Home and Lawn

Last month, I got rid of an old reclining sofa that my wife and I purchased 24 years ago. At the time, it was an elegant black-blue leather sofa that reclined in a special way that it could be placed safely next to the wall. I say the color of the sofa is black-blue because I always assumed the color of the furniture was black, while my wife insists that it is blue. This debate on color was never settled, but I can assure you that family history protocol will dictate that I was wrong and my wife is correct.

In a move set to disrupt the home improvement industry, GreatBuildz—a leading homeowner-contractor matching service—has launched BidCompareAI. This free and publicly available AI-powered tool is designed to help homeowners make sense of contractor bids—one of the most confusing and error-prone aspects of home renovation projects.

I haven't been writing too much lately as I've been busy on a number of personal projects. One of those projects has been redoing my office at home. My previous office space was put together haphazardly a few years ago as a response to the pandemic and finding I needed my own space for both work and play. Fast forward a few years and I now find I want the office space to be better designed, more functional, and include better furniture.

In the early years of our marriage, my wife and I bought a lighted Christmas wreath. The wreath was two feet in diameter and was strung with the old incandescent cluster lights. This wreath hung in our picture window of our first house and would make its way to the transom window above the front door of our second house. Over the years this Christmas wreath had become my favorite decoration to hang during the holiday season.

The other day I witnessed a children's story time that showed a picture of an incandescent light bulb symbolizing an idea. At that moment I thought to myself, pretty soon these kids will have no idea what a traditional light bulb looks like as they get replaced with more modern lights. Take for instance my own garage where I recently replaced the last of my light bulbs with LED Garage Ceiling lights that aren't bulbs but now LED lights composed of 6 adjustable LED panels. So it goes, time has moved on in my own house.

Whether intentional or not, Home Depot briefly listed a never before seen "21 inch Select Cut Lawn Mower with Touch Drive Technology" .  While we're unaware of public announcement from EGO POWER+, we came across a couple interesting pages online via Home Depot Pro that may very well be an upcoming new EGO Power+ mower about to hit the market. Details on this new mower are subject to change but below is what we can speculate from the information we know so far.

EGO is about to introduce to market a new 21 inch 56-Volt cordless electric walk behind mower with two significant features:

This winter I'll be relying on my newly purchased EGO Power+ Snow Blower to clear the snow off the driveway. However, this EGO snow blower isn't my first battery-powered snow blower as that honor goes to Snow Joe's first two-stage 80V Cordless Snow Blower, the iON24SB-XR (Amazon affiliate link).

For the past couple years I've had an obsession with battery-powered cordless tools. While I've bought a number of cordless power tools and even a cordless snow blower...what has been missing in my garage is an all-battery lawn mower.  For the past couple years, I've had my eyes on the EGO Power+ 56V Lithium-Ion Self-Propelled Mower.

A few weeks ago during my visit to the local Home Depot, I came across the Ryobi RM480E, an all-battery powered electric riding lawn mower. Ryobi claims that you'll get up to 2 hours of run time or cut up to 2 acres on a single charge. This quiet, smooth battery powered riding mower houses three high-torque brushless motors to support the mower's blades and drivetrain.  The RM480E's uses four 12V lead acid batteries instead of lithium-ion which given the choice  and given the size of the mower  so they're not lithium).