Construction and Industrial Articles
posted on 19 October 2011
I bought this house twelve years ago, and love living in it. But it has been a lot of work: a roof repair here, a cabinet latch there, adding some velcro tape to hold something together here, a paint job there. Something always needs doing. When I first moved in, the needs for fixing, furnishing and decorating were almost overwhelming. The house was basically in good shape. But not everything suited me. The walls were painted dark blue. The previous owner worked in construction, so I think he must have gotten some dark blue paint for free and used it. During the first two years I re-painted most of the rooms. Another thing I did, the first year, was to rip out the carpet in the bedroom. The previous owner had two cats, and the carpet smelled of them. I replaced the carpet with a vinyl tile flooreasy to clean. Now I am looking at the carpet in the living room. It has been here much too long. It is shaggy and hard to clean. It shows the wear and tear of many years. Recently I have been up and down the aisles of home improvement stores. I want to replace the carpet with a dark wood laminate flooring. It would look niceand also be easy to clean. Then, on top of the wood floor, I would like to place a nice, intricately-designed oriental style carpetabout 5' X 7' or 8' X 10'. To match the curtains, it would need to be predominantly deep red or maroon in color. I saw the perfect one in a store a couple of days ago. It is wool (I prefer natural fibers) and is beautiful. But it is more than I can afford right now. Maybe writing this article will get me a tiny bit closer to buying it. |
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posted on 5 August 2011
I don't think it's worth it to go to university these days, unless you really have to e.g. doing your seven years to become a doctor. But the soft sciences? Come on. All you're doing is delaying your career and getting into debt at the same time. Don't do it - just get out there and kick start your career already. If you're not sure on what job you want to do, go for some temp work. That's what I do now - I've done all sorts of jobs - from using concrete screeds to working on a petrol station forecourt. Now I know you'll think those jobs aren't great, but they're giving me experience and also discipline. I'm also saving money too. I feel I'm in a much better position than if I went to university - just getting into debt and learning things that aren't useful in the world of work. |
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posted on 18 May 2011
I visited Toronto recently and was amazed at how sparkling clean the streets were there. What's more, they weren't clean due to armies of workers and the familiar honda pressure washer you see in other cities keeping the streets clean - they were clean because there was no litter dropped there in the first place. There's a sense of pride among the local Toronto folk, and that's reflected (sometimes literally!) in their shiny, clean streets.
Now I compare that to my home city of Manchester in the UK. Oh dear. Piccaddilly at night is awash with chip papers, head out to the suburbs of Longsight, Levenshulme, Fallowfield etc - litter everywhere. And it's not a class thing - middle class students are one of the worst offenders! I know why - because when people live in an area that's litter-strewn, they think it won't make a difference if they use rubbish bins, so they litter too. |
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