement.  

This post shows how I built a DIY loft bed for my son’s room.  It utilizes basic framing and structural pipe fittings for support.

I collect small parts.  Nuts, bolts, screws, washers, nails, bushings, fasteners, fittings, plastic odds and ends, you name it – chances are I’ve got something like it.  But why?  Why keep that little protective plastic cover that came on that tube of epoxy I just bought??

Growing up, we had a neighbor, Bob.  Bob was a war vet.  Not just a war vet, but a POW vet.  During WWII his plane collided with another American plane killing all but Bob and one other Army Air Corpsman.  He was captured by the Nazis and went on to spend 18 months in Stalag 17B as a POW.  Bob was a consummate American bad-ass serving in WWII, Korea, and Nam before retiring in 1973.  Sadly, we lost Bob in 2004, but his legacy lives on.

I just installed some new heavy-duty steel garage cabinets that I got at Home Depot.  My old garage cabinets were worn, tired, and didn’t match my black tool cabinet and lockers.  They were really more suited as cheap cabinets for a laundry room.  The humidity fluctuations in my garage caused the shelving to warp slightly.  No bueno.  I needed something strong that would last the test of time.

We’re in process of switching around our kids’ rooms, and our oldest has moved into his own room.  One of the projects to tackle was getting him a desk to go under his new lofted bed.  When I was kid I had an old mid-century steel tanker desk painted a lovely 80’s beige.  It wasn’t much to look at, but it could and did take all the abuse a boy could throw at it.  They don’t call them tanker desks for nothing.  For YEARS it sat mostly unused in my parents’ basement.  Thankfully, they kept it!  Here’s the before: