Later this morning I’m picking up a friend and we’ll be visiting 7 private homes as part of my town’s annual home and garden tour. It’s really the gardens I’m interested in seeing, but I know the homes will be lovely, too. I imagine they won’t want people taking pictures inside, but perhaps I can sneak in a few outside to show you later. 

I haven’t done this in about 15 years. The tickets were $25 each. My friend mentioned that she thought one of the houses was somewhat inaccessible and that it looked like a walk in the woods to the house and she hates insects, not her idea of a good time, yadda yadda yadda. I think she’s entirely mistaken about that house; what she may have thought was a driveway was, I believe, a road. It has been insufferably hot and humid for a week now but we will be in an air-conditioned car and I’m guessing most of these homes are also air-conditioned as well. So please, don’t ruin this outing with complaints already. Let’s think of it as an adventure. Geez. 

Otherwise, this was pretty much a normal weekend for me. I hit Trader Joe’s Thursday, BJs Friday and will be at Caraluzzi’s after the home and garden tour. For some reason, I never wind up getting everything I need at a single grocery store, even though I always come with a list.

I am thinking next week I will look into getting someone to remove a non-functioning humidifier that’s attached to my oil furnace and replacing it with a new one. When I bought the house, I took the advice of a furnace guy to detach the existing humidifier because it would spew lots of unhealthy mold spores into the air or whatever. I have lived 18 years regretting that decision because in the winter, the air in here is exceedingly dry; I wake up with a sore throat daily and you generally feel a lot colder than you would if there was some humidity.

What made things worse is that the guys who were here at the time cut the plastic tube that carried the water, and at some point later, the water still trapped in that tube leaked out and totally rusted the unit as well as one side of my furnace. It didn’t damage the furnace, but it’s very unsightly. You just don’t see it all unless you walk around behind the unit. Anyway, I’m hoping it can all be replaced and the rust somewhat cleaned up for no more than $500. We’ll see. It would be money well spent. Surely they make humidifiers now with a UV light or whatever that kills mold.

My neighbors behind me lowered the price on their house from $900-something to the high $800s after probably less than a month on the market. They have a gorgeous, 6 bedroom house with 7 acres, but it doesn’t help, I would imagine, when the Zillow estimate that appeared on their Patch page with their open house listing valued the house at $580K or in that vicinity! It makes it appear they have grossly over-valued their home. I haven’t had a chance to talk to them about that, but I would love to know why they think there’s such a discrepancy.

I bit the bullet and ordered 6 custom-made bamboo shades (with liner) for my sunroom, at a cost of about $316 with coupon. I really, really need these. My sunroom was done about 3 years ago and I have suffered through 3 summers without any kind of window coverings. From June through August, from noon on, it gets too hot in there to enjoy the space. The windows face south and west. And the heat spills over into the family room, warming it up as well. So I’m hoping these shades will really cut down on the heat in there. I can’t wait to get them. I hope I can install them myself. Others said installation was easy. I need to borrow a drill.