101 Things I Love about Maine: September 2015

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Scenes at the Cumberland Fair

Farn animals for pettimg
and exhibits, seasonal displays, music and dancing
Lots of fun for\everyone

Saturday, September 26, 2015

101 Things I Love about Portland Maine

Rustler's Steakhouse: Real steakhouse chow!

http://www.rustlerssteakhouse.com/

Friday, September 25, 2015

Scenes from Common Ground Fair in Unity Maine

http://www.mofga.org/TheFair

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Selling Your House Next Spring? 5 Fall Projects to Do Now

By: Jennifer Nelson

Take the pressure off getting your home ready to sell with these ideas.

Planning on selling your home in the spring? Good news — that leaves plenty of time to tackle all sorts of projects this fall that will help you snag top dollar when the tulips start blooming. Take an objective look around your home from a buyer’s perspective. What would stop you from making an offer? What do you need to do to put your home’s best face forward?

Here are some fall projects to jump on now in order for your home to be in tip-top shape for a spring sale:

1. Update Your Curb Appeal

Image: Laurin Lindsey, Landscape Designer

“Curb appeal is important,” says Steve Modica, sales associate and property manager at HomeXpress Realty Inc. in Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla. “Make sure the bushes are all trimmed. Re-mulch or replace stone walkways and paths. Remove any dead plants and trees, and aerate your lawn so it will be lush come spring. Pressure wash the driveway, the front walk, and the exterior of your home. If need be, have the exterior of the house painted and, at the very least, apply a fresh coat of paint on the front door.

Related: Tips on Aerating for a Lush Lawn in Spring

2. Get a Home Inspection

The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® says 77% of homebuyers have an inspection done before completing a home purchase. To avoid nasty surprises once you’re in the process of selling your home, have your own inspection done and make any repairs over the winter months before you list the home. Homebuyers often use flaws and needed repairs to negotiate a lower price.

3. Replace Flooring and Paint Walls

Determine if your carpets need replacing or just a deep, professional cleaning. If they need to go, consider if hardwood or another flooring material might be more appealing to buyers.

You’ll also want to inspect interior rooms for dirty or scuffed walls that need a fresh coat of paint. “Paint the whole wall, don’t just do touch-up repair work, because it never looks as good,” says Modica. Also, if you have eccentric or loud wall colors, now is the perfect time to update to a more neutral palette. Stagers recommend beiges, light grays, and off-whites.

4. Tackle the Basement, Attic, and Garage

Image: Liz Foreman for HouseLogic

Often overlooked, these storage meccas can become a catch-all for junk. Use cool, fall weather as an excuse to get down and dirty in these hot spots and organize them from top to bottom. Install shelving, pegboards for tools, and hanging brackets for bicycles and other large sporting equipment. Your goal is to pitch the junk, sell what you no longer need, and categorize the rest.

“Donate or recycle clothes and bedding you don’t use anymore in order to free up storage space in your closets, basement, and garage,” says Amy Bly, a home stager at Great Impressions Home Staging in Montville, N.J. These areas should look roomy, well-organized, and clean.

Related: Garage Storage Ideas Under $50

5. Consult a Stager

Buyers need to picture themselves living in the house, and they may have trouble doing that if all your personal effects are on display. In order to accomplish that, a professional stager can create a plan for you that you can spend the winter months implementing. Bly spends about two hours walking through a property assessing curb appeal, interior flow, closets, bookcases, media cabinets, flooring, and more.

“I give homeowners a multi-page, room-by-room form they can use to take notes on my recommendations,” says Bly. She typically recommends things like neutralizing out-of-date decor, removing old furnishings and carpeting, and updating light fixtures. She also suggests the type of shower curtains, towels, bedding, and pillows to display for an upscale look.

Getting a jump on these fall projects will give you a leg up on selling in the spring. Today’s buyers are savvier than ever before, especially millennial first-time homebuyers who may have searched homes online for months prior to getting in the field. More than just listing your home in the spring, you want to make it’s as perfect as possible. That means everything works and looks immaculate, and there are no glaring issues that will turn off buyers. When you’re ready, have a friend or relative drop by for a tour and point out anything you may have overlooked.

Related: Best Projects for Return on Investment

Jennifer Nelson

is a Florida-based content writer who is always up for a home improvement project. She writes about remodeling, home repair, improvement, and design. Her work has appeared in Better Homes & Gardens, HGTV, DIY Network, and many other print publications and websites. Follow Jennifer on Twitter.

101 Things I Love about Portland Maine

Cia's in South Portland

http://ciacafe.com/

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Portland Maine Farmers Market

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Green Cleaning Products for the Bathroom

Published: August 28, 2009
By: Alyson McNutt English
Inexpensive green cleaning products—both off the shelf and homemade—can be just as effective on your sinks, toilets, and showers as conventional products.

Grimy grout. Moldy showers. Smells you’d rather not talk about. Given its frequent exposure to moisture, not to mention calls of nature, the bathroom needs to be one of the most frequently sanitized rooms in the house. But if you rely on conventional commercial products for your lavatory clean-ups, not only are you paying big bucks but you’re also bringing some of the harshest chemicals on the market into this small, often poorly ventilated space. The combination makes the bathroom a prime candidate for a green cleaning products.

Environmentally friendly doesn’t necessarily mean expensive, however. While there are many sustainable off-the-shelf options, safe and effective cleaning solutions also can be mixed at home for pennies from common household ingredients like vinegar and baking soda. Here’s a tip sheet for transforming your bathroom from chemically contaminated to green and clean.

Showers & Baths

A serious bathroom-cleaning hazard is the accidental combination of bleach and ammonia, common ingredients in different all-purpose cleaners. On their own, each is unhealthy to breathe in and can seriously irritate skin. Combined, however, they can create a dangerous plume of chlorine gas, says Eric Richter, chemist for the Atlanta-based Ecodiscoveries. You can avoid this toxic reaction by staying away from conventional cleaners, or at the very least carefully scrutinizing labels.

Another harmful chemical found in conventional all-purpose cleaners is 2-butoxyethanol. It belongs to a group of grease-cutting industrial solvents called glycol ethers, which are easily absorbed through the skin and have been linked to reproductive problems and birth defects in animal studies. “It’s just overkill in a bathroom, where your biggest problems are toothpaste in the sink or soap residue in the shower,” says Ali Solomon, director of communications for the environmental organization Women’s Voices for the Earth.

Solomon says you can save the $4-$5 you’d spend buying chemical concoctions at the store by making your own all-purpose cleaner for your shower enclosures or baths. Mix equal parts water and vinegar, then heat in a glass bowl. You can also add several drops of a disinfecting essential oil like orange or lemon, she says, to improve the smell and boost germ-fighting power. Food-grade vinegar runs about $4 for a 64-ounce bottle; that’s $1 per 32-ounce batch of cleaner.

Toilets

The commercially available cleaners for your porcelain throne contain some of the nastiest stuff you can buy. Mary Findley, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Green Cleaning,” says you can skip chemicals like bleach, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, and naphthalene, and still score a white, clean toilet.

Add about half a cup of a green all-purpose cleaner like Biokleen’s ($5 for 32 ounces) to the toilet, then sprinkle baking soda into the bowl. If you want extra bleaching power, substitute hydrogen peroxide for the all-purpose cleaner. The one-two punch will transform your toilet for pocket change compared to the $3-$6 you’d shell out for a bottle of the conventional stuff.

Drains

Put away the $6 you’d spend buying industrial-grade acids when you’re trying to dislodge a hairball. Instead, pour a half-cup of baking soda down the drain, and follow with a half-cup of vinegar. Cover and let it set for at least 30 minutes, then flush with boiling water. If that doesn’t work, try an enzyme-based cleaner like Nature’s Miracle, which contains eco-friendly microbes that eat away at clogs, or buy a $5 plunger and dislodge the clog manually.

Sinks & Vanities

Many sink problems, from leftover toothpaste to stray makeup splotches, can be cleaned with hot water and a natural dishwashing soap like those from Mrs. Meyer’s ($4.50 for 16 ounces). If you want to disinfect, try Women’s Voices for the Earth’s green all-purpose cleaner recipe, or what Solomon calls the “Creamy Soft Scrub.” It’s a mix of baking soda, castile soap, and essential oils that will foam up and clean away dirty sink and vanity problems. Castile soap retails for about $15 for a 32-ounce bottle. You can use the soft-scrub mix all over the house, and castile soap can double as a body wash or shampoo.

Mirrors & Glass

Pour on the vinegar to clean glass and mirrors, Findley says. Add a quarter cup of vinegar to a 32-ounce spray bottle, and fill the rest of the way with distilled water. Spray on and wipe with an old newspaper rather than a cloth or paper towel to prevent stray threads and towel bits from remaining on your glass. Your mirrors will be streak- and particulate-free, and for significantly less money than if you’d shelled out the $5 for a regular glass cleaner.

Tile & Grout

Tile grout’s prickly texture tends to invite dirt, mold, and scum. The soft-scrub mix is a good option, Solomon says. To mop tile floors, whip up a batch of water and vinegar-based all-purpose cleaner. In the shower, if you’re dealing with moldy grout, try borax. A 76-ounce box costs about $6.50. One cup of borax in one gallon of water with a stiff-bristled sponge should help scour mildew from your shower grout.

Odors

Very few synthetic fragrances found in cleaners and air fresheners have been tested for human toxicity, Richter says. You can avoid the risk (and the $3 a spray air freshener will cost) by simply using common sense and ventilation. To freshen a stinky bathroom, turn on outside-vented fans or open windows, when possible. Otherwise try the age-old trick of sticking an open box of baking soda in your lavatory. It costs less than $1, and it sucks unpleasant smells right out of the air.

writes regularly about home improvement, decorating, and “green home” tips; her work has appeared in magazines like Pregnancy, Kiwi, and Parenting and on many websites, including BobVila.com and HGTV.com.