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Help me figure out the way back to normal
Bought a condo couple of months back, it looks like the baseboard was replaced but whoever replaced it did a bad job with too many holes and most of the holes not filled. Whereas the holes that were filled were not filled right and it shows up like some kid scratched a wrong color crayon on the spots
Im debating between sanding down the badly filled wholes, putting some filler and sanding again or just use Mohawk filler straight up
#home
Bought a condo couple of months back, it looks like the baseboard was replaced but whoever replaced it did a bad job with too many holes and most of the holes not filled. Whereas the holes that were filled were not filled right and it shows up like some kid scratched a wrong color crayon on the spots
Im debating between sanding down the badly filled wholes, putting some filler and sanding again or just use Mohawk filler straight up
#home
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hree months, six tomato plants, and one very full garage: I started canning to save produce, but now I can't stop calculating pounds per jar. How do you manage the overflow?
It started with tomatoes from my container garden on the back patio. Six plants, more tomatoes than I knew what to do with. Looked up water bath canning and just went for it.
That was three months ago.
Now I have a shelf in my garage that looks like a small grocery store. Salsa, pickled green beans, peach jam from a neighbor's tree she was about to let drop. My partner keeps walking in there and just staring at it.
The part nobody warned me about is how it changes how you look at produce. I walked past a farmstand last weekend and my brain immediately started calculating. How many pounds. How many jars. Do I have enough lids.
Coming from a background where I'm constantly thinking about square footage and storage optimization, this hobby hit different. You start seeing shelf space as something alive.
For people who have been doing this longer, I'm curious what you do with excess jars you can't finish before next season. Do you give them away, sell at a market, or do you just keep going and assume you'll eat through it? My salsa shelf is getting out of hand and I mean that in the best way possible.
Also if anyone has done this in a small space like a patio setup I'd love to hear what actually worked.
#home
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It started with tomatoes from my container garden on the back patio. Six plants, more tomatoes than I knew what to do with. Looked up water bath canning and just went for it.
That was three months ago.
Now I have a shelf in my garage that looks like a small grocery store. Salsa, pickled green beans, peach jam from a neighbor's tree she was about to let drop. My partner keeps walking in there and just staring at it.
The part nobody warned me about is how it changes how you look at produce. I walked past a farmstand last weekend and my brain immediately started calculating. How many pounds. How many jars. Do I have enough lids.
Coming from a background where I'm constantly thinking about square footage and storage optimization, this hobby hit different. You start seeing shelf space as something alive.
For people who have been doing this longer, I'm curious what you do with excess jars you can't finish before next season. Do you give them away, sell at a market, or do you just keep going and assume you'll eat through it? My salsa shelf is getting out of hand and I mean that in the best way possible.
Also if anyone has done this in a small space like a patio setup I'd love to hear what actually worked.
#home
source
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Automation Help
Can someone tell me if the following automation is possible with my current setup. I have Aqara Hub M200, Apple Homepod, Aqara Door Sensors and Mysa Mini-split controllers.
I have set it up so that when the door is opened the Mysa shuts off the AC. Is it possible to make it so that when the ac turned on while the door is open the signal either doesn’t go through or the Mysa will shut it off again.
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Can someone tell me if the following automation is possible with my current setup. I have Aqara Hub M200, Apple Homepod, Aqara Door Sensors and Mysa Mini-split controllers.
I have set it up so that when the door is opened the Mysa shuts off the AC. Is it possible to make it so that when the ac turned on while the door is open the signal either doesn’t go through or the Mysa will shut it off again.
#home
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Has anyone built a second floor on a ranch? How much was it?
We are going to replace the whole roof on our house soon and were thinking of potentially adding a second floor since were replacing the roof anyway. We will only need to hire out roofing, plumbing, electric and HVAC. But we will be doing the roof, siding, and gutters and finishing ourselves.
Has anyone does this before? Do you know estimates of how much it can cost? We live in Greater Boston area.
#home
We are going to replace the whole roof on our house soon and were thinking of potentially adding a second floor since were replacing the roof anyway. We will only need to hire out roofing, plumbing, electric and HVAC. But we will be doing the roof, siding, and gutters and finishing ourselves.
Has anyone does this before? Do you know estimates of how much it can cost? We live in Greater Boston area.
#home
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Best practices for sealing grout between 1” tiles?
We have a shower with the original 1980s tile in the master bath and just refreshed the grout in it. Now we need to seal it, but there are so many lines of grout it seems like it will take days to do if I try to keep it cleanly over the grout lines.
Is this just a “it is what it is” situation or are there good ways to speed it up?
#home
We have a shower with the original 1980s tile in the master bath and just refreshed the grout in it. Now we need to seal it, but there are so many lines of grout it seems like it will take days to do if I try to keep it cleanly over the grout lines.
Is this just a “it is what it is” situation or are there good ways to speed it up?
#home
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HayWire National hay index up to $191, week of July 27
National index: $191/ton, up 1.7% on the week. 15 markets reported.
By type: alfalfa $217, orchard grass $192, mixed grass $152, grass $114.
How it's built: only real USDA auction and direct-sale trades. No asking prices, no estimates. It tracks price change within each market and weights by volume, so it shows actual movement, not just whichever markets reported that week.
It's a national all-grades number, so premium cuttings run above it and low-grade below.
#home
National index: $191/ton, up 1.7% on the week. 15 markets reported.
By type: alfalfa $217, orchard grass $192, mixed grass $152, grass $114.
How it's built: only real USDA auction and direct-sale trades. No asking prices, no estimates. It tracks price change within each market and weights by volume, so it shows actual movement, not just whichever markets reported that week.
It's a national all-grades number, so premium cuttings run above it and low-grade below.
#home
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Looking for a way to auto-send hourly quantum computing notifications
Hey all,
I want to set up something that sends me a push notification every hour, from 5am to 11pm, with a new piece of quantum computing content each time — could be a term explained, a real-world innovation, or a summary of a strong recent research paper. Basically a rotating quantum-computing-fact machine, 18 notifications a day, no repeats.
#home
Hey all,
I want to set up something that sends me a push notification every hour, from 5am to 11pm, with a new piece of quantum computing content each time — could be a term explained, a real-world innovation, or a summary of a strong recent research paper. Basically a rotating quantum-computing-fact machine, 18 notifications a day, no repeats.
#home
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About 30 states have introduced plug-in solar bills. What you can actually plug in varies a lot by state.
Read the NYT piece on plug-in solar and then went down a rabbit hole reading the actual state bills. Simple concept: a couple of panels on your fence or balcony railing, a microinverter, a standard 120V outlet. No electrician, no permit in a growing number of states.
The variation between states is kind of absurd though. Utah allows up to 1200W of backfeed through a regular plug (HB 340, passed 2025). Colorado passed a law in May going up to 1,920W and specifically blocking HOAs from saying no. Maryland also passed something in May, but their exemption caps at 391W. That's basically one panel.
The safety cert to look for is UL 3700, launched this year for plug-in solar specifically. Certified kits kill power at the plug prongs within a fraction of a second on disconnect, and stop feeding the grid during an outage so lineworkers stay safe.
My hangup: even in states where this is legal, a 1200W system on a 15-amp branch circuit that's already running a fridge and a few other things is going to trip. Your utility might not have updated its interconnection rules either. The law being ahead of the practical wiring reality seems like the actual bottleneck right now.
#home
source
Read the NYT piece on plug-in solar and then went down a rabbit hole reading the actual state bills. Simple concept: a couple of panels on your fence or balcony railing, a microinverter, a standard 120V outlet. No electrician, no permit in a growing number of states.
The variation between states is kind of absurd though. Utah allows up to 1200W of backfeed through a regular plug (HB 340, passed 2025). Colorado passed a law in May going up to 1,920W and specifically blocking HOAs from saying no. Maryland also passed something in May, but their exemption caps at 391W. That's basically one panel.
The safety cert to look for is UL 3700, launched this year for plug-in solar specifically. Certified kits kill power at the plug prongs within a fraction of a second on disconnect, and stop feeding the grid during an outage so lineworkers stay safe.
My hangup: even in states where this is legal, a 1200W system on a 15-amp branch circuit that's already running a fridge and a few other things is going to trip. Your utility might not have updated its interconnection rules either. The law being ahead of the practical wiring reality seems like the actual bottleneck right now.
#home
source
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Considering giving up 2 acres to move to suburbs— advice needed
I feel so torn about a decision that my husband and I have been considering lately. I know a lot of people may not be able to relate, but any advice/thoughts/insights would be appreciated. We are considering leaving our house on 2 acres (about 50-60 minutes from the major city in our area) closer to the suburbs. We moved out here about 4.5 years ago right before we had our first child. I am now currently pregnant with baby #3 while taking care of our 2 toddlers. Initially the dream was to homestead. We thought of this property as a stepping stone to bigger land someday eventually (but realistically, we wouldn’t be able to buy a bigger property for probably another at least 10 years). We have chickens, a garden, and hopefully plan to get meat rabbits eventually, but that’s really the max we could probably handle for a long time in the homesteading realm. There are so many reasons why we are considering this, but I am so torn and kind of heartbroken. First of all, we have no help from family. So it’s just my husband (who works full time from home) and I (who stays home) trying to keep up with our yard and take care of our house and kids. It feels endless. We can never even remotely catch up with anything that needs to be done on our property and inside our home. I think this adds so much weight to me particularly, but also my husband. We made our garden too big when we first moved here, but even with making it half the size this year, we just cannot stay on top of it. The weeds get so out of control because we do not have the time to take care of it. And then when we do grow things, we have no time to preserve it (except occasionally fermenting) so it just feels like a failure. Chickens have been good so far, but some days it feels like we barely have time for that. Our regular yard maintenance has not been good. We can stay on top of mowing the lawn, but we have insanely large weeds where normal landscaping should be. It just looks so bad, but again, where are we supposed to find the time to stay on top of this stuff? Our yard looks junky because we don’t have the time to take care of it beyond keeping it mowed. Our house is cluttered and I have no time to declutter. We can’t take on meat rabbits until we have a handle on these other aspects, so if we stay here, it could be several years before we can really get to it. Another issue is, we are Orthodox Christians, and there are no churches in our area, they are all in the city/suburb areas. Going to another denomination of church is not an option. Our drive to church is 50 minutes. Because of this we cannot make other church services during the week at all, only the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and it’s important to us that we be able to make more services than we do, but we just can’t with our commute. Since our church is so far away, it means most of our friends are also far away, living in the suburbs. We have been unable to nurture these friendships for ourselves and our kids so far. It’s too much to be driving there often in order to be close with them, so a lot of the time, I feel secluded and isolated. My oldest toddler is extremely social, the most friendly kid I’ve ever met, and I know he will want to have close friendships as he gets older, but living out here would make this very hard. We are planning to homeschool so that adds another layer of seclusion that may become an issue as they grow up so far from our community. Living out here, we have great neighbors. They’re all retired couples, and extremely nice, but it’s not the same as having families with young kids like us. So out here we have no community. Even if we did have one out here, it’s very important for us to be close to our church community specifically, so it also just wouldn’t be the same. Another aspect is my grandma is declining slowly in health and I am very close to her. She lives in the suburbs, so if things started to get worse for her, I wouldn’t be able to see her regular with how far the commute is. That would be so hard for me.
Now, we love our home and our yard, and just today I was sobbing while outside with the kids just thinking about not living here anymore and how much I would miss the beauty around us, the space, all of the work we put into planting our fruit trees. If we did move, we would only move to somewhere in the suburbs where we could have a garden (much smaller this time), chickens, and meat rabbits (although I don’t know how common it is to find a home like this in the suburbs). It would be much less yard to manage so it wouldn’t get as junky/weedy if we downscale to what we can actually handle. On the other hand, we love that we have no rules where we currently live and I do not want someone telling me I can’t have chickens or meat rabbits. There is also the reality that if we move, we would have to get used to less privacy (although right now, we can still see all of our neighbors fairly closely, we just aren’t right on top of them like you are in the suburbs/city). I also worry about safety and if things like riots would happen in the political climate we face. Although I do not want to base my decision on fear of something that might not happen. I also worry about if the economy got much worse and we had to produce more of our food (although I truly do not know how that would be possible with what we have on our plate), and we wouldn’t have the space to do so if we move. But like I said, even if we had to produce more food, I don’t know much we realistically could ever produce for ourselves given our time restraints. I really don’t understand how families with kids are able to homestead and do so much (or at least it seems to be).
I just worry that we will regret leaving after a year or something and wish we never left our property. But the grass is always greener, so I know that’s a possibility that I will forget how little we could manage and keep up with when we did live more rurally. Has anyone gone through this? What would you do? Any insights? Thanks for any help in this matter.
#home
source
I feel so torn about a decision that my husband and I have been considering lately. I know a lot of people may not be able to relate, but any advice/thoughts/insights would be appreciated. We are considering leaving our house on 2 acres (about 50-60 minutes from the major city in our area) closer to the suburbs. We moved out here about 4.5 years ago right before we had our first child. I am now currently pregnant with baby #3 while taking care of our 2 toddlers. Initially the dream was to homestead. We thought of this property as a stepping stone to bigger land someday eventually (but realistically, we wouldn’t be able to buy a bigger property for probably another at least 10 years). We have chickens, a garden, and hopefully plan to get meat rabbits eventually, but that’s really the max we could probably handle for a long time in the homesteading realm. There are so many reasons why we are considering this, but I am so torn and kind of heartbroken. First of all, we have no help from family. So it’s just my husband (who works full time from home) and I (who stays home) trying to keep up with our yard and take care of our house and kids. It feels endless. We can never even remotely catch up with anything that needs to be done on our property and inside our home. I think this adds so much weight to me particularly, but also my husband. We made our garden too big when we first moved here, but even with making it half the size this year, we just cannot stay on top of it. The weeds get so out of control because we do not have the time to take care of it. And then when we do grow things, we have no time to preserve it (except occasionally fermenting) so it just feels like a failure. Chickens have been good so far, but some days it feels like we barely have time for that. Our regular yard maintenance has not been good. We can stay on top of mowing the lawn, but we have insanely large weeds where normal landscaping should be. It just looks so bad, but again, where are we supposed to find the time to stay on top of this stuff? Our yard looks junky because we don’t have the time to take care of it beyond keeping it mowed. Our house is cluttered and I have no time to declutter. We can’t take on meat rabbits until we have a handle on these other aspects, so if we stay here, it could be several years before we can really get to it. Another issue is, we are Orthodox Christians, and there are no churches in our area, they are all in the city/suburb areas. Going to another denomination of church is not an option. Our drive to church is 50 minutes. Because of this we cannot make other church services during the week at all, only the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and it’s important to us that we be able to make more services than we do, but we just can’t with our commute. Since our church is so far away, it means most of our friends are also far away, living in the suburbs. We have been unable to nurture these friendships for ourselves and our kids so far. It’s too much to be driving there often in order to be close with them, so a lot of the time, I feel secluded and isolated. My oldest toddler is extremely social, the most friendly kid I’ve ever met, and I know he will want to have close friendships as he gets older, but living out here would make this very hard. We are planning to homeschool so that adds another layer of seclusion that may become an issue as they grow up so far from our community. Living out here, we have great neighbors. They’re all retired couples, and extremely nice, but it’s not the same as having families with young kids like us. So out here we have no community. Even if we did have one out here, it’s very important for us to be close to our church community specifically, so it also just wouldn’t be the same. Another aspect is my grandma is declining slowly in health and I am very close to her. She lives in the suburbs, so if things started to get worse for her, I wouldn’t be able to see her regular with how far the commute is. That would be so hard for me.
Now, we love our home and our yard, and just today I was sobbing while outside with the kids just thinking about not living here anymore and how much I would miss the beauty around us, the space, all of the work we put into planting our fruit trees. If we did move, we would only move to somewhere in the suburbs where we could have a garden (much smaller this time), chickens, and meat rabbits (although I don’t know how common it is to find a home like this in the suburbs). It would be much less yard to manage so it wouldn’t get as junky/weedy if we downscale to what we can actually handle. On the other hand, we love that we have no rules where we currently live and I do not want someone telling me I can’t have chickens or meat rabbits. There is also the reality that if we move, we would have to get used to less privacy (although right now, we can still see all of our neighbors fairly closely, we just aren’t right on top of them like you are in the suburbs/city). I also worry about safety and if things like riots would happen in the political climate we face. Although I do not want to base my decision on fear of something that might not happen. I also worry about if the economy got much worse and we had to produce more of our food (although I truly do not know how that would be possible with what we have on our plate), and we wouldn’t have the space to do so if we move. But like I said, even if we had to produce more food, I don’t know much we realistically could ever produce for ourselves given our time restraints. I really don’t understand how families with kids are able to homestead and do so much (or at least it seems to be).
I just worry that we will regret leaving after a year or something and wish we never left our property. But the grass is always greener, so I know that’s a possibility that I will forget how little we could manage and keep up with when we did live more rurally. Has anyone gone through this? What would you do? Any insights? Thanks for any help in this matter.
#home
source