The NAR (National Association of Realtors) releases a report every year on what the top projects are for home values by analyzing a complicated formula of how much things cost and how much of a return the person saw on the value of their home. I read through the list and thought even if you can not afford to do these larger projects they are great guidelines for showing you what things are important to a buyer.

The top 5 projects to boost a homes resale value are:

1. Upscale siding replacement: This project gives a full return dollar for dollar on your investment. The problem here is that it is very costly to replace your homes siding. Unless you really need this done, I would suggest working with what you have and concentrating heavily on theside that is visible from the street. Scrape, paint, hang some new shutters.

Stand back from your home and asses how your home looks. I am talking about your home now, not your landscaping. Remember that this is what a potential buyer will see first. This is what will determine if they even set foot in your home. You want them to want to come inside.

2. Midrange bathroom remodel : Yes, you might like those fancy imported faucets, but if you are looking to turn your house over in the short term, don’t buy them. Go into your bathroom and see what you think looks out of date. What will tunr buyers off? If it is an old vanity top with a harvest gold sink, well you should definitely replace those. Is the floor an old ugly vinyl? Tear that up and put down some simple tile.

If all of the big things in your bathroom look good, then maybe it is time to break out the paint and maybe replace some fixtures. If you have a wallpaper border up, please take it down. Even thought you love it it screams 1980’s and most people don’t like them.

3. Minor kitchen remodel: Kitchens, along with bathrooms, are the smartest places to invest your home improvement dollars. A minor kitchen remodel is one in which you take a functional, but dated kitchen, and give it new life. Look at the countertops? Are they dated or worn? What about the sink and faucet? The hardware on your cabinets? Your lighting?

I like to think of the faucets, light fixtures, and cabinet hardware as jewelry for the kitchen. Step back and give your kitchen a critical eye. ANd then scrub it clean like you have never scrubbed it clean before.

4. Midrange siding replacement: I think the same advice I laid outfor the upscale siding replacement follows here. If you don’t need new siding, you don’t need it. But you can make sure that the siding on your house looks the very best that it can look.

5. Attic bedroom remodel: Adding on an extra bedroom is always going to increase the value of your home. Especially now that so many people are working from home and trying to carve out some extra space for an office. This is not always a possibility, for many reasons, among them maybe you don’t need another room or want to spend the money for another room.

But what does this really say about the home buyer? It says that they are looking for additional space. Make sure that your home is not cluttered. Peoplecan not see past the clutter. I have heard a good rule of thumb is to remove half of what is in your home.

I would add a sixth project here: paint. Honestly nothing makes your house look fresh and clean like some new paint. It is inexpensive and sets the tone for your home. If you painted one of your rooms a really bold color, go over it with a neutral. Even though you might love the shocking yellow walls in your dining room, or the bright purple in the living room, other people will not.

This past weekend we hung sheet rock over the plaster ceiling in our kitchen.

Hanging sheet rock over plaster on the ceiling is much easier than the walls. First we used 1″ x 4″ boards spaced at 16″ intervals. We shimmed the boards where necessary to make the sheet rock as level as possible. Then we were able to attach the sheet rock to the new boards easily.

The sheet rock lift? THAT is a wonderful invention and well worth the rental fee.

If it is more than a small tear, you will probably be better off replacing the entire screen.

Step One:

Remove the screen door from the door frame and lay it on a flat work surface. I like to lay it down across two sawhorses so that I don’t have to remove the handles.

Step Two:

If you have a wooden screen door, as I do, you will need to gently pry off the thin wood trim that covers the edges of the screen and then pry off the staples or small nails that hold the screen in place. If you have a vinyl screen door you will need to pry the spline from the track that runs the perimeter of the screen.

Step Three:

Remove the damaged screen and discard. If your door is wooden and in need of touch up paint, you might want to do that now while you don’t have to worry about getting unsightly paint on the screen itself.

Step Four:

Place the new screen over the opening and trim away the excess making sure to leave a few extra inches around the perimeter.

Step Five:

Now you will need to secure the screen back to the door. If you can grow a third arm right now that would be extremely helpful. If not, enlist a helping hand or two to hold the screen steady while you push the spline back in on one side of the door, or use your staple gun if you have a wooden framed screen door.

Make sure you pull the screen taunt while you are securing it. You do not want to go through all of this work only to have a sagging screen. That will happen soon enough when one of your children decides to lean on it rather than use the handle.

Step Six:

One you have replaced the entire spline, or stapled it into place, you will need to trim away the excess screen. On wooden doors you will now need to nail the wood trim back into place. You really just need to tack it on with some tiny finish nails.

Step Seven:

If you are like me and tired of having to repair the screen in the door, buy and install a screen door grille. They sell them to protect your door from dogs, but really they should say protection from children.

Step Eight:

Rehang the door. Sit back and enjoy your new handiwork. Practice saying, “What, do we live in a barn?” Because your children will never shut the door anyway.

From the website, the contestants should submit plans for

a single family house with up to 1,400 SF, including 3 bedrooms and 1½ - 2 bathrooms, on a 50′ x 100′ site in Houston’s historic Fifth Ward. The winning design should be adaptable to a variety of sites in the area, including 33′ x 90′ lots and 40′ x 100′ lots

This particular neighborhood was selected because it has fallen into decay in recent years and the competition organizers hope that by building affordable, sustainable housing the area can be revitalized.

The 99K budget includes builder’s overhead and profit, all appliances, hardware, and finishes, and any additional engineering or architectural fees. Logically, hard construction costs of materials and labor should be in the range of $75,000. The $99,000 construction limit must include construction costs, financing, closing costs, commissions, overhead, and profit. The actual construction budget in the Houston area will be approximately $75,000. The lot and infrastructure are not included in this figure.

So the 99K house is the cost to build the house, not what the house would be sold for to the public.

There were 185 entries into the contest. This is the winning entry

The part that I like the best about the design are the water conservation ideas outlined here:

We have been thinking of installing a couple water barrels on our downspouts to use for irrigating our lawn and garden, certainly nothing as elaborate as two story cisterns attached to the side of the building as in this design. But I think that is a fabulous idea and one that makes you wonder why more people are not doing something like this.

The area that I don’t think this design works is the passive cooling system. In a hot and humid area like Houston, air conditioning seems like it is a necessary item. Where I live in New England, air conditioning is not a necessity. We don’t have it. Our older home stays remarkably cool due to window placement, porches that shade the sunny side of the house, and large windows for cross ventilation. However, the number of days that the temperatures top 95 degrees every summer can be counted on one hand. Apparently the the competition judges don’t agree with me.

Construction has now begun on the project. It will be interesting to see the design through its building phases.

A whole new level of DIY.

Tonight I came across this post on the IKEA hacks blog. When my children were small they had a Duplo building table that was the same basic idea, though not nearly as nice looking.

This is one of the ideas from the IKEA hacks blog that I would actually attempt as a weekend project.

From there I was sucked into the swirling vortex of the internet where I ended up at this website, Instructables. There you can find instructions for making anything. Yes, I believe anything. The homemade simple telegraph particularly captivated my children. Or maybe you want to turn your paper clip into a safety pin. Perhaps some self watering plant containers are more your speed.

I am always amazed by the creativity of people.

If you can repair and patch the plaster, this is the easiest thing to do in the long run. Knocking down plaster and removing the lathe behind it is a messy, time consuming job. Not to mention that hauling all the heavy plaster out of the house and into the dumpster is back breaking work.

Many people advocate just hanging sheetrock over the damaged plaster. We have done this. There are benefits, especially in a house like ours where the insulation has been blown in. Removing the plaster and lathe (the wood or metal mesh behind the plaster) causes the insulation to come out of the walls. Then new insulation will also have to be installed.

If your home is not insulated I would hands down take the extra time and effort to removed the plaster and insulate. The added benefit is that once the walls are open you can easily redo the electrical wiring and plumbing inside the walls. This is what we have chosen to do in most rooms where the plaster was not able to be salvaged.

The major problem with sheetrocking over plaster is what will you do with all of the trim work in your home? If your home has beautiful wood trim you will want to think about how you are going to remove it and replace it on top of the sheetrock without damaging it. This will require a level of carpentry skill that is above most novice DIYers. Even if you do not care about the trim from a preservationist point of view, replacing all of the wood will be quite costly.

If you have windows and doors on the walls you are going to run into additional issues. You will need to increase the depth of door jambs and rehang any doors that have been displaced. This is not an easy task. The doors never seem to fit back in exactly right. You will also need to find a creative way to address the increased depth in the window casing.

This wall has just been replastered. There had been numerous cracks in the wall, a couple of them deep, most on the surface. All of the plaster was still firmly attached to the lathing behind it, another important factor to consider before you attempt to salvage the plaster on your walls. Will you need to use some large screws to secure it into place? or will you need to chip away some areas and patch.

Up next for my wall, primer. I can hardly wait.

Now it is five years later and the house, most especially the front of the house where the sun bakes it all day, needs to be repainted. You start to wonder if there will ever be a reprieve from the work.

Last weekend I worked on painting the steps that lead from our patio up to our sun porch. They get a lot of use during the warmer weather, the kids use it as their primary access into and out of the house. And kids are, by their very nature, dirty little creatures who scuff and muddy up every surface they come near.

I sanded the steps and the railing. I primed and then painted. Everything needed a second coat of paint, but it was looking good. I was more than halfway done I reasoned.

Then it began raining. And all of my hard work washed off.

All week long the skies threatened to open up whenever I even thought about pulling out the paint and paint brush.

Finally my husband had the brilliant idea of dragging out the tarp and tacking it up over the newly painted areas in case it decided to rain. You know it didn’t rain then, right? But in any event, I am well on my way to being finished with this one home maintenance project.

I even tackled a smaller stoop area that is off of our family room. This one was not in as bad shape since I don’t allow the kids to use this an entrance and exit. But it is still amazing how a fresh coat of paint can make things look so much better.

Now to begin tackling the other five gazillion projects that need my attention. One of which is to replace the screen in the storm door that my children have put their hands through. I suppose pushing on the wood frame, or GASP, using the handle is too difficult.

Turns out my favorite thing about the benches is the storage that is available inside of them. We made a hinged lid on top and the inside is perfect for storing things that you don’t use every day, but still would like to have somewhat convenient.

We started by building long rectangular boxes out of finished plywood, as you can see in this photo.

Lowes has instructions for building their built in window seat.

The plans that they suggest follow the way that we built our bench. You can vary the dimensions to suit your needs and also change the type and size of the face molding.

Note sure you want to build a bench from scratch, This Old House has instructions to build a window seat using stock cabinets.

Right in front of our television in our family room we have a deep 4 inch scratch. Making it even worse is the fact the the light from the windows shines right on it, like a beacon, making it obvious from anywhere in the room.

If the scratch was only on the polyurethane layer, the scratch could be touched up by applying matching polyurethane to the area with an artist’s brush. Before you do this, however, you will need to “rough up” the area so that the polyurethane will have something to adhere to. Mark off the area that you will working on with some painters tape. You don’t want to accidentally rough up more of the floor than you need to. Using a fine gauge steel wool, lightly sand the scratch. Lightly being the key word.

You will then apply polyurethane to the scratch with your small artist’s brush. Then with a cloth slightly dampened with mineral spirits, the excess should be wiped off and blended before it fully dries.

If the stain has also been scratched, you will need to touch that up before your apply a new finish. Many floor manufacturers sell repair kits that you can order which will match the stain exactly. I know my kitchen and laundryroom cabinets came with such a kit. One which has sadly already been put to use. If this is not an option for you, you will have to try and match the stain yourself.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a furniture stain marker. Color in your scratch and then quickly wipe the excess away. Let it dry and repeat as many times as necessary to achieve a match. Remember, it is better to do this slowly with many light coats, than to put a heavy layer on that is too dark and makes the scratch even more unsightly.

Once you have matched the color, follow up with the polyurethane.

Should this not blend well enough, you may have to refinish an entire strip of wood. Depending on your level of expertise this might be something better off left to a professional.

1) Fertilize container plants each time you water them. I really need to do this more regularly. My container plants always end up dying half way through the summer. It really is very sad.

2) Don’t over water your plants: The soil becomes waterlogged and plpants can’t survive in waterlogged soil because they can’t get oxygen. Stick to a watering schedule which might be something like every like every four days. In your container plants use water holding crystals or buy self watering containers. These will help you achieve the balance between under and over watering your plants.

3) Measure the amount of water you are actually giving to your plants. If you are using a sprinkler system, set out a small container to catch water. After the watering cycle use a ruler to measure the depth. You want about 1″ each time.

4) Stop pruning, increases new growth and stresses the plants which is not good in heat when your plants are already stressed. I have a hard time with this one because once everything blooms and has leaves out, that is when I really can see where the pruning needs to occur.

5) Stop planting: The survival rate of new plantings drops dramatically as temperatures increase.

6) My children’s favorite: Cut back on mowing the lawn. When you do cut the lawn, set the blades high to prevent stress on grass. Remember the taller grass will survive the sun’s scorching rays better.

7) Keep gardens well mulched. The mulch helps hold the moisture in the soil.

Following these seven tips will hopefully lead you to a more successful garden this summer.