Monica Kochelee

I used to work with a woman who had bare naked windows. She lived out in the woods, with no neighbors in sight, and she loved having no window coverings at all. She showed me pictures of the different rooms, she was very proud of the fact that her windows were bare. Although she DID have some hanging plants in front of the windows and some shelves with plants in front of some windows, for the most part I thought that the windows looked too sterile; I feel that curtains add a lot of personality and warmth to a room.  I also feel that insulated curtains are a good idea to help save energy and reduce heating and cooling costs.  I’m always all about saving energy and heating and cooling costs!

The Curtain Shop website accepts competitor’s coupons and has a price matching guarantee - they will match their competitor’s online prices for the same product. They have a wide assortment of high quality window treatments, from tab top curtain panel, valance treatments, drapery ensembles, sheers and door panels to name just a few.  They also sell bedding ensembles and rocking chair cushions to complete the ”feel” of the room being decorated.  This is a good website to check out when redecorating a room!

I really enjoy looking at all of the decorative accessories on the market that people can buy for the outside of their houses, and for their yards.  I especially love decorative residential mailboxes, and address plaques; I think that they make a big visual impact to visitors!

If a house has one of those mail-slots in the door for the mail to be slid through, then I think that really nice decorative items to have outside the house are birdfeeders and address plaques.

Mailbox and Beyond Company has a very nice assortment of the types of items that dress up the exterior of a house. They sell birdfeeders, sundials, custom painted mailboxes, door knockers, door bell decorations, and some really cute water faucet knobs too.

I want to find a local contractor to install a cellar bulkhead door to keep water out of the basement stairwell to take care of our flooded basement problem.

I found a website called clicksmart.com that lists certified expert construction contractors that I’m going to use to find some local contractors to get some quotes on the work.  The website is easy to use, you just go to the website and fill in what kind of service you want and what area you need the service done.  For example if I was looking for Hartford Contractors I would go to their website and choose Contractors, then Connecticut, then Hartford.

Ever since we bought this house my hubby has been talking about how much he wants to put some kind of additional storage building on the property.  We have three acres of land, so it really isn’t an issue of having the space.  It’s just a matter of picking out what he wants that will fit in our budget and serve his needs.

Right now my hubby is “hogging” the garage with his show truck and his motorcycle, leaving our “real” vehicles out in the weather.  When I go grocery shopping, I have to lug the groceries into the house by myself through the rain.  I really don’t like that at all.  I’d like to park the car beside the house, under cover so I don’t have to try to run through a downpour.

I’ve found a website, www.steelmasterusa.com that sells some nice carports that would be good options for storage buildings.  I’d really like to see us put in one of the metal carports near the garage. We have more vehicles than our garage holds, and a carport would be a great thing to have.  I certainly wouldn’t mind having one of the metal buildings that look like a garage, either!

My hubby loves stainless steel.  When we moved into this house almost two years ago now, we needed to buy all new kitchen appliances.  We went to the local appliance store together and my hubby went all “gaga” over the stainless steel appliances.  We ended up buying a new stainless steel dishwasher, range, and refrigerator.  Later on when my toaster oven and microwave oven died we replaced them with stainless steel, too!  My hubby probably loves stainless steel so much because it reminds him of the shiny parts on the machines he loves to tinker with.  I know he likes to put chrome everywhere he can on his machines!  He’s big into shiny metal!

I like shiny metal jewelry too, so I guess I have to think of the stainless steel appliances as jewelry for the house!  Now that we’ve been here a while, my hubby has been thinking about adding a few “decorative touches” to the house.  He found a website, www.thestainlesssteelstore.com, that sells stainless steel accessories made by bloomus, and he has made up a wish list of things he wants to buy.  Some of these items are for our house; some of them are for gifts for his relatives that he wants to buy.  So far he has on his wish list some Blomus stainless steel mailboxes, Blomus stainless steel fireplace accessories, and stainless steel bird feeders.