We’ve recently added the product Get Growing from Get Microsolutions out of Fort Collins, CO. I was very happy to have this product because I have just the lawn it is designed for. My lawn is full of thatch. The grass isn’t all bad, but is far from wonderful. I water a lot and it looks great. I water sparingly and it looks terrible. I fertilize, I mulch when I mow (which I love, I’ll never bag again!) so I thought that Get Growing would help me out.

    Get growing is, well, allow me to quote from the Get Microsolutions website:

GET Growingâ„¢’s benefical microbes recycle grass clippings and other plant materials, helping your lawn, garden, and flower beds feed themselves.GET Growingâ„¢ works in all geographies, all soil types, and with all plant species or your money back.

GET Growingâ„¢’s family friendly product technology is safe for kids and pets. Unlike fertilizers, it:
builds soil structure
leaves virtually no carbon footprint
does not harm wildlife or contribute to nitrate pollution of ground water, rivers, and lakes

    That pretty well sums up just what I need. So I applied it on May 12. I’ll keep you updated as to how well it works in the coming weeks. I did find one downside right away: It doesn’t cover very much area. I have a 5000sq ft (roughly) lawn. The bottle says that’s just what it covers. However as I was applying from the end of my hose I was only about one-third done when the bottle was about empty. I didn’t quite get half of my lawn covered. It really comes out quickly, so be prepared to walk fast and spray it around quickly to get all your lawn covered. Good & Bad with this, at least I should be able to compare the two halves of my lawn and see how well it really works.

-Clark

   Grout. Now there’s an exciting subject. Nothing like staying at home on a Friday night and sealing your grout. Hoo Boy! Here in lies the problem. Grout is a really boring part of life and one of those things that nobody ever thinks about. That is until your grout cracks and leaks. Then you’ve got something to think about.

   Our bathroom project was to be one main bathroom in the house. The day before we were to start, however, the shower in our master bath decided to leak through the cracked grout, through the subfloor, throught the downstairs ceiling and on to the basement floor. As Sam from Qunatum Leap would say, “Oh boy!” So needless to say we started on that bathroom first.

   The culprit was cracked grout. Nope not very big cracks, had to look fairly closely with a flashlight just to see them, but water sure found its way through the cracks. It was kinda like an NTSB inspector at the scene of a plane  crash as we looked for a reason behind the leaks. It was obvious after the fact, but hard to tell before. I’m certain this grout, which was 43 years old, was sealed maybe once or twice, and easily not within the last ten years. Hard to say for certain, but proper maintenance and sealing more often would likely have saved us from replacing all the tile in the shower.

   Yep we ripped out all the tile, the old and partially rotted drywall and took it down to bare studs. Let it dry out really well, put up new cement board and new tile as well as a new fixture and all is great again. It’s a good ending, but still not a job I was planning on doing.

   The moral of this story is to look at your grout, however boring it may seem. Seal it regularly, keep it clean and look for cracks. It’s entirely easier than replacing a whole shower.

-Clark

   Our designated blogger, Meghan, has moved on to graduate college and get married. Great news for her, but not so great news for us. That means I’m back to writing my own blogs. Oh well.

   So what have I been up to latley? Remodeling two of the bathrooms in my house. Ah yes, this is one of those inspired projects that looks so easy. Just get a new vanity, new tile on the bathtub, re-surface the tub, hang new towel bars, a little paint and voila, new bathroom! Why it only takes a half-hour to do these type of projects on TV. I see it done all the time.

   Yeah, right.

   I started this project in February and only hope to have it all done by the end of May. This was a winter, inside project. Something to do to keep me from being bored while it was cold out.

   Well, things are getting there, but at a very slow pace. It’s been a real pain at times and interesting at others. I’ve learned a lot about building, contractors, cabinet shops, big box stores as well as many products we sell. I’ll keep you posted here in the coming weeks and let you know the good, the bad and the ugly about the entire project.

Until then, it’s back to work for me.

-Clark

 

Michelangelo Faux Finishing has been taken off the market.  Consequently, Michelangelo is no longer available through our store.

We’ve just received an innovative new masking tape called Frog Tape. What could be innovative about masking tape you ask? You’d be surprised. It’s green. No, that’s not the innovative part. The innovative part is the way that frog Tape actually seals on the edge and does not let paint weep in.

We’ve all painted with masking tape being very careful to lay down a clean straight edge. Then you peel off the tape only to find that some paint has seeped under the edge of the tape and now you have a not so clean line. Frog Tape is designed to eliminate this problem. Frog Tape has polymers embedded in to the adhesive layer of the tape. These absorb the liquid paint and expand to seal off the edge of the tape, not letting any paint get underneath. Peel off the Frog Tape and you’ll see a very clean edge - just what you wanted in the first place.

For more information visit FrogTape.com, or come see the tape here at our store!

ACE Bag Sale, originally uploaded by dzvette53.

So some of you may have been for the ACE bag sale we had where anything you could fit in the bag, you got 20% off on. Well, I’m not exactly sure this was what all of us ACE stores had in mind but what the hell?!

How could you NOT give this guy the discount!!! This is a fun sale every time we do it, hopefully a few of you got in on it and got a 20% discount.

One of the coolest new products to come around in the past year or so at first seems to be one of the most boring. A dryer Lint brush. Yeah, not exactly a wild and exciting new technological leap forward. Or is it?

Consider this: I had a clothes dryer in a condo that I lived in many years ago that was perpetually clogged with lint. The dryer took at least three cycles to dry clothing. The poor design of the building made the vent very long and had many corners so lint always built up in the vent tube. The condo association hired a contractor to come out and clean these periodically at a huge expense. Then my dryer would work well for a few months.

I also had a dryer at another place I rented many years ago. The dryer worked very poorly and the landlord was about to buy a new one. I took the back off of it and cleaned out years of lint build up. The dryer was like new. My landlord was so happy she lowered my rent. (Yeah right. wishful thinking!)

Now we stock several dryer cleaning brushes so you can keep your dryer vent tube clean and free of lint clogs as well as keeping your dryer itself free from lint build-up. These are simple brushes that range from about seven to twenty dollars and are easy to use. A flexible long reach brush will reach down in to your dryer itself and pull the loose lint from those areas where the lint gets by the lint filter. A drill powered long flexible 4″ brush will reach down your vent tube and clean the lint that clings to the sides of the vent, closing it down like a bad case of cholesterol. Use these a few times a year and your dryer will run safer and much more efficiently. The money you’ll save on electricity by having to run your dryer for less time will easily pay for these tools and your time. Even more importantly, lint build-up can be a fire hazard, so it’s important to keep the vent clean.

So like I said, lint isn’t exactly an exciting topic, but getting rid of it is. A clean vent and a smooth running dryer will only make your life easier and possibly get rid of an annoying problem, and that’s always exciting!

I’m certain that you’ve seen the Energy Star logo on many an item. Energy Star is a very good program of the EPA. You can find out a lot more at energystar.gov, and see lots of programs that they endorse. I only have one problem with them, they’re to paperwork intensive. They are after all, a government entity. I tried to get us signed up as a participating store reecently. Well, they require a large amount of paperwork to sign up, then many forms to be filled out along the way. Again, not a bad thing, just seems to be counterproductive to me. So, why am I saying this? Because we have many Energy Star approved products in stock.

We not only have products to sell, but we use Energy Star products here ourselves. We have just purchased and will soon have installed two new CFL light fixtures for the exterior of our store. These will replace old mercury vapor lights. We are about nine months in to our new lighting, using electronic T-8 bulbs that replace the old T-12 bulbs. We not only have more and better light in the store, we’re saving 15% consistently each month on electricity.

We have also just reduced the paperwork we generate in our office. We buy 100% recycled office paper, but feel even better about reducing what we generate. We should use about 21 fewer reems of paper per year than before! We have two new toilets waiting to be installed as well. Yes, we’re awfully behind getting in line with the low-flow toilets, but we’re doing it.

So, we’re not the greenest store in the world, nor do we claim to be. But we do try to reduce, re-use and recycle as much as possible. And even though we won’t have the official Energy Star logo on our front door, we do sell and promote many Energy Star rated items.

Reflectix Insulation is not a new product, but I remember when it was. Somewhere around ’89-’90 we started stocking it at the store I was with at the time. Sales took off right away as many people found great and unique uses for it. Today it is no different. People are still finding unique uses for it and it remains one of the coolest products around. Or, one of the hottest products, depending on how you use it!

Reflectix insulation is the foil bubble insulation you have no doubt seen in use in many places. It comes is 16”, 24” and 48” widths, and we sell it by the full roll or just a few feet if that’s all you need. We’ll also have their 2” wide pipe wrap very soon. (The 2” is a new product to Ace, and yes I have a need for it, so yes I am going to stock it in our store. I don’t always stock something just because I want it, only when I’m really sold on the item!)

I was just using Reflectix this past weekend. I have a new duct for my heating and A/C and wanted it insulated before I boxed it in and dry walled around it. I brought home regular fiberglass and the Reflectix, wasn’t certain just what I would use. Yeah, right. As soon as I really got started it was a no-brainer. The Reflectix is so easy to work with. It cuts with a knife or scissors very well, it wraps and shapes and conforms and stays really nicely. Using the foil tape to connect and seal it all in is a breeze. The tape is also great to work with, just do be careful not to stick it to itself. No scratchy fiberglass to work with, no blown in mess, and no foam that’s hard to adhere. My project was done quickly, easily and works well.

I’ve used Reflectix over the years to wrap water heaters, ducts & pipes. I’ve used it in windows and doorways for extra insulation. I’ve seen it used in car headliners, floors, and for windows in cars and RV’s. It’s practically only limited by your needs and imagination.

The other cool thing about it is purely a guy thing. In fact, it’s purely a high-tech guy thing. When you’ve wrapped something in it, it looks like something straight from NASA! The foil bubble and the foil tape combine to give a space age look to anything. Wrap your water heater in it, show it to our friends, and brag about your new liquid hydrogen storage tank for converting hydrogen to power for your house and see how many believe you. You’d be surprised!

Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, or CFL’s as they’re commonly called are finally becoming a huge thing in the world of lighting. Why has it taken so long? I can recall in 1990 (or so) when they first hit the market. The Earthlight was the first big hit bulb, but it was big, heavy expensive and sold only moderately well. I was in California then, and even with all the earth-friendly folks out there, it was a hard sell. When I moved back here to Loveland, CFL’s were and even harder sell. Nobody seemed to be very ineterested in a bulb that flickered, lit slowly and cost $10.00. Then came the big electrical crunch in California 4-5 years ago. The stores in California, along with the utility companies, were selling thousands, where they used to sell dozens.
The bulbs have also finished that final push to become what people want. They’re smaller, cheaper, they light up instantly and last a long, long time. That brings me to today, where CFL’s are quickly becoming a huge part of our light bulb inventory. Just yesterday I placed orders for more than twenty new types of CFL’s. We will soon have the best selection of CFL’s around. We’ll have CFL’s to fit every common bulb in your house, from your floods, indoor and out, to your chandelier to your bathroom vanity. Not to mention we’ll have a better selection of comon “A” or pear shaped bulbs for standard lamps and fixtures.
I worked for years with the manufacturers to get them to come out with a multi-pack of CFL’s, so people could buy them just like regular bulbs. Well they finally did so, and that has quickly become our best seller. So much of the cost was in the packaging that it kept the per bulb price around 4-5 dollars. Now the price is around 2 dollars per bulb.
Still not convinced? Consider this: I have replaced enough regular bulbs in my house to equal over 1500 watts in electricity saved. That’s equal to running your average electrical space heater. They’re also much cooler than regular bulbs, which is another plus on the hot summer days.
Still not convinced? Check out two things. One, www.EnergyStar.gov for even more information, and two the City of Loveland/Platte River Power Authority CFL rebate program that is coming this fall to our store. Stay tuned for more details on the rebate program, it will be great!