Control Ants Safely

There are ants in the house. Ants in the kitchen. Ants in the living room. Ants in the bathroom. Ants come in through the smallest cracks in doors, windows and even the foundation of a home. Poisons and pesticides will kill the ants, but they are not healthy around children, pets or even kitchens. There are safe ways to kill ants safely for households that have children or pets.

Here are what is needed for 2 methods of getting rid of ants safely. Method 1 items are, a small spray bottle, some vinegar, water, black pepper and paper towels.

Method 2 items are, a paper plate, some syrup, powdered boric acid, some sidewalk chalk.

Mix equal parts of water and vinegar and pour into a small spray bottle. Fill 2 bottles and keep them in a couple of handy places. Spray ants anytime they are seen, inside and out.

Spray any ants as soon as they are seen in the home with the vinegar and water mixture. The vinegar kills the ants quickly and cleanly. No pesticides needed. To clean them up, just wipe them up with a paper towel and toss them away.

Locate a trail of ants inside or outside. Spray the ants with the vinegar mixture. Dust the trail with black pepper to prevent the ants from taking the same path into the house.

Follow the ants as they rush back to their nest and sprinkle more black pepper in and around the nest. This will repel the ants from their own home, and will cut down on how many are around the house.

The ants will run from the nest, spray the ants with the vinegar mixture as they leave the nest.
Pour hot water down the ant hole to boil and drown any remaining ants.

Another child and pet friendly way of controlling ants in and around the home is using boric acid and side walk chalk. Boric acid is toxic to ants and a few grains of dust can kill the hole colony safely.

Place a dot of maple syrup in the center of a paper plate. Sprinkle a line of boric acid around the syrup. The ants walk through the powder and take it back to their home, killing the whole nest.

Draw a line around the foundation of the home with sidewalk chalk once the ants are all out. Be sure to draw a wide line, with no breaks. This line will keep ants from entering the home.

Kat Oakley
Grandma
F5MC Support
Article Writer
Blogger

I have been an unemployed Grandma for 2 years. I have devoted my time to caring for 2 of my grandchildren full time and babysitter duties for the other 5 as needed. I am freelance article writing in my spare time and just love it! I was a stay at home mom for most of my children’s lives. It would have been great to have this venue to earn a living at while my children were growing up!

http://kat-grandparenting.blogspot.com/
http://grandretirement.blogspot.com/

3 Simple Ways to Paint Your Walls

Besides buying wood dressers for your bedroom or an elegant wood filing cabinet for your home office, you can also quickly and easily add style to any room in your home by using any of several painting techniques on your walls. By using these techniques, you can easily make a DIY paint job look professional.

Before you embark on any type of painting on your walls, you need to be sure you are prepared. The walls need to be prepped by filling in any cracks or holes and taping off the trim and windows with blue painter’s tape, and you need to gather all your supplies together. You will also need to pick up the special tools you will need for these techniques.

Rag Painting Technique
With this technique, no paint brushes or rollers are used. Instead, you use a simple rag (such as an old t-shirt or any type of cotton rag) to apply the paint. The result is a marbled effect on your walls.

To apply this rag painting technique:

Dip your rag into the container of paint, shaking off the excess.

Dab the rag onto the wall, taking care to apply the paint in whatever pattern you’ve chosen. But be sure not to spread out the pattern too much.

If you want to get really creative, try applying a darker base color first and then rag on a lighter color on top of it.

Sponge Painting Technique

It’s easy to give a wall both depth and interest using this particular painting technique. Before you begin, you will need to apply a base color to the wall.

To paint with sponges:

First dip a regular sponge or sea sponge into the paint or glaze you’ve selected.

Dab the sponge in a random pattern, working your way from the outside of the wall in.

You can either choose to only do one wall in the room or complete all the walls in the room using this sponging technique.

Color Washing Technique

This painting technique adds a subtle finish to your walls that gives the appearance of floating color. This is a great technique to use if you have a wall with several flaws you want to cover up. This technique is a little more time consuming, however. Layers must be built up in order to get the full effect of the color wash.

To apply color washes:

You first need to paint the wall with your base color and then wait for it to completely dry.

Using a slightly different color or a complementary color, then come back and paint another layer once it’s dry.

This layer should be painted using only a paint brush. Apply the paint in all different directions, going over your strokes, so that the base color shows through in random areas.

More than one layer can be done in this way, if you want another color to show on the walls as well.

These painting techniques work wonderfully in any room, from the kitchen to the bedroom. Not only do they instantly add style, but they are a great way to perk up any room.

Hanging Collectibles in a Shadowbox Grouping

Although most people own a number of collectibles, many times they are stored in a drawer or cabinet in order to protect them and keep them clean and dust-free. A better approach, which not only allows you to enjoy your collectibles but also use them as decorative room accessories, is to display them using a shadowbox grouping. By using shadowboxes, your collectibles will still be protected, but you will be able to display them on the wall just as you would any other type of wall art.

Choosing an Appropriate Shadowbox for Your Collectibles
There are as many different types of shadowbox frames as there are collectibles to display in them. Although all shadowboxes have a deeper frame which is designed to hold collectibles, memorabilia and other types of objects, you want to make sure that the frame you choose is deep enough to properly contain your specific objects. Also, depending on the type of collectible you wish to display, you might want to use a shadowbox which has been specifically designed to display certain types of objects. For example, if you have a collection of thimbles, shot glasses or collector spoons that you wish to display, you will be able to find shadowboxes that have been designed with features that will allow you to display and frame these items effectively. Or, if you have military collectible items which might include a folded flag, there are specially shaped shadowboxes that can display not only the flag itself, but also provide display space for other types of military collectibles as well. If you have items that need to be secured, such as pins or medallions, selecting a shadowbox that has a soft backing such as fabric or even Velcro can help you display your collectibles without them slipping inside the frame.

Materials Used for Shadowboxes
Another factor to consider when selecting a shadowbox is the materials used in the construction of the box frame. If you have heavier items to display, make sure the shadowbox is made from sturdy materials such as wood or metal, so that it doesn’t break after you hang it. You also want to pay attention to the type of front that is on the shadowbox. Although most of these display cases have a glass or acrylic door, sometimes these doors swing open, and other times the door slides. Shadowboxes with glass or plastic doors of some type are usually preferable to boxes without a cover, since the glass helps to protect the collectibles and keep them dust-free.

Where to Hang a Shadowbox
If you have several shadowboxes, you can create a nice decorator effect on the wall by grouping them together. This can be effective whether all the frames contain the same type of collectible, or if a variety of types are displayed. By grouping them together, the entire collection will have more design impact, and will be more interesting to look at than a single shadowbox hung alone on a wall. Additionally, wall groups always have more design impact than a single small piece of wall art simply because the combined dimensions of all the frames are visually perceived to be equal to one much large art display.

Jessica Ackerman of WallDecorandHomeAccents.com, is an interior designer who illustrates how simple it can be to use metal wall decorations and unique candle wall sconce.

Around the Fridge – Cabinet Building

To give our kitchens a more attractive and pleasing, we can add more storage areas to it. Cabinets are the most notices part of every kitchen. Actually, it is the one that gives life into the entire kitchen. A cabinet around the fridge will be a perfect one to have. it will create a more classy yet elegant look into our kitchens. We can create this with just a few simple procedures:

First, we need to provide all the materials that we will need. These are:

· Flexible measuring tape
· Molding
· Wood screws
· Drill
· Stain
· Finished plywood
· 1/4 inch wood for the backing
· Cabinet door hinges

After gathering and preparing all the materials, we now go to the building of our around the fridge cabinet. At first, it will seem a bit complicated for we know that around the fridge have lots of different measurements. This is the main task on this project: to measure properly. We need to make sure that everything will fit into their proper places or else we have to do it from the start again.

First we will measure the size of the fridge. Depends on how wide our fridge is. Typical refrigerators have a 30-inche wide body. The double door ones are 36 inches wide. We need to make sure that we will not damage our fridge once we already have our cabinets around it. We need to pay attention on the hinges and the doors of the cabinets goes with the doors of the fridge. Once we are opening and closing them, none of each should touch each other.

We also need to decide the depth of the cabinet should be. If we want it to the same as with the fridge or if it will exceed a little, we need to get the exact measurements that we want. We also need to decide how much clearance we want on each side. The recommended clearance is 5/4 to 1 inch clearance.

Choosing the wood will depend on what we have for the rest of the kitchen cabinets. It should match with the others in the kitchen. If we use used simple plywood with the existing cabinets, then that is the exact same wood we should use for our fridge cabinets.

After all the deciding, we now go to the building of the cabinets. The only difficult part of this is the measurements before the cutting. We need to make sure that we measured everything correctly before the final cutting. Then we go to the fun part which is putting all the parts together.

If they are assembled together, we can now finish our around the fridge cabinets by finishing them with either paint or stain, also depending on what colors we have with our existing cabinets.

After that we can now slide the cabinets around our fridge and enjoy our new kitchen look.

Related Articles
Fridge Cabinets
Kitchen Makeover

Cedar Garden Furniture For Style and Durability

Commonly found in North America, all-natural Cedar hardwood is frequently employed in the manufacture of outdoor garden furniture. Due to its natural beauty as well as suitability as an out of doors material, clear grade western red cedar is a common variety used in the creation of outdoor furniture all through the USA. Being in a position to endure the onslaught of the sun’s rays and the rain is a necessity of any furniture that spends most of its life outdoors, making cedar an ideal material. Western red cedar contains natural oil preserves which help the wood withstand rot and decay.

One of the first pieces ever produced from this material was the Adirondack Chair, which is still widely desired by many garden owners across the United States. Incidentally, the potential of cedar to endure what ever Mother Nature threw its way influenced the federal government to start making use of the wood in their own park benches. Regrettably, the Great Depression of the 1930s offered the federal government lots of time to evaluate these types of benches, as countless individuals were being put to work producing them by way of the WPA. The WPA essentially was a plan developed by President Roosevelt to aid individuals that had been left out of work by the Great Depression. The work program which had been created in order to help relieve the joblessness in the country resulted in countless cedar trees being felled and made into furniture, this included park bench designs widely used by the government.

Countless cedar chests were also manufactured as they made it easier to help stop mold and mildew from wrecking the chest and its contents. Mariners regularly reported that the cedar chest was most appreciated on lengthy journeys. Additionally throughout this era, funeral service directors started making use of cedar as well as pine to construct coffins. Being able to stop diseases from spreading was one identified advantage by numerous physicians. Basically, cedar’s flexibility as a timber has found a lot of uses throughout the ages.

Today one of the primary uses of the wood is in cedar garden furniture, due to the fact that the beautiful wood is in such demand by many who wish to decorate their patio or garden area. The durability of the timber is also what makes it a well-liked option.

Cedar with its natural attractiveness can be employed in traditional log form, planed smooth or with a rough sawed finish. It’s also possible to give the furniture a clear finish to bring out the woods natural beauty, with different shades and colors available to suit your taste, the finishes you can achieve are manifold. You may also give cedar the chance to weather and blend with the natural surroundings. Weathering will allow the wood to naturally grey and look natural in any garden environment. As previously mentioned cedar has a natural level of resistance to decaying, however a sealant can preserve it for a lengthier period of time.

White or red cedar wood benches are not only very sturdy but go well with other styles of garden furniture. The contours and curves of a cedar bench allows it to be nestled within a small garden area or used as a central piece on a patio. Whatever type of garden furniture you’re after you can be sure that cedar will give you many years of satisfaction.

If you would like to find out more about different kinds of garden furniture on the market, visit us at wood garden benches. If you have a porch then take a peek at the wood porch swings website for great ideas on porch furniture.

Closet Organizer – The Basics

Where Does Closet Organizer Fit?

Closet organizer is a furniture that helps in a numerous ways to keep in control the limited space that you have in your apartment. You won’t be requiring a large room to place your closet organizer. Nowadays the closets are built in such a way that, they can be used in the most limited space situation also. Moreover, most of the closets come in parts, which can be assembled according to the shape and size that you desire and see fit. This feature also adds to the portability of the closet, and thus makes it easily packable and movable. The arrangement of the shelves can be totally altered the way you like it. The closets come with the rods which can be either added or removed and hence they give you the power to take control.

How Good Can You Divide a Closet?

Have a separate section for your suits or full length clothes, where in you can hang the clothes without their bottom touching any other clothes. You can do this by removing one or two horizontal racks to make a vertical space free. After this is done, you can use hangers to hang your full length clothes in it. Many closets provide the tower, where in space is given to hang the long clothes. This space can be utilized by you for suit length clothes. The other small drawers given can be used to keep your small clothes such as underwear and socks. On the other hand, in the medium sized racks and shelves you can keep the graphic t shirts for men and pants folded. Many closets also provide a neat and sleek hooks for hanging your ties. Look for the closet that might have this if you are too much of a gentleman.

What Are The Sizes In Which Closet Organizer Is Available?

Closet organizer comes in various sizes. It all depends on you, what kind of a family you have, and how organized you want to be. If you have enough room space, good advice would be to go for a bigger, stationary, one piece closet. If you are a frequent mover type, then it is advised that you get a detachable and removable closet organizer which can fit in small places and be easily movable. Also consider your budget, if you have good amount of money, you can probably buy a closet made of wood which is having a premium look, and also adds nice look to your interiors. But if you are tight on budget, you can suffice with the metallic and plastic ones. Also look for good brands of closet organizer.

There are many brands which provide very good quality of closet organizer, and they even give you guidance on how to use it in an efficient way.

Hello, I am a software engineer at Bangalore, and I’m currently reading about the closet organizers, and I’d be sharing with you my findings. Please feel free to contact me.

How to Paint a Room

Painting a room is one of the best and least expensive ways to freshen it up, if you do it yourself. Here are some tips on how to do it.

1. Decide if you need to prime first. Primer is an undercoat that prepares your walls to receive the new paint. You will need to use primer if this is the first time the walls have ever been painted, or if the existing paint is a different medium than the one you intend to use (ie. if you are putting acrylic paint over top of oil based paint). It is also advisable to prime the walls if the current colour is much darker than the one you intend to replace it with. This will prevent the old colour from showing through when you repaint. Talk to the salesperson at your local paint store to figure out what needs to be done in terms of priming your walls.

2. Mask the room, and protect the furniture. You will want to mask the edges of all the areas you intend to paint. This usually includes along the ceiling and the baseboards, and the window edges. This will give you crisp edges when you paint, and prevent the paint from going where you don’t want it. Green painters’ tape is the best tape for the job. You will be able to find it at your local paint store. You should also put down some drop cloths to protect the furniture and floors. Old shower curtains or plastic table cloths from the dollar store work well.

3. Paint the trim first. The best brushes are those spongy ones rather than traditional paintbrushes, which tend to leave streaks. Paint along the top and bottom edges of the walls, around the windows, and in the corners. Basically, you are trying to cover all the areas that you won’t be able to reach with a roller. Make sure you paint a couple inches down from the ceiling, since you don’t want to hit the ceiling with the roller later on.

4. Paint the walls with a roller. It might be handy to get a handle extender so that you don’t need to get up on a ladder. One mistake that amateur painters often make is to roll only in an up-and-down direction. You will get more even coverage if you roll over an area in several directions, such as up and down, side to side, or diagonally. Make sure the paint is spread thinly with no thick drops remaining, and add more paint to the roller when your rolling is not fully covering the wall even after going over the same area in several directions.

5. In most cases, two coats of paint will suffice. You might want to add a third coat if the colour underneath was darker, or if the paint is uneven for any reason.

Marie Pontecorvo lives in Toronto with her husband, Marcus, and their two children. Their current project is the site Plastic Baby Gate, where they have an article on getting the best retractable baby gate.

Fleas – An Irritating Household Problem

Anyone who has ever had flea problems within their home can testify how frustrating and difficult it can become to exterminate them. The typical scenario would be spotting a flea, grabbing it firmly between two fingers and squeezing, throwing the flea into the trash, then watching it hop back out unharmed and scurry off to find another victim. Not only do the fleas readily bite and feed on any mammal within the household, but they also seem capable to withstand a variety of pesticides and flea baths designed solely to kill them. A flea sting not only causes local pain and skin irritation, but within many allergy sufferers serious rashes or other complications can quickly develop. Their colony can spread very quickly and if left unchecked a large infestation can occur in a very short period of time.

Fleas range in size from 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch but their size is often deceptive. They have a streamlined body that allows them to pass through hair and feathers with very little resistance, and their compact frame allows them to cover long distances without expelling large amounts of energy. This species is among the greatest jumpers in the modern world and they are able to propel themselves some 200 times further than their own body length; this would be the equivalent of a human toddler leaping across an entire football field. Their tube-like mouth is optimized for extracting blood and this species can feed several times per day on a single or multiple sources.

Because of their size they are able to hide nearly anywhere but prefer nesting close to their host. A mature flea normally lays fifteen to twenty eggs, shortly after feeding, either directly on or near the actual host and once the eggs hatch the flea reaches adulthood within a month. Fleas are also associated with the spread of sickness and disease in both humans and animals, so it is vital that this species be exterminated as early in their reproductive cycle as possible.

If fleas are discovered within your household, it will often require professional intervention if the situation is not handled properly. The likely host that allowed this species access to your home would be your pet, so flea baths with proper shampoos will exponentially slow the breeding cycle. On top of caring for your pet, also make sure to wash their sleeping quarters in hot water to rid this species from that area. Frequent brushing of your pet will help to remove any flea eggs from their hair and skin, and the resulting hair can be vacuumed up and disposed of outdoors immediately. The same techniques also work for humans…wash all sheets in hot water and thoroughly vacuum around your sleeping area. If this does not rid your home of these pests, then insecticides in the form of an aerial spray, also known as a bug bomb, will be necessary. This technique will require ample preparation, leaving your home for an extended period of time, and several hours of clean up afterwards. If any further questions arise, a pest control specialist will happily help you determine the proper course to rid your home of fleas.

Gary Dorris is a Napa pest control professional. His company, Hydrex also provides Vallejo Pest Control.

An Electric Outdoor Heater Adds Versatility and Efficiency to Your Patio Area

If you are one who wants to own only the most versatile and effective home and garden products, then an electric outdoor heater is for you. These type of patio heaters are preferred by a lot of people, one of the reasons being that they do not emit any smoke at all, and therefore can be used inside or outside. This type of patio heater works by heating objects around it and not the air, so no heat energy is lost in the process. Now, if you are one of the many people who prefer to buy this type of heater, then read on. Here are some of the tips that you need to consider before buying this particular heater.

Know The Length OF The Area and The Mounting Height of The Heater:

This is extremely important as this will let you know about the energy that this type of patio heater will likely need to produce heat. This means that the larger the area and the higher the mounting height, the more energy the electric outdoor heaters will need to provide enough warmth to the area. On the other hand, this will also allow you to determine the energy consumption of a particular heater. Having said this, a heater that is mounted very high in a very wide area requires more energy therefore you will consume more energy than normal.

Look For The Clearance Requirements:

Each type of electric outdoor heaters has a clearance requirement which is just the dimension of the maximum length of the area that the heater can heat. This also includes the heat coverage and other factors that can heat up the entire environment. The clearance differs from one product to the other thus it is extremely important to choose the electric outdoor heaters that offers maximum clearance requirement for your patio. This is also another factor that determines the price of the heater

Determine The Cost of The Heater:

As mentioned earlier, a cost of the heater is determined by the energy consumption and the clearance requirement. For this reason, you need to make sure that your electric outdoor heaters are sold at reasonable prices in order for you to get the best value out of your money.

Greg has been writing articles for over 4 years. Please visit his latest website about outdoor heaters at Patio Heating, with information on finding the best Electric Outdoor Heater products, and other patio-related ideas and discussions that any home improvement enthusiast would be interested in.

Modern lighting fixtures have turned plain, ordinary lamps into a spectacle of contemporary art that serves to brighten our precious domiciles. The much clamored art pieces prevalent in the 1940′s and 1950′s can only be seen in old movies and on pictures in magazines. Those were the times when even a humble desk lamp was designed not only to add light but to serve as a decorative art piece as well. The popularity of such art deco lamps experienced a downfall in the 1970′s up until the late 80′s, when people prioritized functionality over any other feature. Also the fact that life was hard during those days kept prices and costs at a minimum.

Modern lighting fixtures however have evolved quite a lot during the past decade. Artists from all walks of life expressed their unique discipline and culture into illumination sources that were strangely symbolic of antique lamps and wall sconces from the past. Is it a habit of old trends to come back and present itself with an added modern touch? The ordinary desk, wall or floor lamp is not spared from the evolution, as contemporary illumination sources of today feature sizes and shapes that resemble antique lamps from the past, but are updated with either brushed metal or probably a touch of fresh color. These amazing types of today, as mentioned above, serve not only as a lighting fixture but as an expression of the owner’s culture and taste.

As unique as wall sconce lighting is, a finely decorated home will not do without an equally impressive desk lamp. Observe how plush hotels use modern antique looking desk lamps to accentuate the feeling of prestige and how it instantly adds texture to a rather plain and simple setup in any room or hallway. Modern illumination sources of all kinds for your home need not be expensive and overly extravagant to merit comments. As long as the decoration follows the appropriate theme, a simple desk lighting, a wall sconce or a standing floor lamp will instantly add coziness and warmth to a rather plain surface. Contemporary illumination is an expression of today’s culture and how it evolved from a harmonious and glorious past.

It is no surprise that you will find these modern lights in many homes today, not only in the living room but also in the bedroom, on the hallway, in the kitchen and even on the porch outdoors. People like going back to more romantic, vintage and elegant times while at the same time retaining the functionality of nowadays that the contemporary illumination sources can offer.

Tiffany wall sconces are a touch of that glorious past with their beautiful base and form. Visit my website that discusses the various types of wall sconces lighting to learn more.