Category Archives: Current House

current-house-category, red autumn mapleOn this section, we show you the projects we’ve worked on and the ones we’re working on – sometimes more than one at the same time – on our current (and hopefully last) house. The goal is to share our progress and ideas, hear and learn from your opinions and have a friendly discussion about our different home improvement and do-it-yourself projects.

Our Low Maintenance, Low Water, No Grass Landscaping

Our landscaping without grass; west side of the house

Side of the house before completing our landscaping without grass

When it comes to landscaping, well, pretty much everything around the house, actually, I’m one of those neighbors that tries to stay on top of its maintenance. Pulling weeds, mowing every week, picking up leaves in the fall, in other words, always making sure it (and the house in general) looks nice.

However, the fact that I stay on top of everything does not mean that I enjoy the work. In fact, I do not enjoy landscaping work, at all. You may have guessed this by now, though. Because as you know, I like using lots of rocks, which usually help a lot with weed control, meaning, less long term maintenance, even though they’re harder to spread than other materials.

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How Hard is it to Install a Garage Door Opener?

How hard to install a garage door opener

The Chamberlain garage door opener we installed

When I tell people that we installed our own garage door opener, they look at me like I’m some kind of genius. A professional installation costs about $500 depending on the unit, so it must require some special tools and skills, right? All I will say is that if you have the time, some basic tools and the willingness to learn how to do it, then the answer to the question of how hard is it to install a garage door opener is: as easy as it gets!

As with any other project, there are several steps you need to follow. In this case, you need to first assemble the unit, then install it, adjust it and finally test it to ensure its proper operation.

On this posts, I present the steps we followed to install our chain drive garage door opener. The instructions may vary slightly between the different garage door opener brands and models, however, most of them follow almost the exact same sequence.

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