Bob

We had 3 cherry tomatoes we were able to pick.. Actually have a few tomatoes and a couple of peppers appearing.

Also had one jalapeno crop up, but that was short lived as the youngest grabbed it and said it's not that hot and proceeded to have a bite. Didn't end well. Said chilli is scattered around the garden now.

Pulaski

My garden has been negected and I need to go and tie everything up and do some weeding before I'd consider taking any pictures of it. .... And the deer have been browsing on the tomato plants, again!

mrken30

Did get my first reasonably sized apricots this year.

lizzyq

They look good!

I am, as ever, fighting the wildlife for some of our produce, but today I picked peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, a melon and some cucamelons/mouse melons/Mexican sour gherkins.


Savor melon - ideal for 2 people

Crisp, crunchy and only slightly sour. Usually I eat them before they reach the house!

markonline1

Finally moved out of our fairly cramped house into a decent sized one. Bought if off a real old couple, so although everything is in good nick, it’s dated. Carpets are pretty effed too with stuff having been dropped on them and not cleaned up. So floors are getting replaced, popcorn ceilings are getting removed. My project is the living room. There is a family room off the kitchen, so I want the living room to be a nice modern room with decent tv options. The larger tv is already in there. Looking at home theater options. Going between the home theater, which will obviously sound better, and a decent sound bar that will give a cleaner look. Feel free to share thoughts or pics so I can get some inspiration.
Room before the work begins (although popcorn has been removed)

SpoogleDrummer

Are you missing a light in the ceiling? I only ask as the front room/office in my house doesn't have a ceiling light and it really bugs me, but not enough for me to go crawling through the room to wire one in.

Pulaski

Do you have access under or over the room? I installed the cables for surround sound in the walls and under the floor. It took some time and patience to thread the cables, but it's great having wall-mounted speakers behind the sofa without having cables trailed across the floor.

tom169

And if you're going to put a light in consider getting a fan/light combo while you're at it.

Steerpike

Congrats on the new home! Have prices come down a bit due to the virus, etc?

I personally have found 'surround sound' systems to be more trouble than they are worth, but part of that is because my g/f is hard of hearing, and all the 'surround sound' systems seem to make things worse for her (they tend to favor the sound effects over the voice, and she can't hear the dialog). So when I moved I gave away a ton of fancy gear and now use the TV's built-in speakers! Sad but true ... I've also had sound bars and found them to be OK.

But I may be able to offer one bit of advice. I see you have a power recliner in the middle of the room, with a power brick leading to it. I bought a similar recliner recently. And just a few weeks ago, I discovered that nearly all power recliners use the same connectors, and I was able to replace the power cord with a battery that I picked up on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07NV3LSZJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1Not cheap at $99, but it worked perfectly! Apparently it will run for months without a charge. Then when it runs down, you just plug it in for half a day and you get another 3 months. I actually have two recliners side by side, and the one battery feeds both of them.

This is the connector:



As for the lighting - I find the classic 'center of ceiling' light to be very unattractive, and something only found in UK. If you are going to spend time and money on lighting, I'd put in a bunch of recessed lights around the ceiling. You can do new LED lamps very cheaply and you'll get a much more even light from, say, 6 or 9 recessed lamps vs. one big bright central lamp.

Nutek

We had a 7 speaker surround (+ sub). When we moved house I chucked it in the dumpster and we just went with a sound bar. Just couldn't face all the fuss and extra hardware littering the place.

Not gonna claim the bar sounds better (it doesn't), but it isn't THAT much "worse" and it is clean, simple and fuss-free.

Nutek

This.

Pulaski

As fan-light combo's seem to be a popular recommendation, I should point out that fans are much more position-specific than lights, so a ceiling light that has an unremarkable location somewhere near the centre of the room can become weirdly off-centre with respect to the fan.

So we have a bedroom fan centred on the room, but not over the only practical location for the bed, so the fan is over my feet, and we have a fan in the breakfast nook that is too far into the nook, so is close to the far edge of the table, and then the light in the bonus room was weirdly close to the attic access, and the previous owners had therefore installed the most ridiculously small fan you ever saw in a room that is about 15ft x 20ft .... and the light fitting wasn't even centred on the room in the first place! I moved the wiring and light fitting sideways by a couple of joists, moving the fan closr to the centre of the room and simulataneouly moving it away from the attic hatch. Needless to say, moving a light fitting on the ground floor of a two storey home is almost certainly more trouble than its worth.

tom169

Neat idea for the battery

Steerpike

Just to expand on this, in case anyone wants to pursue it - if the chair in question has any 'lights' on it, it can affect the battery. Some chairs, these days, have USB ports, and helpful lights near the switches to aid in their location. So if you have that chair type, the battery life can be affected. But my chair, while it has USB ports (which I don't use), it doesn't have lights.

lizzyq

Today I picked tomatoes, a little under-ripe to beat the critters. A couple of days in the kitchen and they will be fully ripe, these are "brandy boy"