Tag: home improvement

• 3 Home Projects to Use for Homeschooling

  Posted at 7:52 pm by HomeDabbler, on March 25, 2020

  

  School is only boring if you make it that way. There are practical life lessons all around your home that won’t feel like “school” at all. Here are a few projects to do with your kids that are fun and teach important subjects.

  1. Science – Start a Garden

  Doesn’t have to be big, and it doesn’t even have to be outside. Gardening is full of science lessons, including chemistry, biology, measurements, and more. And you can eat the results!

  I suggest you start small, maybe with a container garden on your porch (watch this video I did on the subject). You can also teach the chemistry of gardening with my video on pH (positive hydrogen) and its importance for plants.

  There are lots of gardening lesson plans out there. I found some cool ones at kidsgardening.org.

  

  Gardening kids are happy kids.

  2. Biology – The Chicken Life Cycle

  If you didn’t know, I’m obsessed with chickens and have raised them for 20 years. I have an entire page dedicated to them on this blog.

  Walking through the chicken life cycle, including how an egg gestates and hatches, is one of the most fascinating and educational experiences in life. Ideally, I would recommend you buy an incubator and hatch some eggs yourself.

  Don’t be scared! You can get everything online and you don’t have to keep the chicks once they hatch. Trust me, you have someone like me near you who loves chickens and will take them off your hands. Just put out a Facebook post and watch the chicken people emerge.

  Scholastic has some cool chicken-hatching lesson plans to get you started.

  I recommend Tractor Supply and Murray McMurray Hatchery for supplies.

  

  There’s a chicken growing in there!

  3. Math – Build a Bird House

  This is an oldy-but-goodie. Building even the simplest bird house requires measuring, calculating material, volume, estimation, even calculating the size of the hole in the front. Math, math, math that is fun, fun, fun.

  And there is nothing more fulfilling for anyone than building something with your own hands. It’s what HomeDabbler is dedicated to.

  Lowe’s has plans for beginners. The Spruce has tons more.

  

  Even simple bird houses teach big lessons.

  You Can Do It!

  It’s okay to drop the books for a while and get your (and your kid’s) hands busy. You’ll all be happier and – let’s face – you’ll both learn more.

  Enjoy!

  Kevin

  

  Posted in Chickens, Yard & Garden | 0 Comments | Tagged Chickens, diy home improvement, garden, home improvement, home schooling, lesson plans

• How’s Your GFI? (Yes, You Have One)

  Posted at 4:06 pm by HomeDabbler, on December 8, 2019

  

  Have you ever been in the bathroom running a space heater and the lights go out? Pressure washing your house and the plugs in your garage go dead? Probably your GFI.

  GFI? Huh?

  A ground fault interrupter (GFI), sometimes called a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), is a super sensitive electrical circuit in your home that is connected to any location that has a water source – kitchen, bathrooms, outside plugs, etc.

  It’s obviously bad if an electrical plug gets wet, especially if you are holding a hair dryer when it does. The GFI is there to protect you. If it gets even the tiniest power surge, it shuts of the whole circuit immediately.

  What does a GFI plug look like?

  A GFI plug that has two buttons in the middle of it. One is labeled “TEST” and the other “RESET.” If your GFI cuts the circuit, press the RESET button and the power should come back on.

  I don’t see a GFI in my bathroom. Where is it?

  If you have more than one bathroom, it is possible to have a GFI plug in one and not the other. That is because both bathrooms are on the same circuit and you should only have one GFI per circuit, not per bathroom. Same for exterior plugs. They are usually all on the same circuit with the GFI receptacle in the garage or on the porch.

  I pushed RESET and nothing happened. Now what?

  Many houses have a GFI in the breaker box. If your RESET button doesn’t turn the lights back on, try that.

  If the circuit doesn’t recharge after that, something is wrong. Call an electrician.
  Oh, and if you own an older home without a GFI, get an electrician there now to install one.

  Kevin

  Also, here’s a video of me talking about GFIs on TV. 🙂

  Posted in Home Repair & Renovation | 1 Comment | Tagged electrical, gfci, gfi, ground fault circuit interrupter, home improvement, home repair

• [VIDEO] Why Channel Lock Pliers Are the Best Pliers

  Posted at 7:19 pm by HomeDabbler, on September 4, 2019

  There are many types of pliers but there is one that reigns supreme for DIY home projects. Get rid of those crappy standard pliers and step into the land of the channel locks.

  Kevin

  Posted in Home Repair & Renovation | 0 Comments | Tagged diy, home improvement, tools

• [VIDEO] Bush Trimming Basics

  Posted at 9:57 pm by HomeDabbler, on June 22, 2019

  Here are some basics on the how, when, and how often of pruning your landscape bushes.

  Enjoy!

  Kevin

  Posted in Yard & Garden | 0 Comments | Tagged diy, home improvement, yard and garden

• The Day I Decided to Learn Home Repair

  Posted at 8:39 pm by HomeDabbler, on July 8, 2018

  

  I was 26 years old. My wife Kathy and I had bought our home a year or so earlier and the water heater was the first thing to break.

  At this point in life I had no significant home repair skills; I was certainly not up to plumbing the source of our precious hot showers. So I bought a water heater and called a guy.

  Guy came, cut the copper tubing connected to the old heater, dragged the offending appliance out of the house, and came back in with a small propane torch and a few fittings. What happened next changed my life.

  Guy lit the torch, soldered six fittings (I’ll never forget, just six) connecting the new water heater to the house plumbing, and turned the water back on. In roughly 20 minutes, he was done.

  Well, not quite. He handed me a bill for $250.

  I happily paid it and Guy was gone. But over the next couple days a frustration built in me. Not that Guy charged me $250. He was the bringer of hot water; I would have paid him twice that. No, my frustration was with me.

  I couldn’t escape the feeling that with a few tools and some basic skill, I could have done that repair myself.

  To protect my ego, I then thought, “Well maybe soldering is harder than it looks. Guy was a master plumber. Perhaps I can’t do it after all.” So, I popped down to a friend of mine who grew up on a farm and can do anything with his hands. I asked him if he would show me how to solder copper pipe. He walked into his barn, brought out a torch, some copper pipe and fittings (just like Guy), and in 20 minutes I had soldered my first weld.

  It was as easy as Guy made it look, once I knew what I was doing. It was true – with the right tools and someone to teach me some basic skills, I was capable of doing it myself. That was a breakthrough for me and changed the way I saw my relationship to my home and, in fact, my life.

  Home repair is expensive and, between the baby boomers retiring and the growing American skills gap, you can expect those costs to rise dramatically.

  According to HGTV, Nerd Wallet, and The Balance, among others, you should set aside 1-2% of your home’s value every year, just for repairs.

  $250,000 home=$2,500/year=$208/month. That’s 1 percent. Two percent is $417/month. Do you have that kind of scratch?

  Think of it another way: How many experiences could you buy with your kids for that repair money? Or buy a car. Or any other enjoyable thing besides a plumbing leak.

  Now there are some repairs that you should almost always leave to professionals. But I’m here to tell you that most of the everyday stuff is completely doable. By you.

  I’ve never calculated how much money I’ve saved doing my own repairs over the last 15 years, but I can count on one hand the times I’ve called another Guy to the house. Three. And only for major stuff – a new A/C, a new well, and a water filtration system.

  Money aside, though, there is another reason why I’m glad I learned to fix my own stuff and why I’m passionate about teaching others.

  Competence. Few feelings match the satisfaction of knowing that when it hits the fan, I can take care of it. When something breaks, I have the wherewithal to deal. I know what I’m doing.

  Level with me – how many times these days do you feel like you know what you are doing?

  And maybe it’s because I’m listening to the Classical Music for the Soul channel on Pandora right now, but there is something downright inspiring about taking a tool in hand and literally fixing my own problems. Something a little more, I don’t know, American.

  In a country known for the rugged individual, anxiety is a scourge in America today, which leads to other public health problems like family strife, low work productivity, and depression. It saps happiness and optimism. To my mind, it is an affront to our ideals.

  The black root of anxiety is helplessness, the feeling that you lack agency and mastery in your own life. Competence is the antidote. A sense of control over your world—preparedness, skill—is invaluable and increasingly rare. And nothing is more central to our world than home.

  Do I think home repair is the end all and panacea for what ails modern society? No, but maybe it’s a start. In an age of debt and insecurity and screen living, maybe learning tangible life skills that save money and build self esteem is a good start.

  Kevin

  Posted in Kev's Thoughts & Stories | 0 Comments | Tagged diy, home improvement, home renovation, home repair

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