Happy List: #437
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. It’s pretty darn great to see you here. Did you plant a summer garden? This year, we haven’t done much. We have some tomatoes and herbs going, and that will be enough for us to stay on top of. It was a light week on the blog due to the Memorial Day holiday. I did share a hyper-specific blog post about where to buy lime to mix historic lime mortar. Hyper-specific blog posts that hardly anyone cares about are my specialty. One of my favorites is how to fix a stretched-out toe post on plastic sandals. I don’t take for granted that you’re…
Where to Buy Natural Hydraulic Lime (NHL) in the U.S. to Mix Lime Mortar
The most common question I receive from fellow owners of old homes is where to buy lime to mix lime mortar to repoint a historic stone foundation. They know it’s bad to use Portland cement on a stone foundation, and the appropriate lime is hard to find! So, I compiled a directory of where to buy natural hydraulic lime (NHL) in the United States. It’s a short directory because we get what we get, but it is separated by U.S. region. Don’t completely discount a supplier or brand of NHL if they aren’t in your region; they may have distributors closer to you. Â I’ve also included which NHL suppliers offer…
Happy List: #436
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I’m absolutely thrilled to see you here today. It’s an extra exciting day for us because we are picking up our oldest child from college. I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by, and I hope that the entire dorm room fits in one car. Ha! This week on the blog, I shared fun ideas for crafts and decor you can make with stones and pebbles. I was so inspired by this post that I made my own pebble art. If you missed that, you can check it out here. I don’t take for granted that you’re spending part of your…
How to Make Beautiful Pebble Flower Art (Easy DIY Pebble Art Flower Tutorial)
Empty those pebbles from your pockets! Today, I’m going to show you how to DIY Pebble Flower Art. This is so easy to make, and no two will look the same. That’s the beauty of this craft. Someone has to state the obvious, so it might as well be me… Pebbles can be used to make various shapes. In the case of this art, the shape is a flower, but you can make animals, people, words, etc. The only limit is your patience and imagination. You’re seeing the limit of both of mine in this craft! Â That’s okay, though, because I’m smitten with how it turned out. What you need…
12 Stone Gift and Craft Ideas
Art takes on many forms, and it will not surprise you, given our recent stone masonry work, that we find stones and rocks make for fantastic gift and craft ideas. Paintings, jewelry, and home decor – these are just the tip of the boulder when it comes to all of the artful stone gift and craft ideas that now exist. People are so creative, and I’m here for it. If you’re looking for a gift or for your next craft, check out these 12 stone and gift craft ideas. Custom Painted Rock | Etsy I can think of a few pictures I’d love to see translated into paint on stone.…
Happy List: #435
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I’m thrilled to see you here. This week on the blog, I shared the finished repair we made to one of our gable returns. We even hired a painter to finish painting all of our roofline trim that we couldn’t reach. That job needed to be done for two years, and I used AI to help me find contractor leads. That was the overwhelming part of the job for me, and that research assistance got that project back on track. As always, thank you for spending a moment of your day here. The Happy List is meant to be a bright spot in…
How I Used AI to Successfully Hire a Contractor
I recently used AI to hire a contractor, or rather, help me hire a contractor, and that’s the kind of assistance I could used to. Finding a good contractor – any contractor, really – is so hard. One unfortunate universal human experience seems to be that homeowners have a hard time finding and hiring good contractors. We all have stories. Ugh. So. Many. Stories. I needed to hire a painter to paint the trim along our roofline. It was a small job square footage-wise and it was all 30-feet in the air. Plus, there might be some rot to deal with. “Super fun,” said no one. I had been ghosted…
Repaired Gable Return on a Greek Revival
Did you know gable returns are a defining feature of Greek Revival-style architecture in the United States? We recently repaired a gable return on our Greek Revival, which ended up being a doozy of a project, so we’ve gotten an up close and personal look at this stylistic architectural feature. While not universal, gable returns are commonly found on Greek Revival-style homes built in the United States between 1830 and 1860. Gable returns or eave returns, as they are sometimes called, are an extension of the roof trim or cornice that turn the corner at the bottom of the gable. They are purely decorative for homes built in the U.S.,…
Happy List: #434
Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List, and Happy Mother’s Day to those celebrating. Consider this your reminder that Mother’s Day is on Sunday. I had the perk of seeing my oldest child last week (she’s away at college), and she gave me an early Mother’s Day gift – the flowers at the top of today’s blog post. It’s the first time I won’t be with both of my children on Mother’s Day, and that feels weird. I’m not even super into that holiday and it feels weird. Part of how life changes, I suppose. This week on the blog, I shared the Push Pin Travel Globe I made. I…
Maple Seedlings Make Their Own Sunscreen & 4 Trees We’re Growing
Seedling maple trees have a cool trick to protect their fragile new leaves from the sun. They can make their own “sunscreen.” Are you kidding me? I wish I could do that. I learned that cool fact this week after riding the rollercoaster of “will it or won’t it live” for a volunteer maple tree we’ve been watching grow. The emotional investment is getting out of hand. The Maple Tree’s Origin Story In the summer of 2025, we noticed a maple tree was growing out of a potted fern we had on our deck. This wasn’t completely unexpected since there is a giant maple tree in our backyard. What was…
