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Landscape Shrubs that Work Very Well in Containers

Containers are not just for pretty flowers and twining vines. Shrubs can make for a great container structure and a focal point for patios and porches. If you are considering planting a shrub in a container, but haven’t a clue which ones may be the best fit, here are three choices that all work very well in containers.

Ixora coccinea, the Ixora

This shrub is from the madder family of plants and is an evergreen. It grows four to six feet high and in a dense form. Leaves are leather-like and glossy, in pairs or whorls on the stem. Flowers are in two to five inch clusters and are tubular, scarlet, blooming year-round. There are some different colored cultivars. It is intolerant of alkaline soil and salt. Plant ixora in partial shade or in full sun but with shade during the highest temperatures of the day. Soil should be well-drained but moist. It is hardy in USDA hardiness zones of nine through eleven.

Punica granatum, the Pomegranate

A member of the pomegranate family, it grows to be six to fifteen feet high. Leaves are shiny and deciduous. Flowers are trumpet-like and orange-red in color. They can be doubled. Fruits are red-green or yellow-green, edible, and globose. Fruits come about year three or four. Plant a pomegranate in full sun with regular watering. It is hardy in USDA hardiness zones of eight through eleven.

Tetrapanax papyiferus, the Rice Paper Plant

A shrub from the ginseng family of plants, this is an easy-to-grow container shrub. It has leaves that are ten to fifteen inches wide, palmately lobed, with a white fine hair underneat. It grows fifteen feet high and nearly as wide. Flowers are white and in wooly balls that appear in fall. Berries are black, in clusters, and come after the flowers. Plant a rice paper plant in light shade with regular watering. It is hardy in USDA hardiness zones of seven to eleven. Its fan-like leaves are its main attraction. Take care around this shrub as people with sensitive skin can get contact dermatitis touching it.

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Home Remodeling: Closet Design

Closets are far more important than most people realize. Essentially, closets act as the primary storage space for everything you own, and if you don’t have enough closet space, your stuff will begin to spill out onto your everyday life. Unfortunately, closets are often an afterthought in designing an area. Here are a few things to think about when designing the closet space of your dreams.

Storage Access

The method of accessing closets can be as important as the closets themselves. Cheap doors, not enough clearances for swinging doors, or poorly installed sliding doors will ruin your experience and make you dread your closets. It doesn’t have to be that way.

First, remember that you need to plan for both the door, and where the door will be when it is open. If you don’t give yourself enough room, you will have a closet that only half opens, making half of the space inside unusable.

Second, remember that the biggest items you can get in are limited not only by the closet size but by the door width. A narrow access space can ruin a closet. Sliding doors are good too, but remember that they will only give you access to half the closet space at a time.

Next Post: Click on the link to get the best granite countertops near me in your area.

Useless Depth

A very shallow closet is limiting. Unless used as a pantry or linen closet, you probably realize already that you need a closet with enough depth to fit your belongings. On the other hand, it is common in older buildings to find closets with useless depth. These are typically a result of a poorly thought out remodeling job. For instance, in my current apartment, the primary closet has an 20 inch wide doorway, but is easily 9 feet deep. At those depths, the closet gains a level of uselessness that is hard to avoid. While you can pile your “once in a long, long while” items in there like holiday decorations and sleeping bags, you probably can’t use the closet for your daily activities.

To avoid this problem, add shelves to the back of the closet. Obtain long, narrow storage bins to slide onto each of the shelves. Just doing that will make the back of the closet suddenly come alive with new possibilities. At all costs, avoid creating a “pile” in the back because that “pile” will never be sorted through and will just get in the way. In front of your storage wall, put in hooks on the wall for things you will need frequently, and put on the floor only things that are easy to move like vacuums or shoes. Try to make the back as accessible as possible for more value out of a closet with absurd depth.

Closet Shelves

As I’ve highlighted above, I’m a big believer in closet shelves. They don’t have to look pretty, but they should be sturdy and be placed at good intervals. Think of it this way: a closet with 20 sq. ft of storage becomes a closet with 60 sq feet of storage with just two shelves. a shelf can really improve the accessibility of your items as well.

Final Tips on Outside Storage

Finally, consider clutter reducing storage in your halls and living areas. A filing cabinet, bureau, or other chest of drawers can be an attractive piece of furniture while removing much of your clutter simultaneously. If you don’t have enough closet space, think outside the box. Don’t get caught with clutter just because you couldn’t think creatively about where to hide it!

Home remodeling is tricky business. On one hand, there are few activities which are more intimate than redesigning the space that you live in; we don’t tend to think about it in that way, but the reality is that our use of space, and the way that we occupy and decorate the space says a lot about us. On the other hand, there are certain cold realities that have to be faced by the average family recreating their space; principal among them… budget. Part of the difficulty in taking on a remodeling project is trying to balance those two facets of the job – on one hand, we have the imperative of design and the pent up wants and desires from the months or years of planning leading up to the final decision to begin construction, and on the other hand we have the reality of our financial limitations.

There are only really three ways to overcome budget constraints; artful substitutions of materials to achieve substantially the same effect, cutting back on labor costs or deus ex machina– hitting the lottery, an unexpected inheritance or a huge gift borne of unrequited love from a long-pining ex. Logically, we do as much as we can in the design phase, making material substitutions and simplifying complex and labor-intensive elements to save labor costs, and shifting priorities to try to get the most bang for the buck by eliminating the “nice to haves” to keep the “must haves”. Often though, we get to the point where the outlay of dollars exceeds the inflow of the things that have long been dreamed of, and the client reaches out to achieve the improbable by going to the modern day fountain of deus ex machina, Craigslist.

Contracting, at least here in Houston, is intensely competitive and margins are thinning as the big-box stores like Home Depot, Lowes and Olshan’s step into the fray. Like most retailers, contractors have had to deal with shrinking margins, consumer demand that has scaled back with the weak economy, and major incursions by the big conglomerates into our space. When we price a job, it’s usually with the understanding that at least two other contractors are bidding. In most cases, we’re bidding somewhat low in order to get the job, knowing that if we get the job and can save the client a few dollars and “wow” them with the quality of our work, there will be either follow-on jobs or the opportunity to garner some referrals.

From a client’s perspective, the average client is of course trying to maximize their bang for the buck and talking to their friends and relatives to try to get design ideas and leads for cheap, quality craftsmen. Human nature being what it is, they are going to hear some great advice, some cutting edge design ideas and a whole lot of chaff. As mentioned before, home remodeling is an intensely personal experience, and like car buying is prime turf for nostalgia and a little embellishment to make for a better story. The reality is that good work costs money, and there is a world of difference between the wages earned by skilled craftsmen and unskilled laborers. When I present a bid for granite, for example, for most of the clients in my market, I am going to quote slab granite and not prefab lengths. I’m going to include the costs of the bullnose or square overhang, the costs of decking for the bullnose and the costs of all cuts, holes for faucets and cut-outs for undermount sinks. Most conscientious contractors will do the same, so that they don’t have to come back to the client after the sale with add-on costs, and most consumers in our market will be sophisticated enough to calculate the per square foot cost for comparison. Simple fact is that granite and the installation of granite, though not beyond the cost of our average client, is far from cheap. Unlike electrical bids and plumbing, the installation and pricing of granite is also fairly straight forward, easy to understand, and doesn’t present the same risks as electrical work. It’s also a lot more fun to talk about, and nearly everybody who has remodeled has not only an opinion, but a great story that goes along with it.

So what happens after a dinner party when our client hears the great stories, the great deals, the truckload of Italian marble that was stranded on I-45? They go home and look at their contractor’s bid and the small square sample of granite there; not much of a story, is it? And at a per square foot price nearly fifteen dollars more expensive than Susie’s. That’s where Craigslist comes in – on any average day, you can get ads like these:

GRANITE FOR $5.95 A SQUARE FOOT!
$5.00 A SQUARE FOOT TO INSTALL THE GRANITE!
PRICE INCLUDES FABRICATION, TEAROUT, DECKING, AND INSTALLATION OF NEW GRANITE!
WE HAVE SEVERAL COLORS TO CHOSE FROM! ALL DELUXE GRANITE!

Hard to beat real granite for $10.95 a square foot installed. But what is the likelihood of getting the work done for that price all in? Not likely. Economically, it doesn’t make sense to sell granite that commands anywhere from $18.00 to $35.00 per square foot installed for less than a half of retail price, even if you could, even if the granite were free. If a furniture store or a car dealership were offering to sell for less than cost, most sophisticated consumers would scoff, so why not on ads for granite or hardwood floors? It should be clear that the aim of the ad is not to sell granite for $10.95 a foot, but to get you to call so that they can get an appointment to sell you some granite. Surprisingly, though, the Craigslist ad is proof enough for a great number of people that the market rate for granite is $10.95 per square foot, or that the market price for installed real hardwood floors is $3 per square foot. And there is where many hearts are broken.

As a general contractor, I know the market price of materials, services and trades that go into putting together a successful bid and completing a job with smiles and handshakes at the end. My preferred subs have a track record with me and know that although I can be tough, I’m a great referral source. They have more invested and more at stake in their relationship with me than they have at stake with any individual client. They also know to provide a solid, no-nonsense bid to me that they can stand behind and deliver on.

What can a client that relies on a Craigslist ad bank on? They can pretty much bank on the fact that they are going to have to do their homework. The beauty of Craigslist is that it gives many, many tradesmen who would otherwise have no exposure a way to get their names out there. Some are very, very good at what the do and very, very bad at creating an effective ad. What can you do to help seperate the wheat from the chaff?

Get a baseline quote. Get a quote from your contractor or a recommendation from a trusted friend or advisor or check out a well known name in the yellow pages, and call that person for a quote. If you got the number from a friend, ask if you can see the work in person. Ask every question you want, and ask them what questions you should be asking. Keep their name and number handy in case new questions pop up. That quote is your base quote. Since these people are your known and trusted source, any other quote that you take should be lower in order to compensate you for the risk you are taking on an unknown entity.

Get more than one quote. Don’t make a career out of getting quotes, or else you are not going to remember one vendor from another and all the meetings will blend together. Get at least three quotes, all written. You’re soon going to know where the market price really is – that alone is worth the effort. Compare the final quote given after all the measurements were taken to the price that was advertised on Craigslist. If the difference is more than 25%, you’re dealing with somebody who has no compunction about stretching the truth in order to get a job.

Listen to what they are saying. Ask questions and ask them to walk you through their process. Ask about any options that they recommend and ask them about the differences between materials that they show you. Honestly, it’s pretty easy for anybody to memorize a pitch, so keep that in mind, but the more familiar they are with their work, the better. Ask them whether they will do the installation, and if not, ask them to tell you a little bit about your installer. Where are they from, how long have they been in the business, how did they meet? Basically, many of the people who advertise on Craigslist are themselves contractors and have no idea who the people are who do their installations. Nothing wrong with contractors, but any good contractor should know their subs and should know them well.

Be safe. Remember that Craigslist is an anonymous service and that you don’t know the people you are inviting into your home. Your safety should be paramount – don’t meet them alone, make sure that you take precautions, and if possible, arrange to call somebody when your appointment arrives and have them call you right back. In front of your appointment, let the caller know who you are meeting, and give the caller the phone number of the person you’re meeting with as a “referral”.

Tell us about yourself: Sandy has been a corporate credit and collections manager and Glenn has been a CFO of high tech companies. Handyman Matters wants to be the TRUSTED choice for quality, safety and security home or office repair and remodeling services, employing skilled Craftsmen who complete small to medium size jobs exceeding the expectation of customers.

The vision for this company is to change the face of the Handyman Industry by setting standards of quality, safety and security for our customers. To be the “one stop” home and office maintenance and remodel company that enhances real estate property.

Give us a description of your company: Mr. Handyman Matters is licensed as a general contractor and has a master electrician on staff. We employ qualified Craftsmen to complete home repair and remodeling projects. Our employees have clear background checks and are covered by insurance while they work. Our Craftsmen are scheduled for a specific time for the appointment. They provide the expertise and tools to complete the project. The homeowner has the option of providing the materials or having our Craftsmen purchase them.

What are some of your favorite kinds of jobs to do and what are you most skilled at? Our Craftsmen are hired for specific skills in the trades. Each Craftsman is sent to a home or business that needs his specific skills. Handyman Matters can complete electrical jobs, drywall, texture, prime and painting projects. Our Craftsmen are skilled in fixing leaks and drips in plumbing. We have removed and replaced windows and doors. We have completed remodeling full bathrooms, kitchens and finished basements. We have done tenant finish of business spaces. The other trades we are able to do are; tile, painting, carpentry, and pre-finished flooring.

How long have you been in business? 3.5 years

How long have you been a Christian & share a little about your faith: The Lord came into my life through the ministry of Vernon Grounds 32 years ago. I have been involved in many women’s ministries such as MOPS, Women’s Sunday School, and many Bible studies.

How has your faith in God inspired and helped grow your business? Service to others helps to grow our business. We endeavor to make things right when sometimes they go wrong.

Tired of smelly, harsh and abrasive cleaners that are bad for the enviorment? Here’s some quick and easy solutions made right out of your own cabinets at home. These easy to make cleaning supplies are both nontoxic and very green friendly. Not only are these much safer for the yourself and the world in which you live, the end cost is much less than that of traditional cleaners bought at your local stores.

Air Freshers :

Sweeper Scents

There are a few ways in which you can ac hive beautiful long lasting scents without adding problems to the ozone layer. These non aerosol freshers are a snap to create. The scent mixtures are of endless possibilities. However for this one I will use Lemon Balm Leaves, you may use what ever you desire.

The awesome thing about this nifty little trick is that you can grow Lemon Balm in your own backyard, it requires very very low maintenance and will grow in just about any climate and soil condition.

If using live plants you will first need to cut and hang the stems upside down in a safe place to thoroughly dry out.

Remove leaves from stems, gently crush leaves into smaller pieces and place into a reusable tea bag or small cheesecloth bag. Unzip your sweeper bag and pin the Lemon scented pouch to the inside of the bag holding compartment. Wahhla your done, each time you run your sweeper you will fill the remove with an inviting sent of lemony goodness. Another way you can do this is to directly sweep up the crushed Lemon Balm leaves into the sweeper, this will act the very same way as the attached pouch, however you will need to redo these steps when you have replaced the dirty bag.

All purpose cleaners:

Counters, toilets, floors and more

Vinegar is a natural dirt killing machine, it cuts though dirt and grime like a warm knife through butter. White vinegar is best to use, You can use this in full or diluted strengths to clean any hard surface in your home from counter tops to toilets. Use caution on some flooring’s due to its natural acid content, it may tarnish or eat away at your wax covering on some floor polishes when used at full strength.

To use at full strength simply place the vinegar into a clean spray type bottle and apply to surface and wipe clean, the smell will dissipate once the vinegar has dried.

For diluted applications in a clean spray bottle mix 1/2 cup of warm water to 1 cup of white vinegar, apply to surfaces and wipe clean.

Stained Coffee Pots

Diluted formula is also ideal for coffee pots, add the water mixture to your water chamber in your coffee pot and set to brew, this will clean all the dirt and grim that has settled into all the nooks and crannies of your coffee maker as well as the pot it’s self. Rinse thoroughly and rerun plain water through the pot to ensure any residue is gone and your morning java isn’t blessed with a hint of vinegar.

Drain Cleaner

Vinegar is also one of the best natural drain cleaners, to unclog your drain pour a small amount of baking soda directly into the drain, next pour undiluted vinegar into the drain. Remember in school when you would see the recreations of lava on a model? Your going to be seeing that again, when the two are mixed it will create a bubbly effect that pushes it’s way up and through the clogs. You may have to repeat this a few times for very stubborn clogs, Rinse drain by running warm tap water down it for a few mins. Safe and easy for all drains in the home with out sending nasty chemicals down the tubes.

Windows

Vinegar can also be used on windows! For clear clean windows use undiluted. Spray directly onto the window and wipe dry with a soft clean rag.

Soap Scum Buster

Tubs, toilets, sinks and counters

A tired but true helper when it comes to getting tough soap scum and build ups off your tub and tile is the age old trick of using Baking Soda! Just shake out the soda directly on to the surface, use a warm wet rag with a back and forth or circular motion to clean. Rise thought when done, repeat if necessary. Safe and effective.