You've loved living in your apartment; it's convenient to your job, and it's easy to maintain. However, your bachelor days are gone, you have a family, and you're finally financially ready for something bigger – meaning a house. You've notified your landlord that you'll be moving out on such and such date, and in the meantime you're actively looking for your dream home.



After an extensive search, you've finally found the perfect house for you and your family regardless of home improvement needs. You've now moved out of that apartment (funny how it seems so cramped now in comparison to your new home!) and are in the process of getting settled.

You've never had to do much work on a home before, or any place that you lived. At your old place, if you noticed a sink was leaking, or there was a crack in the wall, it was up to your landlord to fix it. Now, you want to experience what you think is the thrilling challenge of home improvement.

As a result, you and your wife agreed to buy a real fixer-upper. What could be better than accomplishing your own home improvement projects? You envision yourself pointing to some pristine tiling work and proudly declaring, "I did that!"

Well, before you get started on any of the many home improvement projects you want to accomplish, you should first consult people who actually know what they're doing. For example, for that painting project you have in the living room, why not talk to your nephew? After all, he recently completed a College Works Painting internship, and is well on his way to establishing a successful painting career!

Once you've consulted the professionals, you can then start thinking about tackling a few projects yourself. However, it's important that you stick to smaller projects – ones that don't have a high probability of getting injured.

A perfect way to start is actually not inside the home, but outside of it. The yard looks awful, and the gazebo needs to be painted. Start by getting yourself a really good lawnmower and mowing that lawn! You might even want to add some extra color to the lawn too, but adding various flowers and decorative plants.

Then, there's the gazebo. The white paint is chipping off in clumps, and mold is growing on the side. No need to panic, this is a great job for you, oh Home Improvement Man! Lay a tarp down around the gazebo area. Get some clean rags, and dip them in basic household cleaning solution. Vigorously rub away any signs of mold. That step was pretty easy, right?

Next, take a paint chipper (if you have to idea what that is, just go to your local hardware store and ask for one) and scrape off as much of the flaking paint that you can. By this time, the area around the gazebo probably looks very, very messy. Thank goodness for that tarp! Gently gather the corners of the tarp, drag it over to a trash can, and dump in the bits and pieces of trash. Just think, after all that hard work, you can actually start painting. Who said house projects were time consuming and not much fun?