What follows are the notes from my reviews of various washers and dryers...

I went appliance shopping the other day.
...And I took 15 pages of notes!

Yep, I spent close to 3 hours at the local Home Depot and Lowe's stores trying to get some basic ideas for our kitchen and laundry appliances.

I don't know where we'll eventually buy our appliances from, but I simply wanted to get some general information about the products available on the market today.

As I inspected, opened, closed, turned, sized, and photographed practically every appliance that the Home Depot had on display (their selection was about 1/3 that of the Lowe's store), I jotted down notes about each one in my 5x7 notebook. I'll be sharing my notes about the specific appliances in future articles, but I just thought I'd give the general overview at this point.

I was mostly interested in two things:

#1 Overall Dimensions -- I was hoping to get a better idea about how much space to allow for the appliances in our laundry room and kitchen cabinetry design.

#2 Overall Quality -- How flimsy were the drawers? How easy did the doors open & close? How effective was the door seal at keeping out air? How solid does the product seem overall?... which would determine how long the product was likely to last in our home. How do the manufacturers compare?

I learned a lot! ...

We will have to dig a well at our property, so we turned to Watson Company for answers to our questions about wells.

Here's what we've learned... (lots of fun facts about digging a well and water usage for all to enjoy here).

Choosing the right floorplan for your dream home is based on two things:

1. Your basic "wants" and "needs"; and
2. How your family will ultimately utilize the spaces within your home.

Now is the time to explore floorplans and begin to scrutinize the layouts and the little things within each of them.

When building a new home, you are investing a lot of hard work, time, and money.

But have you given any thought to just how long those things that you're installing are going to last? I have.

Recently the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) shed some light on the life expectancy of common components inside a home -- everything from appliances, cabinetry, and flooring... to roofing, plumbing, and HVAC.

Have a look...

What follows are some of the unique features that we plan to incorporate into our log home's master bathroom.

One way to use this is as an "idea list"... to help you weigh out the pro's and con's of various bathroom features in order to ultimately determine your own "wants" and "needs" list for your own master bathroom.