Category: Moving

Remodeling and Disposing of Your Dining Room

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As COVID-19 or normal nest-fluffing activities prompt us to make bigger and more comprehensive changes to our house, the dining room is typically considered as an afterthought.

We set it, we forget it.

Silverware pun aside, the formal dining room often receives little love. We do a lot of daily eating in and around our expanded kitchens, and the idea of having company for dinner is still a rare treat.

But when it is time to re-do the dining room, here is a guide for how to handle each part of the redesign.

The table – many dining room designs and redesigns focus on the table. Appropriately so. The table makes the determination for whether you will eat in the dining room at all. Is it too big? Is it too formal? Is it covered with the bills, or a vexing jigsaw puzzle?

If you dispose of your dining room table and chairs: think of St. Vincent DePaul or some other local agency that employs folks to resell furniture. If it is functional, there is likely another life with another family. If your table was damaged to the point of unusability, only then should it be thrown in your Big Daddy Dumpster.

The china cabinet: was it part of a set with the dining room table? Then it’s got to go to make room for the replacement. If not, try to determine if it can be redone in a way that complements your new look. And what about the curios that are stored inside? Are they heirlooms whose story you know? Keep them, if not …

If you dispose of your china cabinet and contents: Determine if it is functional. If so, donate it. There is simply no sense in throwing away working furniture in a country with a 40% poverty rate. If it’s broken or unusable, BDD!

The carpet: It’s the focal point of the space only in that it must work with the table. But it gets heavy use, especially on the corners where people step on it while traveling from room to room. If the whole room is getting re-done, the most likely casualty in this war is the carpet or rug.

If/when you dispose of your carpet or rug: There really isn’t a second life for carpeting or a rug. It’s time to consider renting a dumpster for your project, it just got big.

Window treatments, art, and wallpaper: Sorry, they’re gone. They served their purpose, but they were unique to that space and time and design. For the most part, they’re difficult to remove in a way that preserves them. And no one can use them again.

When you dispose of your window treatments and wallpaper: Dumpster. MAYBE your art can earn a second life at a furniture reseller, but they will have a say in that. Be willing to make the trip knowing that you will return with the same full trunk you had when you set out.

Remodeling (and Disposing of) a Bedroom

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Bedrooms are our most personal expression of who we are when we can fully be ourselves. Here, we place homages to our values and our aesthetics. We transition from posters of our favorites musicians to paintings of our favorite scenes, or expressions from the minds of our favorite classical artists.

Often we are working in the bedrooms of our children as they transition from one age to the next, moving through different phases of self expression.

Then one day we must grasp the possibility of this space without them, as they take off into the world.

When our children are young, redoing the room typically means paint and rearranging furniture. When they fly from the nest, the transformation needs to be more radical.

The bed: What will this space be next? If it will maintain its use as a bedroom, but now for guests and even the welcome (temporary) return of our progeny, we keep the bed and simply accent around it.

If your vision does not involve a bed: Donate it. In almost every situation, there is a family who can benefit from a hand-me-down bed. As long as it holds together, you have all the parts, and it is not too badly damaged, St. Vincent DePaul or a similar agency will make your life easier by taking it off your hands for a modest price. The mattress, however, is another issue altogether. Your municipality may have special requirements for the donation / disposal of mattresses, and it may be required to be thrown away.

The dresser: The advice here is pretty clear. No, it’s not easily converted into something else. Nothing says “my home office is really a bedroom” like keeping the dresser. So don’t.

To dispose of the dresser: Always start by exploring the donation route. Working furniture can live a long time, why not help it avoid the landfill?

Curtains, art, and wallpaper: This room was great for your kids. You’re not your kids. These were unique to their location and are hard to remove in a way that allows them to be used again.

When you dispose of curtains, art, and wallpaper: Try and get your kids to take them with them. Maybe they have some great memories attached. It’s clear, you’re either going to throw this stuff out now or you’re going to throw it out in 20 years after storing it that whole time. Dumpster.There just isn’t a second life for them.

What Size Dumpster Do I Need?

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One of the biggest challenges in doing a major remodel project around the house is finding the right size dumpster. This is because there are so many variables.

There are lots of sizes to choose from.

They are built on a scale that is difficult for the average person to visualize.

Most people rarely need to rent one, so we have no experience.

It is hard to imagine how big your project will look when it is dumped in a dumpster.

We are going to try to demystify the process a bit.

Garbage Bags

You’ve probably already looked at the website of a local dumpster dealer and you’ve seen a picture of an average scale human standing in front of an average scale dumpster.

This is meant to be helpful. Really it is. However, we seldom think of our garbage as being scaled with our body.

Instead, we are much more familiar with the size of a garbage bag. We handle those frequently. We have a sense of their size.  So in order to help you visualize it, we are going to explain it in terms of garbage bags.

Your dumpster choices will be marked in terms of “cubic yards” or “yd³”

On average, 1 cubic yard looks about like a medium size dresser, or about 6 trash bags.

Your smallest dumpster choice, the transition point where it makes more sense to rent a dumpster than to put it out in your own trash can, is 10 cubic yards. So this is about 60 trash bags.

  •             10 yd³ = 60 trash bags
  •             15 yd³ = 75
  •             20 yd³ = 120
  •             30 yd³ = 180
  •             40 yd³ = 240

Pickup trucks

OK so maybe garbage bags aren’t how you think. Maybe you are a do-it-yourself kind of person who understands what it means to throw a shovel in the back of a pickup truck, or what it means to load the pickup truck with mulch or dirt.

And besides, it does get pretty challenging to think about size in terms of 60 garbage bags.

Let’s measure in pickup trucks.

  • 10 yd³ = 3 pickup truck loads
  •             15 yd³ = 4-5
  •             20 yd³ = 6
  •             30 yd³ = 9
  •             40 yd³ = 12

This is an especially helpful measure when you are imagining each of those pick up truck loads being driven to your local dump. If it’s right around the corner three trips is no big deal.

However, if you’re like most folks who are doing a big fix-it-up project around the house, the local dump is NOT right around the corner.

And the further away it is, the more time and effort it adds to your project to haul everything there yourself.

Now you’re loading, driving, unloading, driving back … multiple times. And this is time added to the work of demolition or removal.

Many people might even choose a 10 yd³ dumpster to avoid that pain and hassle of even one or two trips to the dump.

Also, you should round up, and get the next biggest size if you are unsure. No one is judging you for not wanting to make any more trips than you have to. Or making no trips at all.

We hope this guide helped you with your project.

Keep Others From Using Your Rented Dumpster

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We know what happens. We might, if pressed, even admit that we’ve done it ourselves.

Sometimes things get thrown in the dumpster by someone other than the owner or renter.

It’s no big deal when a member of the working crew throws their Wendy’s bag in there, or someone passing by on the street does the same.

But having strangers illegally filling a dumpster that you rented can be an expensive a time-wasting event.

So how do you prevent it?

Here are some suggestions.

Location: where are you place your dumpster will influence how much outside debris gets placed in it. If it is possible for you to move the dumpster away from the property line and against the building, that is an ideal situation. Removing from sight from the street is even better.

You should work to put it as much on private property as possible. It’s unavoidable that a dumpster placed on or near a public right of way is simply going to collect a little bit of community trash. You can reduce that by placing it in the yard instead of in the street, for instance.

You can make the call if saving some unwanted refuse is worth the dead spot in your yard.

Signs: sometimes it helps just to post simple easy to read signs that explain to people it is illegal for them to put trash in your dumpster. It can be helpful if you know the local municipal fines for doing this.

Signs can be especially helpful if they point out that the site is monitored. Of course, it can help even if you are just claiming that, even when a spot is not monitored.

Fencing: if your dumpster is going to be in place over a long period of time, or perhaps dumped and refilled multiple times, it might be tempting for other work crews in the area to dump larger and larger loads in it over time.

Putting fencing around your dumpster does several things to prevent illegal dumping. First, a good fence makes it clear that dumping from strangers is unwanted.

Second, it just makes it physically harder to get large loads into your dumpster, because now they have to go over a fence.

Third, if you can allow some space between the dumpster and the fence it can make it almost impossible to place anything heavy in the dumpster. This is important because typically charges are added to your final fee based on the weight of the trash in the dumpster. And while we’re not talking hundreds of dollars, we know that this weight and these fees can add up.

Get proactive: Does a neighbor up the street also have a project going on and no dumpster? Knock on their door. Tell them what you’re planning on doing and ask them if they want to get involved and perhaps share the cost of renting a dumpster.

Identifying and heading off potential conflicts down the road can be beneficial for your bottom line and for neighborhood harmony.

A Quick Guide to What You Can’t Put in Your Dumpster

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We get versions of this questions of this version all the time:

“What CAN’T I put in my rental dumpster?”

Of course, there is a list of items included in the rental contract, but you want to know the answer before you make the decision to rent a dumpster. So here’s a quick guide to what you can’t put in your dumpster.

First of all please note, this is a list of what you can’t put in YOUR dumpster.

There is a much shorter list to what you can’t put in someone else’s dumpster: everything. You should never put anything in someone else’s rental dumpster. If you do this, you are subjecting yourself and them to possible citations and fines.

The list of prohibited items falls into a couple of different categories.

Home interior:

The following home interior items should not be placed in your dumpster.

  • Mattresses
  • Couches
  • Upholstered chairs
  • Beds
  • Paint / paint cans
  • Televisions
  • Household cleaners
  • Light bulbs
  • Refrigerators
  • Large appliances

Each of these items likely have specific rules in your community for their disposal. In some cases this is because the items can be reused, usually decent furniture fits into that category, and televisions you’ve replaced not because they weren’t working but because you’ve upgraded. Keeping them in use and in circulation saves landfill space and saves another family money.

In other cases the items can’t be disposed of because they are themselves toxic or they contain toxic ingredients. Placing them in the landfill those poses problems to your environment including the drinking water for your community. Your community likely has rules and procedures for disposing of hazardous ingredients.

Garage or lawn and garden:

These garage, lawn, and garden items should not be placed in your dumpster.

  • Pesticides
  • Lawn chemicals
  • Weed killer / herbicides
  • Engine oil or lubricants
  • Propane tanks (even if you’re CERTAIN they are empty)
  • Tires

In each of these cases throwing out the indicated item is a risk to the environment and the people who handle or work at your trash processing facility. In some cases, including engine oil and lubricants, proper recycling means that they can be useful again. It might take an extra step, but reusing and reducing waste goes a long way towards helping the community.

Large item removal

Many municipalities offer the service of removing large items for you. Often you have to call ahead to schedule a pickup of the item on a specific day. This might not be your normal trash pick-up day, because the schedule is handled separately and sometimes is handled by an entirely different company or contractor.

Most communities require you to get it out to the curb which doesn’t require any more or less work than it would’ve taken to get it into a large dumpster. Some communities will even offer the help of someone coming into or up to your house to help with the removal process.

How do I know if this is trash? – Garage Edition

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It’s spring cleaning time. Or perhaps you’re tasked with cleaning out a relative’s garage. Or maybe you have inherited some stuff you just don’t want.

But is it trash?

How do you know?

Here’s a handy guide to what is – and isn’t – trash in your garage.

Lawnmower:

That old gas guzzling, gray cloud spewing lawnmower. You thought maybe you got rid of it when you got the new one … was that six years ago? Seven?

Ask some key questions. Is it in almost-usable shape? If so, there are good reasons to donate it to a lawnmower repair place. A lot of lawnmowers are built with standard-size parts, and these can be used or upcycled to keep other lawnmowers in good repair. Donate

If it worked when you replaced it, someone might be able to get it working again, depending on the extent of the damage. Donate

Is it covered in rust, with visible damage from the elements and maybe rodents? (Rodents are attracted to the sweet taste of common engine oils.)  Trash

Hand tools:

Still sturdy and in workable shape? These are the types of tools that can get re-worked and put to good use for another generation. Donate

Covered in rust? Unmoveable? Showing physical signs of decay? Trash

Siding and building materials:

You forgot that you kept that bag of shingles after the roofing project, “just in case.” But there it is, under something that was under something in your garage. Or maybe it is a few yards of siding.

Do you still have that shingle / siding on your house? You might want to keep it, let’s see how we do on these questions: is it still the original color without staining? Keep

There really is no place to donate these. However, maybe you’re lucky and the siding is true aluminum siding? Recycle

Oh, it’s just discolored siding from an old project? Trash

Turf builder and lawn food:

Do you feel lucky, even though it is expired? Many lawn and garden chemicals change properties over time, but they tend to become a little bit weaker. Applying them to your lawn won’t do damage, as long as you follow the rules on the side of the bag. Keep

But your lawn is your greatest joy and you don’t want to take any chances? Many of these can go directly to the dump, but you don’t want to risk it.  Read the label, then, and dispose of as directed. Trash

Old sporting equipment:

Oh the memories in that old tennis racket. Remember that one game of croquet we played that summer when this set was new? Sadly, time and technology have moved on. If your racket is more than 7 years old, it’s not going to find a new home. That old basketball with a water stain, and that volleyball that you THINK MIGHT hold air? No one cares, and no one is about to start using it now that it has been found. Trash

Aww, my old baseball glove. So many good memories, mostly from being with friends before and after the game. Memories are hard to replace. Bring it inside, dust it off, oil it up, and wrap it in newspaper. Keep

Big Do-It-Yourself Projects

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Home prices are skyrocketing and the housing market is struggling to keep pace with demand. In this market, many homeowners are choosing to take on major renovation projects around the house.

 

These major projects probably require a contractor, though the handiest of fix-it people might try to take these on themselves.

 

Here are popular projects based on the value they add to your living space.

 

Basement renovation:  few renovation projects add square footage as efficiently as a basement remodel. There are lots of ideas for how to do it, but full agreement on why: usually the infrastructure is in place for an economical expansion. Better yet, basement renovations often yield high returns on the investment. Homeowners who later sell often realize more than 70% return on their investment in a basement.

 

Kitchen renovation: kitchen renovations are among the most complex, costly, and time-consuming projects a homeowner can take on. At around $100 per square foot, they can really set a homeowner back. Nationally, owners report that they only return between 50% and 60% on their investment in a sale.

 

A kitchen remodel almost always means working with electricity and water, so often the work involves coordinating multiple professionals and managing their schedules. Unfortunately, many homeowners must plan to leave their house for a period of time for a kitchen renovation.

 

Adding a room: Adding new space can be an attractive way to renovate your house. Adding a mudroom, breakfast nook, or even a full guest room over the garage, can be accomplished without adding expensive foundation elements. There are lots of ideas for where and what to add, and a wide range of costs. Picking the project that will be most useful for your family is important.

 

Renovating a bathroom: Bathroom renovations can be almost as powerful as kitchen renovations in shaping your quality of life. There is not another room where you are certain to visit at least twice a day, and no space knows you as intimately. Making the space larger, warmer, and adding storage are common adaptations. Expect a bathroom renovation to return nearly 70% on investment, according to Zillow.

 

 

Remember, despite information about the return on investment, there are even better reasons to take on these renovations. They simply make your space better.

 

More than one homeowner has taken on a major renovation to prepare for a sale, and decided to stay. They found that their new space was better than any house they might find on the market.

Six Steps to the Best Garage Sale Ever

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Getting ready for your garage sale is as much about finding the right state of mind as it is about finding things to sell.

 

In order to get in the garage sale mindset, one might first watch a few minutes of Marie Kondo or Clean House, and perhaps an episode or two of Hoarders.

 

You know who you don’t want to be!

 

Once you are serious about getting rid of what you no longer need, you are ready to follow these simple steps to prepare for your garage sale or perhaps plan a neighborhood yard sale.

 

Just follow these 6 simple steps to the best garage sale

 

  1. Thoroughly clean in unusual places. Your living room might not have a lot of excess junk in it, or the dining room either. You live in those spaces and regularly tidy up and get rid of useless items. This is a time to tackle the back of the garage, a basement closet, or those boxes you never unpacked from the move.
  2. Don’t throw anything out – yet. Some people suggest doing an early cull and throwing away the “junk” before setting it out. But for most homes, your collection of unwanted items is relatively small. Lots of garage sale visitors work from a list of addresses and drive by the site before deciding whether to stop. Having lots of stuff entices people to stop by and browse.
  3. Set a date and advertise as your budget allows. Local paper? Social media? Printed fliers on the library bulletin board and neighborhood telephone poles? It’s all about your budget and time. Usually ads are relatively cheap. Some local papers offer a coupon for one free ad a month to their subscribers – take advantage of it!
  4. Label your prices – but be prepared to lose a haggle. The fun of a garage sale is getting money – any amount of money – for something you were about to throw away. Too many people end up throwing out or donating items after having asked too high a price during the sale. Now you not only don’t have the money, but you have one more thing to haul away. Everyone loses in that scenario.
  5. Combined garage sale? Use colored labels and keep a sheet at checkout with the actual negotiated price, to make dividing up the money at the end relatively easy. And don’t quibble over a few dollars here or there. Money left over and unaccounted for? Split it? A small dispute over the remaining $5? Hand it over. You have already won by cleaning out your space.
  6. Resolve to never let those items re-enter your house. After the garage sale, look at what’s left. The broken phonograph, the bike parts, the clothing. Some of these items can NOW be labeled junk and thrown in a curbside rental garbage bag, or perhaps into your own trash. The rest can go to a charity where they will find a new home. You’ve already thrown them away once. No sense taking them back in the house and having to throw them away again later.

Create a Neighborhood Yard Sale

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There are many problems with garage and yard sales. There is gathering stuff together, deciding on prices, putting it out on display that morning, and lots of other logistics. This includes advertising.

 

You could advertise in the local paper, Craigslist, Facebook, with neighborhood fliers, and other social media. Few people have the resources to advertise in any broader way.

 

So the real problem is, you are unlikely to draw a big enough crowd to sell everything you hoped to sell.

 

That’s if you do it alone. You don’t have to do it alone. By doing a little extra prep work, you can divide the effort and multiply the crowd you get for your neighborhood yard sale.

 

Create a neighborhood yard sale:

 

Here’s a quick overview of how to create a neighborhood yard sale.

 

  1. Pick three dates that work for you, the further in advance the better. It would be ideal to be six months in advance, but even two months might be enough.
  2. Give these dates to your neighbors in a flier (put it in their door handle, not their mailbox!) Or just talk with three or four of them.
  3. Then pick the consensus date.
  4. Ask for one volunteer to do each of the following:
    1. Design fliers that provide the date, times, and location of the neighborhood sale
    2. Post those fliers in visible spaces around your community
    3. Create a .jpeg image with this information that multiple families can share on their own social media account
    4. Plan for removing unwanted items at the end of the day – some to a dumpster rented for that purpose and some to a local charity
  5. If feasible, add the following fun tweaks, assigning one per person:
    1. Get the street blocked off
    2. Invite a food truck
    3. Add a face painting booth
    4. Allow other neighbors from outside of your neighborhood to sell from your space
  6. Send a reminder two weeks before to all your neighbors – it’s time to clean and prep items for sale, including marking them with tags and setting prices.
  7. Clearly mark the price on items and, if more than one family is selling from a particular garage or yard, use different color tags to help divide the money at the end of the day
  8. Buy something from a neighbor!
  9. Help your neighbors clean up

 

Hosting a neighborhood yard sale can draw a larger crowd than an individual garage sale. More importantly, if done well, it can build a sense of community.

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