118 articles in this category
Tessa
118 articles in this category
The pry bar went behind the casing on the second-floor bedroom window and the whole bottom corner came away in my hand like wet cake. I had budgeted a Saturday and one trip to the lumberyard. I got three weekends and a carpenter named Ray who did not laugh at me, which I appreciated. Window … Read more
Year three, north corner of my deck, on my knees with a bucket and a stiff brush. The boards had a green film on them that a hose would not touch. I bought these because the box said no sanding, no staining, no sealing. Nobody printed the word “scrub” anywhere on it. Low maintenance composite … Read more
The first bid I got for the back corner of my lot was $4,900. The second was $2,650. Same 150 feet, same four-foot fence, same lumpy yard. I sat in my kitchen with both sheets side by side for an hour before I found the difference, and it was not the fence at all. It … Read more
My kitchen faucet dripped for a summer. I told myself it was the aerator, because the aerator is the thing you can reach without lying on your back in a cabinet. It was not the aerator. It was a $38 cartridge, and the whole repair took me an hour and ten minutes once I finally … Read more
I bought my outdoor pumpkin decorations on the last Saturday of September two years ago. Six pumpkins, $38, hauled up the steps in two trips. By October 12 the biggest one had folded in on itself on the top step like a punctured basketball, and there was a wet orange ring on the concrete that … Read more
The guest shower dripped for eleven months before I did anything about it. Not a fast drip. One bead every four or five seconds, loud enough to hear from the hallway at night, quiet enough to ignore in daylight. I finally fixed it on a Tuesday morning in about ninety minutes, and the part cost … Read more
I bought the engineered white oak before I ever checked whether my floor was flat. Eleven boxes, acclimating in the dining room for a week while I felt very organized about the whole thing. Then the installer laid a straightedge across my hallway and I watched his face change. That dip cost me $540 in … Read more
My cousin Dana and I replaced our windows the same spring. Same builder-grade white vinyl double-hungs, same white, same low-E package, nothing custom on either end. She did eleven of them outside Columbus for about $9,400. I did nine and paid $14,800. We put the two contracts side by side on a phone call that … Read more
The first guy who walked my basement was down there eleven minutes. He looked at the stairs, looked at the ceiling, wrote a number on the back of a business card, and handed it to me on the way out. Fifty-eight thousand dollars. About 900 square feet, no bathroom, no wet bar. I said thank … Read more
The kit came in a box with a picture of a showroom floor on it. I paid $189 for it on a Saturday in March, spent a weekend on my knees with an acid etch bottle and a roller, and for about a year and a half I was smug about it. Then I backed … Read more
My three DIY fall wreath builds, all under $25: the real receipts, which base survives rain and sun, and how to hang one without wrecking the door.
For four years I blamed the door. The one to our back bedroom never latched, so it drifted open at night, and I planed the edge twice and swapped the strike plate and bought a heavier knob. Then a carpenter friend held a level against the hinge jamb for about six seconds and said, “Tessa, … Read more
