good morning! I thought it might be good for us to pool our resources on home repairs. Good help and workers is hard to come by. PLUS, needing to be budget conscious. We could all help each other. In the past, we've needed a new roof, new fence, flooring (more than once - but that's another story), bug spraying, trees taken out, home replumbed, a/c/heat work, pool servicing, etc.

Where have you turned? What businesses deserve repeat or new customers?

I was wondering if anyone has a handy man? Do you use someone in particular?

What about more natural resources for bug spraying that WORKS and won't be so pricey?

i'm lucky to have a very handy husband. his father and him both are very handy. between them they can do almost everything. i can't remember that last time i had to pay to have something done. so i'm sorry i don't know of any business to recommend.
i have heard for ant if you pour grits around that the ants will eat them and die because they expand in there stomachs. i have not tryed this.

In the past year we've done a lot of updating and repairs around our house. We've remodeled a bathroom, ripped out all of our floors and put in new ones, painted, removed trees (after they fell on the house!) and had other repairs from the trees.

While we did a lot of it ourselves (well, ok the husband did most of it with friends), we have found some good people for some of the jobs.

I have a good handyman in Bartow, a good painter, and 2 good tree guys if anyone needs any of those - and they were all very reasonably priced!

If anyone knows of a good natural way to get rid of and keep chinch bugs out of your St Augustine grass please let me know.

I’m living an oxymoron because of hubby. I love to live natural but Eddy has a St Augustine grass fetish.

It is so high maintenance, sigh...

After using several pest control companies, I have been EXTREMELY pleased with Country Boy Pest Control. They cater to the entire county and they do inside and outside pest control.

I have a number of a guy that does great stump grinding. After the hurricanes, (lost 2 big oaks ) I had highway robbery quotes to grind the stumps. The guy I went with gave me a price half the other guys and did an excellent job.

Just be carefull and do research on the company that you may do business with and also importantly search the individual that is selling to you. You can do a public search with clerk of courts, better business bureau and the sheriffs office websites to see if they have a bad history. Please do this with everyone that you have come into your home. I learned the hard way.

www.polksheriff.org
www.bbb.org
www.polkcountyclerk.net
www.hillsclerk.com
www.hcso.tampa.fl.us

Thanks for your advice and information Alisa! You are so right, you never know who means us harm or could be scooping us out for future unkind behavior.

Boy don't we know it, Alisa. Have had exactly that experience but not comfortable sharing online. Will do in person at another meet up, though.

My husband has laid flooring (took him a few months on his own around working weekends, too) throughout the house, but due to a second flooding (that was the original issue from our first flood with laying the flooring to begin with), had to pull up more than half the house. So, he has done work, it's just that neither of us is comfortable with some things, especially electrical and the like. Neither of us had parents that showed us how to do things. One thing we ARE teaching our boys, but not an easy task, not being natural for us either. But, we plug along.

When we had all the carpet up, we repainted the entire inside of the house and after the second flood, we decided to add some accent colors and repaint all the trim and baseboards. It's amazing how disgusting they get, even with cleaning. So, we have done our own work. Only thing is, painting left me without a voice for a bit and worsened a condition I have. If I never paint again, it'll be too soon!

I do want my husband to build a floor to ceiling bookshelf unit in our family room. I want my albums out and family books, too. We have other shelves in the living room area, but we do need more. It's too barren right now with all the tile. From our floods, we decided to put down whatever as indestructible as possible! Already having tile, it was a challenge to find some that would flow together, but I think we did a great job and the guy who did it was amazingly talented.

Thanks for the tips and we WILL definitely research with your links before we have any more work done!

Hi ladies! If any of you ever need any roofing done my hubby is a State Certified Roofing Contractor. Alisa, you are so right, you really need to be careful when you are getting estimates. The contractor should be able to show you his license, insurance,ect. We are a member of the BBB, and are very proud of our reputation. The name of his business is Gilco Roofing Inc. We are base out of Auburndale,but work throughout the State.

Thanks,
Julie
Momma to Heather 20, Chelsea 18, and Brinkley 10 mos

Polk County Clerk of Courts has a new section for looking up criminal records, it gives details that way you know exactly what they did incase it is something minor like worthless checks or could be something bigger like fraud.

Alisa, thanks for the tip.

Anyone out there have wood or laminate floors put in at a decent price? I am looking to do some wood or laminate flooring in my house. Does anyone recomend one over the other, real wood vs laminate? Also I need an installer and advice on brands of flooring, help!

Shawn - we just had laminate installed at a great price for labor...free! My husband put ours in (the whole house). They really aren't taht bad to do yourself if you're interested and there are a couple of places in Tampa/Brandon that sell the materials at prices much better than Lowes, Home Depot, etc. We got ours from Floor & Decor (Brandon) for .98/sq versus the $1.98/sq for the exact same flooring at Lowes.

littleT i'm glad you said something about the flooring place in brandon. my husband and i are thinking of replacing a section of carpeting with wood or laminate. we will have to check it out when were ready.

I've been patiently waiting for Ty Pennington! We are in extreme need of another bedroom! We have a 2 bedroom mobile home that we bought for our retirement ten years ago. With raising our grandson, and our 23 year old still living at home, we are in serious sardine can now!! If I were allowed to use my son's saws all, I'd find a way to make another bedroom!!

Seriously, though, we also need a new leach field. Right now, that's on hold until we find a way to raise $3200, not an easy thing to do on social security! Pray for us!

little T, you know, I think hubby and I are both handy people and I think we would tackle it if it was just floors, but we need our stairs done too. We have a 2 story house and right now we have carpet on them. I could beat myself, hind sight, you know? My builder tried to talk me into wood stairs at the same price as carpet. I said no!. I thought the carpet would be safer and more quite. Imagine what that carpet looks like now with 4 boys running up and down it everyday.

I really would like the stairs to be done and at least 2 rooms.

Unless anyone thinks stairs are easy to do and can give me a play by play, I think I should still look for a professional.

Thanks for those tips, there could be others looking for that info as well

Shawn I think that's a smart move with the stairs. We probably wouldn't have been quite as ambitious if we had 2 stories either!

I don't know if he'll do stairs, but Neil at Bartow Home Care (something like that - he's on Oak I think, the one one block west of Orange, almost at the end by Nye Jordan) will do floors. He's done a lot of other handy work around our place for us, we just decided to do the floors on our own. He may be worth looking in to though.

His number is 698-6792 (again, I think!).