When you buy a house, it oftentimes comes with a yard. As it happens, one of the selling points of my particular abode was the lush garden that was included in the purchase price. Unfortunately, the property went untended for much of the summer and autumn while we waited to close, and we arrived at our new home to find it looking rather gnarly and overgrown. C’est la vie.

On one hand, this was a pain — neighbors are more neighborly when they don’t have to look at a rough and tumble yard every time they step outside, and yard work isn’t exactly the idyllic activity that back-to-nature guidebooks would have you believe it is. On the other hand, the scrappy lawn and overgrown flora gave me and The Beard the perfect excuse to drop wads of cash at various garden supply shops.

Long story short, that’s how we found ourselves pricing shrubberies, learning about plant food, and placing an order for the delivery of what seemed at the time like a reasonable amount of mulch. The mulch was to arrive in the afternoon of the day following our foray into the land of bushes and trees.

I was pretending to work on various projects on the day in question when I heard the unmistakable sound of a largish truck backing into my driveway. After peeking out of the living room window I came to an inescapable conclusion: Two cubic yards is a lot of mulch…especially when it is sitting smack dab in the middle of one’s driveway.

We chose an organic mulch made of things like bark, wood chips, leaves, pine needles, or grass clippings, but we could have opted for an inorganic mulch made of fabric, plastic, rocks, foil, or ground rubber. According to the Clemson Extension:

Mulching is a very important practice for establishing new plantings, because it helps to conserve moisture in the root ball of the new plant until the roots have grown out into the surrounding soil. The growth rate and health of trees and shrubs increases when there is no competition for water and nutrients from weeds. Mulch also helps to prevent tree trunk injury by mowers and trimmers. Newly planted trees require a circle of mulch 3 to 4 feet in diameter. Maintain this for five years.

Mulch entire beds of shrubs, trees, annuals, herbaceous perennials and ground covers. How often mulch needs to be replenished depends on the mulching material. Grass clippings and leaves decompose very fast and need to be replenished frequently. Inorganic mulches such as gravel and pebbles rarely need replenishing. As the plants grow and fill in the bed areas, less and less mulch is needed.

So there you have it — more than I ever knew (or wanted to know) about mulching before I ended up with a patch of dirt of my very own. I’m off to move the mulch away from my house, as it can act like a landbridge that lets subterranean termites cross areas treated with anti-bug goo. Now if I could only get this $@#$! wheelbarrow assembled before all of my fragrant mulch is spread throughout the neighborhood via the wind, things will be golden.

A great feature recently up at Telegraph.co.uk brings together experts like award-winning landscape designer Bunny Guinness and interior-designer-slash-author Paula Robinson to compile a list of fifty ways to spruce up your house, inside and out.

For the most part, the improvements they suggest will cost you. Replace all your radiators with an underfloor heating system? Knock out tatty tiles and replace them with slabs of marble? Um, right. I’ll be sure to do that when the economy bounces back, but for now I’m married…and not willingly…to the DIY ideology.

That being the case, I pulled five of the less expensive tips out of the piece. If you’re in the same boat as me, they may help you freshen up your home without spending a bundle.

1. First impressions count, so update your front door with paint:

Glossy black looks great on grand, stucco buildings, but rather forbidding next to red-brick or on a smaller house or cottage where soft greys work well. Blue was voted most appealing in a survey of buyers, but whatever the colour, a trick used by high-end decorators to achieve the best finish is to use several coats of paint thinned with white spirit.

2. Give your kitchen a mini-facelift with new knobs:

Standard sized, plain round knobs emphasise the mass-produced look of cupboards. Replacing them with unusual handles will add interest and character. Aim for texture, and avoid bright lacquered brass; it looks tacky and wears badly.

3. Enjoy regular seasonal refreshment without breaking the bank:

Replace cosy throws on sofas with light-coloured linen or ticking (for a classic New England beach house look, you might even invest in fitted linen-mix loose covers that are put on just for the summer and can be thrown in the washing machine when dirty). Even cushion covers can change: find pretty faded linen floral ones or make your own.

4. Learn to use that old sewing machine collecting dust in your basement:

With a little imagination, you can transform antique linens into unusual curtains, blinds, sofa and armchair slipcovers, cushion covers, upholstered seats or linen bags. Vintage white and cream linen is perfect for spring and summer soft furnishings.

5. Check your gutters…seriously, yucky gutters make a house look bad:

Most gutter problems are not caused by leaves, however, but by leaking joints. Plastic guttering has a high coefficient of thermal movement, and this constant expansion and contraction can push adjacent sections apart. Maneuver them back into place, and check that the supporting brackets are lined up correctly so that it doesn’t happen again.

Wallpaper has always struck me as a pain-in-the-tush design element. Tearing old outdated paper off can be a long, arduous process if the glue underneath is old and the wall underneath that is pitted. Cutting the paper and putting it into the wall is often a recipe for disaster when you’re working in oddly-shaped spaces. Think about it…how many sitcoms have had crazy wallpaper plots?

And yet, wallpaper is just too, too classy. It’s got all of the patterns, colors, and textures you just can’t get from paint. I want to redo my little cottage in all of the wallpapers below!

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You know I love color. I love bright playful colors enough to somehow overlook the fact that a purple toaster will run you a sick $300! So you’d think that I’m sitting here with credit card in hand ordering myself a pink tool belt, right? Wrong. The Beard will tell you that I am the DIY queen, whether you’re talking about epoxying the hell out of something wobbly or refinishing a cabinet I found in someone else’s trash. Sure, there are some things I won’t do–big appliance installations, for instance–but I’m competent when it comes to small home improvements.

I think that double X chromosome construction workers rock. More specifically, I think they rock because they have made a career for themselves in what is still considered a tremendously masculine profession. The construction trade has its own line of accessories…safety glasses, hard hats, work boots, and such. These typically come in shades of brown and black with the occasional bit of gray. They come in these colors for one simple reason: they are going to get very, very dirty.

How long will those Tomboy Trades pink boots stay pink? How long is a Tomboy Trades baby blue tool belt going to be baby blue? If they’re still pink and blue after a couple of weeks, you’re doing something wrong. Construction work is dusty…there are solvents and paints and oily liquids to contend with. Thus the brown! The lack! The gray! And how about that Charlie’s Angels-esque design on the hard hat…I’m sure that’s gonna command plenty of respect down at the construction site, right?

You could pair it with this for spectacular effect:

The nice thing about buying a house is that you own everything in that house. Conversely, the bad thing about buying a house is that you own everything in that house.

Right now, I own cheap kitchen counters that are made of some sort of porous material that absorbs stains as a matter of course and a stainless steel sink that is slowly falling into the kitchen cabinets underneath. For this, I can thank the previous homeowners and their half-assed approach to DIY home repair.

Speaking of that gravity-impaired stainless steel kitchen sink, I’m in the market for a shiny new one… and I can’t imagine buying the kitchen sink itself without buying a new faucet set to go with it. Curious to see what I’m considering? Read on for pics and what to me are incomprehensible contractors stats.

The Polished Brass Single Handle Kitchen Faucet with Spiral Handle and Sprayer:
-3-Hole Installation -1/2″ IPS Inlets -11-7/16″ Spout Height -6-1/2″ Aerator Clearance -9-15/16″ Spout Reach -3″ Maximum Deck Thickness -Ceramic Disc Cartridge -Spiral handle with porcelain index button

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