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Quality furniture on the cheap

January 19, 2012

One of the things that has taken me years to learn is the fine art of buying great furniture at deeply discounted prices. It seems like it’s either choose quality and hefty price tag or cheap materials and a wallet happy price. It doesn’t have to be either or though! Ikea While Ikea certainly has [...]

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Barn Beam Mantel

December 29, 2011

One of the big items on our to-do list for the family room was building a new mantel for over the fireplace. The existing mantel was a thick but not deep piece of wood stained a dark walnut color. When I removed the mantel during our demo phase it was nailed into the brick and [...]

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Hiring Help for your Home

May 16, 2011

Living a Centsible Life isn’t just about what makes sense in terms of dollars and cents. Sometimes it means making the most of your time and money to focus on what is important to you. After all it is called personal finance for a reason. I’ve made a decision to do something many people feel strongly [...]

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Cooktop Fail-When a new appliance stops working

May 5, 2011

This is a guest post by Jennifer Pohlhaus of Harmonic Mama. Jenn is a working and homeschooling mother of two. She has her BFA and currently blogs about her experience with the challenges and fun of homeschooling along with her love of crafting and cooking at HarmonicMama.com. You can find her on twitter and facebook as [...]

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Family Room Remodel Update

March 17, 2011

The family room remodel is going sloooooowwww. As expected the demo part of the job was pretty fast and SO fun. I like destruction. After the major deconstruction was done, we spent a day removing the exterior door from the back wall of the family room. I wish I had photos or video, but if [...]

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Green & Cheap car wash: Wash Drops

March 16, 2011

photo credit: fortes I loathe washing the car. Usually I’ll pay $5 for the automated gas station car wash when my car is desperately dirty in the winter months, typically once it starts rubbing off on the kids’ coats (why do they always rub their coats against the car anyway??). Probably twice a year I’ll [...]

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How to make a reading nook in a closet

March 15, 2011

Reading nooks, or a space of your own when you’re a child is a magical thing. It gives you a special place that is all your own to just be when you need some quiet. My oldest daughter occasionally wants space to relax away from her brothers and sisters, but told me her room is [...]

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Demolition (mostly) Complete

February 23, 2011

The family room demo phase is nearly complete. Whew, my arms still hurt, but it feels good to have it mostly done. Want to see? The floor is gone-the plywood under the ceramic tile was a major pain to get up, but that $25 tool in the background made it go so much faster. This [...]

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Home Renovations: the Unexpected

February 15, 2011

Home renovations rarely turn out as we expect, especially when you are dealing with an older home. You may have noticed I’ve been quiet the last few days on the blog, twitter, and Facebook. As you can probably guess, it’s because we hit an unexpected snag in my quest to do it myself on the [...]

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Under destruction

February 13, 2011

I don’t know what came over me this week. I think I’m just tired of looking at our house and imagining things looking nicer someday. Since someday usually involves boatloads of cash, and our priority is to get out of debt someday starts feeling a looooong way away. Maybe it’s stir craziness from being stuck [...]

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