OHW

In my work as a landscape architect we often use the Spreading Yew (Cephalotaxus harringtonia 'Prostrata'). It doesn't get much more than 1 or 2 feet tall. Another good option for a shady groundcover is Pachysandra. We used to have a big patch of it in the back corner of our yard in NJ, and I recent...

My side porch had the original wood columns, which I kept, but I put fiberglass columns on the front porch since the originals the had been replaced with cheap fluted aluminum ones. They match the style of the original ones, look just as good if not better than the wood columns, and I don't have to ...

what about attic for the momentos that you'll never access? Too much heat in the attic can damage certain things also. It can be bad for furniture finishes and dry out the glue. I recently took a box of my grandmother's drinking glasses that had been stored in my parent's attic for 10 years and the...

I installed ceiling fans in two of my bedrooms and one on the porch. I got a basic all black fan, which looks similar in style to some of the antique ones I've seen. There were a couple original ceiling fixtures that I replaced. One of them I was able to reuse in another room, the other I saved the ...

My attic originally had about 6" of loose insulation, much of which had settled to even less than 6". I added some insulation to bring it up even with the top of the ceiling joists, and then added 8" fiberglass batts on top of that perpendicular to the ceiling joists. In the areas I wanted to use fo...

My picture rails are also mounted up close to the ceiling, about 1/2" down (makes it a pain to cut in the edges when painting the ceiling). There are a couple rooms where the previous owner put up sheetrock over the original plaster and installed crown moulding in place of the picture rail. I added ...

I used a continious strip vent when redoing my soffits. It seemed to fit the best with the existing beadboard, I just had to remove one strip of beadboard. When painted the same color of the trim it isn't that obtrusive, especially if it were two stories up. Hardie siding also makes a product meant ...

My front door has two sidelites that are currently each one single pane of glass. The door and sidelites were replaced by the previous owner. Ideally, I would like to repace them with something nicer, but for now I was thinking of adding some window grids to give the look of what would have been the...

I used to cool my house with 4 window units, one large one in the living room/dining room and a smaller unit in each of the bedrooms. With the two large oak trees shading the house, I was able to keep the house pretty comfortable most of the time. I had central air installed last year. The big incen...

I think that even if the four columns are structurally strong enough to support the roof, the roof and beam on the front are so visually heavy, that you need some beefier columns to balance it out. I like the look of the doubled up square columns, or you could go with some heftier brick columns, or ...