A friend with young children informed me that her offspring had a preternatural ability to sense when she and her husband, though exhausted by the demands of coupling career and parenthood, would take advantage of a spare 20 minutes for some time alone with each other.  No sooner had their undergarments slid to the floor, than the supposedly napping infant determined it was far too quiet in the house and ...

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Many older homes have walk-up attics, which means they have permanent, stable stair assemblies, no different than stairs between floors. Unfinished attics typically don't have hand railings on these staircases; another concern is the lack of a guardrail around the top of the stairwell. With arms full of boxes of holiday decorations, you can easily miscalculate a step backwards and fall into the opening in the attic floor. Less common in ...

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Old cellars leak ... but they don't have to be wet. Here's how to correct common problems. My cellar doesn't seem to have any obvious sources of water but it does leak through the walls in some places when it rains, especially if the ground is real wet. I suspect this is because my home's gutters have been roofed over, as they are on many old houses, and water drips down ...

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