John H's Profile

I've heard of people lifting large pieces of furniture, such as sofas and grand pianos on top of the elevator. This would require your contacting the building's elevator maintenance firm and arranging for the service. Assuming you have a balcony with large access doors, or windows which may be removed or disassembled, you could hire a firm with a scissors lift, crane, or block and tackle to hoist your sofa into your home.

Most reputable furniture stores will take pieces of furniture back both during and after delivery, provided the piece was not a special order. If your sofa is special order, some retailers will for a fee, arrange for a test delivery of a similar sofa to assure that it will fit through doorways and elevators. The fee is normally the store's furniture delivery charge.

There are manufacturers of sofas specifically designed to be disassembled for delivery and reassembled in the home. Carlyle is one manufacturer in New York. There are also firms which will partially disassemble and reassemble conventional furniture for moving.

I am unaware of any specific formula for determining whether a sofa will fit through doorways and elevators. You simply have to measure both the sofa and the door frame dimensions. In delivering a sofa, the piece will either be brought through doorways upright, on its back, or vertically. The basic rule is that the height of the back of the sofa (floor to top) or the depth of its bottom (front to back), cannot exceed the minimum width of any doorframe. If the sofa has feet that are removable, their height may be deducted from the minimum dimension.

Good Luck!

That's a completely ridiculous bathroom. Despite the safety of structural glass, a view down 15 floors is a lot more unnerving that a view down 12-20 feet. By the way, who changes the underfloor light bulbs that shine down in the shaft?

I would suggest you do a ton of research before plunging into building any home or even buying one that you want to renovate. The various home rehab TV programs, with the possible exception of Holmes on Homes, make house construction and renovation seem easy, it is not. If you're going to attempt building a prefabricated home, consult your municipal, county. and state zoning and building codes. A number of jurisdictions have prohibitions or regulations that make prefab home construction difficult or impossible.

If you can, visit models of the homes you like and make sure you will be comfortable living in them. Choose your contractor(s) carefully. A recent NY Times article chronicled a near disaster experienced by a family building an LV home in upstate New York: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/garden/in-the-catskills-a-prefab-box-of-galvanized-steel.html . To avoid disasters and unforeseen problems, engage real experts to advise you on this project. It may cost more, but will save you wasted money, time and effort in the end.

Good Luck!

I also don't agree with this approach to floorcovering. Frankly, it's ugly. If you're going to attempt to combine rugs into a bigger floorcovering, you should use multiple copies of the same rug. However, this approach only works with fringeless, thick pile rugs, with a concealed edge binding, and a limited number of rug designs where the pattern continues across the multiple rugs to create a cohesive whole. Otherwise you're creating an ugly patchwork floor and setting yourself up for a trip hazard.

With the existence of Craigslist, ebay and other online rug sources purchasing an appropriately sized rug is easy and inexpensive. Stitching together disparate rugs to create a larger area rug is time consuming, unnecessary and if you don't know what you're doing, dangerous as well. .

It might be possible for you to put an appropriately sized clawfoot or other freestanding tub in the shower, but you won't be able to fill it conveniently without a faucet, In addition, concentrating the half ton weight of a tub plus water, plus your body weight on four feet will inevitably crack or break any tile in the existing shower stall. The framing structure of your apartment may also not be capable of supporting the increased weight.

You can easily upgrade your shower experience by getting one of the sophisticated massaging single or multiple shower heads or shower head/body spray assemblies currently on the market.

Perhaps if you have a private garden you can put your tub outdoors.

I strongly agree with the advice about doing your own research for the reasons noted above. Since you and your roomate are female, and especially if you're a racial minority and your potential new neighborhood lacks diversity, it is important to remember that changing demographics can motivate existing residents to give out misinformation in order to steer you out of the area. Although minority steering is illegal under both state and federal statutes, people violate the laws daily,

As noted above, definitely inquire with other people who live inside and in the vicinity of the building regarding this man in question and the woman who gave you the advice. Contact the police department for crime and incidence reports statistics in the building and neighborhood and consult the applicable sex offender registry. Stop by and observe the block at different times of both weekdays and weekends.

I have a rose garden of 5 Floribunda and 2 Grandiflora rose bushes on my apartment terrace. They grow in 24" diameter plastic planters. They require regular watering and fertilizing, but it's really nice having a rose garden in the sky.

Unfortunately, Minotaur Wunderland may not be the world's largest model train layout, yet. Northlandz in Flemington, New Jersey houses a model railroad in a lartger space, 52,000 square feet, with 50,000 linear feet of HO scale track alone.

An important improvement to any kitchen is task lighting. Install halogen or LED lighting beneath your upper cabinets to increase the light levels on your countertops. Most kits can be plugged into a nearby outlet or wired into your wall switches. To make the lighting more accessible you can plug the lighting runs into a radio controlled module, controlled by a battery powered wall switch locatable anywhere in the room. The same can be done with accent lighting such as rope lighting. Stringing runs of it on top of the cabinets against the walls will give the room more visual height. Running it on the underside of the lower cabinet toekicks visually expands the room and provides dramatic night lighting.

If the kitchen’s overall light levels make spotting items in your upper cabinets difficult, consider installing track or cable lighting in the ceiling aimed so that it “washes” the front of your upper cabinets.

Add mouldings to the tops and bottoms of your cabinets to provide a finished look and to hide undercabinet lighting modules and other devices. The mouldings may be available from the original manufacturer of your cabinets or you may choose from a selection at your local lumber supply.

Consider using aluminum or stainless steel sheet as a backsplash. It is inexpensive and easy to install.

Top down-bottom up window coverings or a window shade hung upside down will provide privacy while maximizing light levels in the window.

Change out your cabinet door/drawer pulls.

Change out your sink faucet and/or sink. Acquire a faucet with built in sink sprayer, great for sink cleaning and large pot/pitcher filling.

Make your kitchen more functional and efficient by adding storage devices like pull-out shelves in your lower cabinets. The hardware may be reinstalled in any future new kitchen.

Consider replacing your black range hood with a stainless steel model. Simple range hoods are very inexpensive. If you don’t have space for a microwave oven, raise the cabinet over the range and install an undercabinet microwave oven with range hood.

Since you like color, consider brightening the floor by adding a kitchen rug. The rugs are washable and frequently rubber-backed, for slip prevention and cushioning.

Good Luck!

As much as I advocate consumer safety and prudence, especially since it happens to be my professional job, I think it’s also important not to overreact when someone expresses interest in an item you’re selling and they happen to be a little far away. Whenever I travel, I always peruse the area’s Craigslist for items I’m seeking and I am currently shopping for items that I would have no problem driving up to 600 miles from home to buy, fortunately, I’ve not yet had to travel that far for something.

I have been fortunate to have bought several items via Craigslist where the seller was well over 200 miles away from my home. Of course there are risks, I could drive all the way to the seller for them to decide they have me over a barrel and raise the price, put me in a bidding war with another buyer, or simply sell the item prior to my arrival. Fortunately, the vast majority of sellers are honest people and this has never happened. What did happen once was an ignorant Craigslist seller with a mahogany chest I wanted refused to communicate with me because she decided I was a scammer simply because my cell number wasn’t “local” enough for her. Her offensive responses included e-mailing me a copy of Craigslist’s seller warnings. She simply succeeded in cheating herself out of selling her furniture.

My point is, if you have an item you’re seriously interested in selling, (casual posters should stay off of EBay and Craigslist), and you think it might generate interest from outside your locality, be prepared for the not-so-local buyer to arrive. We may occasionally send our friend or parent in our stead, but we always pay in cash or the payment terms specified.