There is little doubt about it, in the long run, home bars cost a lot less than heading out to the local pubs every weekend. Depending on the talents that you may or may not have, installing a home bar might be a reasonably priced way to increase the value of your home and maybe give your popularity a little boost as well. No matter what type of set up you have in mind, there are home bar plans and pre-built home bars to fit most situations. I’ve had no problem finding pre-built bars for sale both locally and online.  What I did have a tough time finding was actual home bar plans that described how to BUILD your own bar at home. Even Amazon came up short. They did have one book that looked promising, and I was going to include it here, but it was out of stock and they didn’t know if it would ever be published again. What the heck???   I’ll keep looking. Drop me a line through the contact form if you have found any other favorite home bar plans and I’ll include them here.

Home bars seemed to be all the rage when I was a little kid back in the 1970s. Most of my parents’ friends had bars in their homes and their group of friends would gather from time to time at each others’ houses to hang out. Sometimes it would be for special occasions like New Year’s Eve or a playoff football game, but other times they just socialized together. The kids went off and did things to keep busy. I remember learning to play bumper pool one time, and going out in the yard at night to catch worms on another occasion. I guess we did what we had to to pass the time.

I never minded going on those visits because I really liked actually looking at the bars. I know that sounds kind of strange, but my Dad did carpentry work on the side and he actually built many of the custom home bars in their friends’ homes. It was pretty cool.  I don’t think he ever worked from plans besides the ones he drew up himself.  He always sketched his plans on a sheet of white paper with one of those rectangular pencils that fit perfectly behind his ear.  My Dad died when I was still pretty young, and I’ve never seen one of those pencils anywhere else.

If you are able to build things on your own, you can save a lot of money, but modern home bars are not all that expensive when you consider how much other home improvements can cost. Honestly, I was shocked at how little pre-built bars actually cost when I checked out the prices.

Before you build a bar, compare your costs to what a pre-built bar would cost. Discount home bars are actually available for under $200, and I know that is a lot less than my Dad spent even back in the 70′s for just the materials he used for building a really nice bar on his own. Now, if you are looking to build a deluxe type bar rather than a simple home mini bar, your costs will obviously be higher. The cheap home bars that come pre-assembled are basically rather short and straight, as opposed to L shaped corner bars that can actually be the centerpiece of a game room. You can add all kinds of accessories like running water or set ups that allow you to keep refrigerated kegs of beer available. You can also go all out and pick out a particular theme that you would like to build around. If you have a favorite sport, your decorating might be based on that. If you like neon lights to give the feel of a “real” bar, you can get those too. Be warned, those home bar accessories are where you might end up dropping the bulk of your money. Even bar stools can be pretty expensive.

Should You Buy Bars for Sale Online?

I’ve been hesitant in the past to order furniture online. I don’t know why. I guess I moved so many things around in a pickup truck in my younger years, that it just seems odd to have a piece of furniture delivered by mail. To be honest, the idea of shipping costs sort of put me off until I realized that many of the units sold online offered free shipping as part of the purchase price. There are a TON of popular pre-built bars for sale, but you’ll have to check each one individually to see what kind of breaks they offer on shipping. The prices are definitely comparable (or better) than any of the units I found for sale at retail outlets near my house. The selection is also much better online.

If you would like to save some money, I would highly recommend checking out your local classified ads or sites like eBay and Amazon when it comes time to buy home bar accessories. Just signs and lights for decorating your bar can be very expensive. Shopping around a bit has its advantages. I’ve seen a lot of nice bar accessories being sold off at estate sales over the years. The prices are usually pretty good, but you never really know what you’ll find until you arrive at each sale.

There are some very cool things that can add an unbelievable amount of atmosphere to home bars. Personally, I think if you have the room, you should have a pool table. I really like playing pool with friends and this is another addition that you can usually pick up pretty cheap if you shop around. If you are willing to go with a second hand pool table, you can really save a ton. New pool tables can be fairly expensive. With that said, I do have to say that I found some pool tables on Amazon that were priced lower than some of the tables sold locally. So if you are thinking of adding a pool table to the mix, it is worth looking online. Most of the ones on Amazon included free shipping.

For sports fans, you might want to consider installing a mounted television and/or sound system for when big games are going to be on. Obviously the cost here depends entirely on what type of system you choose to enhance your set up. Finally, having a dart board mounted in your game room is the perfect compliment to your bar if you are going to be entertaining friends. The electronic dartboards that keep score for you usually come with plastic tipped darts that are designed not to damage things when they hit something other than the board. A bonus is that they are usually really inexpensive.

This is just a small list of ideas. Certainly home bars can be pretty much anything you want them to be. They can be very simple, or if you have enough money to spend, they can become very extravagant. I wish I had photos of the one my Dad actually built. It was an L shaped bar that had a sink built in to the lower level. That level was also lit (by a very cool red light that matched the overhead lighting he installed). The base had sliding doors that hid a ton of storage space. I would imagine having that custom bar built now might carry a hefty price tag. Like I said though, he was able to do the actual building himself.

If you are able to do the grunt work, you might want to just look around for some home bar plans to guide you. You will certainly save a lot of money on labor.  You might also think about finding a carpenter who will do the job for you.  Of course, that probably will not come cheap nowadays.   If you just want to pay the money and get your bar, you should probably consider looking for home bar sets that come complete. You may have to pay a bit for the convenience, but you will be able to get started entertaining right away. Even for the higher priced home bars, the entertainment value is great if you like to hang out with friends. If you are a regular visitor of “real” bars, your savings from not going to them could probably go a long way toward getting your own home bar up and running. That would probably work as a good justification too if you have a partner who is on the fence about getting a home bar!

Once you have your home bar up and running, you will need to stock it with something to drink. Of course, this too can get as expensive as you are willing to let it get. If you stay very basic, you can get by with some basic staples that are used to mix up the most common drinks. If you are into creating fancy drinks, your supplies will cost more. The initial cost of stocking your bar could set you back a bit, but unless you have some very thirsty friends, maintaining your stock shouldn’t be all that expensive. In fact, if your friends are willing to contribute a bit, home bars could end up being a real bargain for those folks willing to put one in their home.

There are some very good reasons that oak bedroom furniture is so popular. One of the more popular types of wood for building furniture, in general, is oak.  I grew up living next woods that were filled with old growth red oak trees and my Dad had a background in carpentry, so I used to hear a lot about the strength of oak and how it had been used for so long to build furniture. I guess I was kind of dorky, but I used to walk through the woods and stare up at those trees in amazement. It wasn’t the sheer size and strength of them, it was also the fact that they were used to build so much of what we depended on every day. Hey, I was seven or eight and we didn’t have cable TV, OK?

When my wife and I started looking for bedroom furniture to put into our house after we got married, she specifically started looking for oak bedroom furniture. I thought that was kind of neat for the reasons I just mentioned, but she just shook her head and seemed to resign herself to getting used to me as we browsed through furniture stores.

I’ve mentioned before that although I can appreciate contemporary furnishings, I really sort of prefer a simpler, even rustic look. We started checking out some Amish furniture that was beautiful, but it was beyond our budget at the time. The antique furniture we checked out was also a bit pricey, but in hindsight, we really should have gone and checked out some estate auctions to see if we could find something. I’ve seen solid oak bedroom furniture go for very low prices at auctions. I mentioned this in another post, but it bears repeating. If you can get the furniture moved quickly, you can sometimes grab a great deal at auctions and if you go out looking for antique oak bedroom furniture in any other setting, you will probably run in to some people asking a hefty price for furniture that people were trying to get cleared out at an estate sale.

Oak Bedroom Furniture Characteristics

Oak furniture has been popular since man first realized its wonderful properties. It is a heavy, dense wood and it is also quite strong. All characteristics that you would like for a piece of furniture. It has a beautiful grain and takes well to having relatively intricate details carved into it. If you have ever cut wood from different types of trees, it is hard to miss the sturdiness compared to softer woods like pine. If you decide to look for solid oak bedroom furniture or any other type of oak furniture, be certain that you are getting what you pay for. Solid oak is heavier than oak veneer, which is other types of wood with an oak finish on the outside. These can still look pretty nice, and if you are working on a tighter budget, getting furniture with just an oak finish might be an affordable option that you will want to consider.

Actually, when we started looking, I expected the prices of oak bedroom furniture to be pretty expensive. I was surprised to find that they actually compared well with similar pine bedroom furniture. If you are in a position like we were of not having a whole lot of money to work with, you might want to consider looking for used furniture or for unfinished oak furniture as an alternative. It is up to you and your budget but I figure that bedroom furniture is one of those things that most people intend to hold on to for a while. We only recently got rid of the old bed that had been my brother’s and then mine. It was originally purchased back in the 1950s and was still in fine condition. If you buy quality, its durability can pay for itself many times over as the years go by.  That’s a household tip that is definitely worth remembering.

I decided to write this post because I’ve dealt with back pain off and on throughout most of my adult life.  I try not to mention it a lot, but when I have spoken up, friends usually tell me that I need to get an orthopedic mattress.  The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be a clear cut definition of what an orthopedic mattress is or isn’t.  More and more people are looking to buy an orthopedic mattress as a solution for their aching backs. When your back is hurting, it can seriously put you completely out of commission. Just one bout of having your back “go out” on you can convince you to make some changes so that it never happens again.  No doubt these folks are just following the same advice I was getting, offered by concerned friends and family who want to help them get rid of their back pain.  I found that there is no shortage of retailers offering to sell hunched over people a back pain mattress.

Turn on your television, especially during the late night hours (when people are struggling to fall asleep), and you likely won’t have to wait very long to see an ad touting the benefits of this or that “orthopedic mattress”. Particularly if you happen to be laying on a mattress that’s uncomfortable, or even if it feels alright but you wake up feeling unrefreshed or even sore and achy, how can you help but wonder if an orthopedic mattress might not just be the answer to your problems?

Well, what is an orthopedic mattress, anyway? As I said, it seems there is no legal standard for what may or may not be represented as such. Who’s to say that some charlatans aren’t out there promising to deliver an orthopedic mattress that turns out to be anything but?  I was actually pretty surprised by this considering how careful most retailers must be nowadays about the claims they make.

Unless they’ve been to an orthopedist, probably most people have but a sketchy idea what an “orthopedic” anything is. Orthopedics is a branch of medicine specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of disorders of the spine and skeletal system, as well as the joints and musculature. Thus, rather than being merely a more or less soft surface on which to sleep, one should expect an orthopedic mattress to deliver benefits to those parts of the body.

People who are unhappy with their mattresses most typically complain of pain in their back, particularly the spine. The spine has a natural contour, and being full of nerve connections to all other parts of the body, putting and keeping it in an unnatural contour for six or eight hours can logically be expected to result in distress at any point throughout the system.  If you have ever fallen asleep in an awkward position on the couch while watching TV, you may have experienced a more pronounced version of this.

Orthopedic Mattress Recommendations

In looking for an orthopedic mattress, then, one should expect at a minimum that it will provide support that doesn’t force or even allow the spine to get out of alignment. Furthermore, since the extremities, most especially considering the head, are connected to the nervous system, adequate and appropriate support should be provided for those as well.

There are several types of mattresses that can be said to provide orthopedic benefits generally, and there are even specialized orthopedic mattresses designed to deal with existing misalignments of the body’s structure. They range from coil spring types to air mattresses to water bed variants to various types of orthopedic foam mattresses.  I’ve personally slept on all of these and the only one I will intentionally avoid now is a water bed.  Maybe I just slept on poor examples, but I can’t personally understand how anyone feels supported by them.  The novelty wore off in a hurry after I slept in one for the first time.

What Orthopedic Mattress Price is Reasonable?

Prices vary greatly among the various types of orthopedic mattresses.  To give you an idea, at the time I’m writing this, a queen orthopedic mattress set made by Serta is available for just under $700 on Amazon.  There are also several queen size memory foam mattresses, that also claim to provide superior sleep experiences, selling for quite a bit less.  I’ll be honest with you, I obviously have not tried every mattress for sale on the market, but I have dealt with a sore back after my wife and I decided to save money by buying a cheap mattress.  My own experience is that cheap mattresses are a lot quicker to lose their shape and stop providing support.  Buying one was a mistake.  Considering that you spend roughly one third of your life sleeping, a mattress seems like a pretty bad place to cut corners.  We did finally invest in a decent spring mattress, and I’m glad we did.  I have been sleeping much more soundly and my back does not give me nearly as many issues as it used to.

Do Orthopedic Mattress Toppers Work?

My own experience is that the value of an orthopedic mattress pad is directly related to the mattress it resting upon.  We tried using a memory foam mattress pad on our cheap mattress, and the results were unimpressive.  When we placed it on top of our new mattress however, it seemed to make things a bit more “cushy” while still providing support.  I wouldn’t count on one doing much in the way of providing support all by itself though.  Of course, your experience may be different.

Do I Need an Orthopedic Mattress?

Honestly, I’m not a doctor.  I’d say that if your back is bothering you enough that it is causing you to lose sleep consistently, it might be worth a trip to your physician to see if they have any suggestions.  My own research seems to come down to the fact that I could not find any “real” definition of an orthopedic mattress besides the fact that they are meant to provide proper support.  It seems to me that unless there are precise definitions put in place, the claim of a mattress being “orthopedic” could just be a way to make it sound more attractive.  If you can, I’d suggest spending a bit of time testing out mattresses in showrooms, and then buy what you like the best.  I’d also ask salespeople for details about what exactly makes one of the mattresses orthopedic while another is not.  I could not get a clear answer on this.  I only got found vague answers that seem to relate to the firmness of the mattress.  Remember that if you do go mattress shopping locally, you can still buy the mattress online if you find them for sale cheaper there, but you will have at least given it a test drive.  I personally don’t ever want to make the mistake again of saving a hundred dollars on a mattress and paying the price with back pain for a couple of years.

I hope you found this post helpful and that you’ll find the mattress you need without paying extra for a label that was slapped on it.  Please take a look around to find more household tips, and feel free to share any experiences you might have had with shopping for an orthopedic mattress.

Keeping up with basic air conditioning maintenance when everything is working the way it should is a great way to save money and to keep things running smoothly.  As the warm season approaches, it won’t be long until many of us hear the sound of our central air conditioning unit kicking on for the first time in months. Soon afterwards, we’ll expect to feel the first rush of cool air from the air conditioning vents and assume that all is well with our system. Well, not so fast! Have you been keeping up with the basic air conditioning maintenance required for your unit?  I for one have taken an interest in air conditioner maintenance tips because the unit that we currently have cooling our house has been here since before we moved in.  I’d like to make it last as long as possible.

Not many air conditioning owners take the time or interest to prepare their units for the off-season, and those who don’t probably don’t give a thought to preparing their units for the cooling season. I probably never would have either, but during a furnace repair a few years ago, one of the heating and air conditioning technicians mentioned that our AC unit was pretty old.  After I found out how much the installation of new central air conditioners cost, I became very interested in keeping things running.  Ignoring air conditioning maintenance can reduce the life of the unit and can prove to be a very costly mistake.

A relatively short amount of time and a little effort and expense can result in a huge savings, to say nothing of avoiding the misery of spending a day or several days in the blistering heat awaiting the arrival of the HVAC contractors or repairmen. Why not plan to take care of this chore before disaster strikes? Depending on your circumstances and ability, you’re likely to find at least some things you can do yourself .

If you were provided with an owner’s manual for your air conditioning unit, this is the time to find it and peruse the section on owner maintenance. If you don’t have such a manual, following you’ll find some very basic, general tips on what to consider. Depending on your circumstances and desire, you’ll find at least some maintenance items you can do yourself and leave the rest to a professional air conditioning maintenance contractor. Either way, don’t leave the maintenance undone.  If you have no interest in keeping up the maintenance of your air conditioner, you should seriously consider paying for a maintenance service plan from the company that installed your AC unit.

Some Basic Air Conditioning Maintenance for Homeowners

First of all, to be safe, cut the power to the unit to avoid accidents.  The simplest item of maintenance is to simply replace the filter. Most people realize that their furnace has a filter, but not so many are aware that filtering is perhaps even more critical to the operation of their air conditioning unit. Airborne contaminants of all descriptions are removed by the filter before they can be drawn through the evaporator or coils of the unit.

The evaporator coils are contained in a part that resembles a radiator, with many metal fins closely arranged. These fins dissipate the heat from the fluids being pushed through them. Their close spacing makes them an ideal location for the collection of airborne debris, and to the extent that you can preclude such stuff from reaching them, you will allow your air conditioning unit to function more efficiently.

You’ll find that you need a particular size of filter to fit your unit. That much is not variable. However, you will also find that there is a range of filters that will remove more or less of the airborne contaminants that find their way to its surface. Generally, those that will operate more efficiently will cost somewhat more. You may have a filter that can be washed and re-used, in which case a thorough cleaning with a garden hose in the direction of the air flow will work wonders.

Another relatively simple chore that the homeowner can perform is to clean the condenser coil. This will be found outside in the housing for the compressor. This also can become clogged, and being located outdoors and not filtered, you may find leaves and other such stuff trapped there, not to mention just plain dirt. The bigger stuff you can pull out by hand. The finer stuff can be washed out with a garden hose. Some people think this would be a good project to employ their power washer. Be aware that the fins can be damaged and bent and doing so will result in a decrease in your air conditioning unit’s efficiency.  It can also lead to needing air conditioner repair services, and you don’t want those if you can avoid them.  Better just to use the garden hose and maybe a brush to remove the mess.

These are the most basic and frequently needed items of air conditioner maintenance, and easily within the abilities of most people.  As household tips go, they are pretty simple, yet effective. Other maintenance items ought to be performed at least annually, and a trip from a heating and air conditioning technician is the best way to have them taken care of.  If you are in doubt, contact a local HVAC company and ask them for advice before you risk damaging anything.  Paying for a HVAC repair will be much more costly than making a phone call to ask a few questions.  Remember that deferred or neglected maintenance is likely to end up costing several thousand dollars for repair or replacement of failed units, so don’t skimp on the inexpensive air conditioning maintenance that you can do yourself.