A few weeks ago, during Easter dinner, my wife’s cousin pulled out his new iTouch gizmo. He wanted to show me some pictures he’d taken at his cottage. Pretty soon he was showing off his device, logging online through a wireless network—over turkey and wine. Then came the chainsaw videos.

YouTube, as I’ve mentioned before, is teeming with silly, sometimes dangerous acts caught on video. And while the Paris Hiltons of the world think “bedroom” when it comes to dangerous acts caught on tape, some of us think chainsaw, as in: wielding a five-pound tool spinning a chain that would sever your head in five seconds … and using it as a toy!

Dumb acts with a chainsaw: entertaining, yes; something you should try at home, no. Instead, sit back and learn from these lessons.

Lesson 1: Safety harnesses are key when climbing a tree in order to cut it down.

Lesson 2: When removing a tree, yelling “timber” isn’t enough—make sure the surrounding area is clear too.

Lesson 3: If chainsaws make you nervous, try another tool (U.S. readers only).

Lesson 4: In the esteemed words of Dean Martin, “if you drink, don’t drive. Don’t even putt.” Same goes for chainsaws.

Lesson 5: Chainsaws eliminate the need for hotdog buns.

Lesson 6: Ask yourself, does the tree really need to come down?

Lesson 7: Cutting down a tree with a chainsaw? Easy. Filming it? Not quite as simple.

Of course, it’s not all fun and games when it comes to deadly, gas-powered tools. Here’s some great video on the dos and don’ts of chainsaw operation and maintenance. And its follow-ups, how to remove or tighten the chain.

Safety equipment is a genuinely crucial component of operating a chainsaw. Especially important: how to put on chaps.

But if you’re into talking about chainsaws, learning about the difference between electric and gas, or just looking at pretty pictures of these fine-toothed beauties, the recently launched Chainsaw Blog is where it’s at. No one seems to be sporting chaps, but it’s probably because they know better.

Most of us—Tom and Katie, if you’re reading this, skip to next blog posting—care about our home’s resale value, even if we’re not planning to move anytime soon. We renovate for more space, to update appearances and to increase the value of the house. With the proliferation of home reno TV shows and magazines, homeowners are renovating more than ever before, fixing up rather than selling. Canadians spent $9.2 billion on renos in the first quarter of 2007, an increase of more than eight per cent over last year, according to Statistics Canada, with similar growth in the U.S.

When it comes to return on investment, not all renos are created equal. Some huge investments (installing a swimming pool, for example) curry zero ROI, while seemingly simple and inexpensive quick-fixes (painting kitchen cupboards) instantly up the ante when it comes to resale value. According to the Royal LePage Renovations and Returns Survey, released this week, the top three ROI renos are interior painting, installing hardwood flooring and kitchen upgrades.

The survey ranked renos according to approximate cost and approximate ROI, grouping projects by DIY and jobs that likely require professional help. In the DIY category, painting the interior ($1,000) curries a 50 to 100 per cent ROI; replacing carpeting with laminate ($2,000) is 50 to 75 per cent ROI; and installing new light fixtures ($2,000) has about 60 to 70 per cent ROI.

In the professional section, installing an additional bathroom on the main floor (less than $5,000) has a staggering 80 to 100 per cent ROI; renovating existing bathrooms ($6,500) equals 75 to 100 ROI; and a kitchen reno ($13,500) offers the same 75 to 100 per cent ROI.

The survey outlines 11 upgrades, from simple to complex, that will increase your home’s value. You can read the details yourself here.

Of course, Royal LePage isn’t the first organization to look at home renos and ROI; the web offers an abundance of surveys, some more applicable than others depending on location and climate. Here is a small assortment:

Kitchen design blogger Laurie Burke has a great post on her page, talking about Fidelity National’s Cyberhomes site that allows you to check ROI according to your zip code. You can discover, for example, that if you live within, say, 10 miles of Matt Damon in South Beach, Florida, and you decide to renovate an existing bathroom, the $6,500 spent will increase your home’s value by $8,765. Not bad at all.

Utah blogger Chris Pearson outlines the top 3 rooms to invest in here. He also warns against “over-improving” your home to the point where it doesn’t fit in with the neighborhood and is actually hard to sell. Neverland Ranch, anyone?

CNN warns us that some renos actually lower your home’s resale value. Swimming pools, boxy additions and trendy finishes or fixtures like a 40-jet, Eliot Spitzer-worthy hot tub, are costly to install, have low ROI and might just have your neighbours thinking you never left 1974.

Every spring my street puts on a block-long yard sale. It’s a day-long event and often the entire neighbourhood can be found sitting outside in raincoats, shivering as we sell $2 books and household junk. I’ve found some great stuff walking through the driveways—computer speakers, a ratchet set—and yet, for every useful item, there are dozens of broken, seemingly useless objects being sold. Who wants a computer hinged with a “Doesn’t Work—$10” sign? Believe me, I’ve seen this.

Now I say “seemingly useless” because while these broken items might not sell to Joe Consumer, they are sometimes useful to non-profit organizations and other community-minded groups. So rather than simply throwing out old stuff, or wasting away an entire day for a $40 profit at your garage sale, consider donating your stuff. Now that it’s all organized, this should be easy enough to arrange. Here are a few options.

Building Materials

Depending on where you live, there are likely dozens of resell stores and drop-off centres for used—but still useful—building materials such as windows, doors, paint, tools, you name it. Habitat For Humanity, for example, sells donated materials through their ReStores and uses the proceeds to fund Habitat projects, while at the same time reducing the amount of waste sent to the landfills. If you’re looking for a ReStore near you, you can find options in Canada, as well as the U.S.

Computers and electronics

There’s nothing worse than seeing an old computer monitor sitting on the curb getting soaked by the rain. As PCs have dropped in price, many of us are upgrading our clunky desktops with tiny laptops. In fact, some municipalities have made it illegal to throw away computer parts without paying for a disposal fee. So while you won’t get much for a massive monitor, you can still donate it to a school, shelter or retailer that will fix it up and sell the “renovated” machine at a discount, often donating part of the funds to charity.

Computers With Causes takes your computer and gives you a tax receipt, just like you’d get with any registered charity. Computer Hope offers a similar service, as does ReBoot Canada.

Furniture and Household items

Almost every community has a Goodwill or Salvation Army drop-off centre for used couches, chairs, carpeting, dishes and toys—things that wouldn’t necessarily sell in your neighbourhood yard sale but would be useful to less-fortunate or simply frugal people (hello, students). We’ve got the links at the top, but you know your own Sally Ann.

For a more comprehensive list of donation spots near you, for every purpose, visit CharityVillage (Canada) and the Household Goods Donation Program in the U.S.

Last week I talked about portable tool organizers, a topic that’s dear to my heart now that I’ve begun my springtime cleanup. Having a mess of screws, glues, tape and tools tangled together inside my front-hall closet was causing me to curse. Now that I’ve got that under control, it’s time to tackle the rest of the house.

If you’ve ever worked in a professional kitchen, or even watched shows on The Food Network, you know the French term “mise en place,” which means, loosely, “put in place” or “prepared and ready to use.” The term is equally applicable to every room in the house, but especially shared areas. Is there anything more annoying than looking for something—scissors, bike tire pump, the remote—and discovering it’s nowhere to be found?

Luckily, the web is full of home organizing tips, although like exercise and dieting sites, most offer “the easy way” rather than giving effective, realistic tips. There are some gems though:

Organized Home is like an online magazine dedicated exclusively to getting your home in order. While it may drift into women’s magazine clichés (“Many hands make light work! Reward the team with dinner at a pizza parlor!”), it does contain some great ideas for cutting clutter and getting kids motivated to help clean.

Organization can become a personal religion for some—that’s why some of us dust and vacuum when we’re feeling anxious—and it follows that those who are passionate about keeping clean become tidying evangelists. Blogger Tracy runs a site dedicated to her passion: tips and techniques for an efficient, well-organized house. Tips to Organize Life includes room-by-room plans for keeping clutter at bay, and runs the gamut from a step-by-step checklist for the bathroom to creating a schedule for your home office.

OnlineOrganizing.com has a very cool tool in its clickable house; click on a room and up pops a list of organization tips and ideas. The site also features a clickable office, 15-minute quick fixes and checklists used by professional organizers.

Most often, the obstacle to getting organized is knowing when to let go of useless clutter and collections and how to keep regular, everyday items in their mise en place. General rule: if it’s something you use regularly, keep it in an easily accessible spot; if it’s something you use infrequently, put it away and take note of where it’s hidden so the next time you need that tire pump ASAP, you won’t need to tear apart the garage to find it. Now if I could only find where I put that note …

What is it about springtime that makes us want to clear out the clutter? Walk down any residential street in the spring and you’ll encounter garage sales—or better yet, a pile of free stuff—offering you more junk to replace the items you just got rid of. Still, the trick to spring organizing isn’t just what you remove from your home, but how you organize what you keep.

A few weeks ago, I faced this problem after cleaning out my front hallway shelving, where I keep a small assortment of everyday tools and fasteners, items I want at-the-ready for quick fixes, like small screws and nails, a multi-head screwdriver, duct tape, and so on. Rather than jimmy an awkward storage system, I’ve been considering getting a small storage container for these items.

Virtually every hardware store offers its version of “the ultimate” portable tool storage solution. Of course, “ultimate” depends on your needs and space, but the three storage solutions below should work for most lifestyles for everyday tools and fasteners.

Order a Bucket

Milwaukee’s Bucket Organizer: finally, a sensible solution to lugging tools around the house in one easy-to-carry tote. Milwaukee gets it right with its heavy-duty, 55-pocket bucket organizer made from water-resistant polyester. The various-sized pockets can house everything from a flashlight to screws and fasteners; inside the bucket is a holster for a cordless drill; and there’s a dedicated square sleeve. At $15, it’s cheaper than the Colonel’s bucket.

Fast Fasteners

Keeping screws, nails and other fasteners in jars or large, wall-mounted storage containers is fine for the home workshop, but not in spots where space is limited, like the garage. Enter Stanley Hardware’s portable, 684-piece kit (pictured below, not yet online) filled with everyday fasteners—nails, thumbtacks, pushpins, anchors, screws, picture hooks—all neatly sorted into 14 separate compartments. Made of plastic, this lightweight tray can hang on the wall or sit on a shelf. Retailing for $13 and available at Wal-Mart, other versions are sold North American-wide at other retailers.

Box it up

Toolboxes are a dime a dozen; unfortunately, most of them aren’t worth the 10 cents. For basic storage of everyday items, keep it simple and don’t overload yourself with a hefty, hard-to-carry tool box filled to the brim with tools you don’t need. Stack-On has the right idea with their 26-inch box with two removable storage boxes. Rugged, built-to-last, and inexpensive—what more could you ask for? Retail: $20.

Stayed tuned for Get Organized, Part 2: keeping your stuff in its place.

Back in the 1950s, homeowners were inundated with ads, like this one, depicting pretty housewives using state-of-the-art home appliances. The home became a symbol of post-war affluence modernized with dishwashers, dryers, ovens, vacuums and other timesavers promising to make life easier. Those were the days … days of inefficient, energy-guzzling machines. We’ve come a long way, baby. Demand for energy-efficient appliances has increased, which means prices have dropped on once-costly items such as high-efficiency furnaces.

So, how do you tell the good from the gimmick when it comes to green appliances? In North America, the easiest way to guarantee you’re buying an efficient, third-party-verified machine is to look for the Energy Star label. Energy Star is an internationally recognized rating system that tests products for energy efficiency. Products range from building materials (windows, doors, insulation, ventilation) to appliances to lighting. Some states and provinces offer rebates for Energy Star purchases.

Outdoor Green Gear

Of course, green appliances aren’t only found indoors; preparing for the springtime rush, retailers are now pushing eco-workhorses for the yard. Forget gas-guzzling mowers; Solaris’s cordless, solar-powered mower can cut up to 10,000 square feet on one battery charge. Simply mount the solar panel on your shed’s roof and get cutting. Retail value: $569.

Black & Decker allows you to mow and mulch–leaving behind grass clippings (rather than bagging and composting) that function as lawn fertilizer and reduce the need to water–with their Cordless Mulching Mower, which runs on a rechargeable 24-volt battery. Retail value: $500.

Black & Decker also makes other cordless yard tools such as hedge trimmers (about $100) and tree pruners (same price).

Super-recycler TerraCycle Inc. sells oak rain barrels for collecting rainwater for watering plants, lawns, and so on. Simply place the barrel under your gutter’s downspout and turn April’s showers in May’s flowers. Retail value: $150.

Of course, this is just a small sampling of green appliances for your home. Virtually every home category is jammed with green products, so look for the Energy Star label and read the fine print. You can find the products above at the Home Depot, and other large retailers across the continent.

By now, global-warming naysayers are fringe folk who probably also believe the world is flat. We know the benefits of recycling, and energy efficiency has become the buzzword in home building and renovating. Your highly efficient stove and windows may cost more upfront, but the real savings—and your home’s resale value—come through reduced energy bills and increased life spans while also helping make the planet a better place.

But green building isn’t just about the planet—it’s also about the health of the homeowner. Newly renovated homes often have that “new car” smell, which is really a stew of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) often found in oil paint, as well as formaldehyde off-gassing from engineered wood, like the medium-density fibreboard (MDF) used to make kitchen cabinets and furniture.

According to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, indoor air quality—especially in tight, new homes—can be three to four times more polluted than outdoor air, which may be the reason 20 per cent of North Americans have some form of lung disorder, likely linked to dust and mold in your home. We spend an average of 90 per cent of our time indoors, either at work or at home, so eliminating VOCs is crucial.

Luckily, homeowners today have options not readily available even five years ago. Most paint, for example, is virtually VOC-free, and engineered wood such as MDF is now available without formaldehyde. For flooring, CMHC recommends hard surfaces, such as prefinished hardwood flooring, or ceramic tiles laid down using a low-toxin grout. The reason: hard surfaces are easier to clean, they don’t collect dust as easily as carpet and they are last longer, which means, beyond better air quality, you’re also reducing repair costs and trips to the dump to plonk worn-out carpet.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health website includes a page dedicated to household products and toxins. Click Products and then choose Inside the Home (for bathroom, kitchen, etc.) or Home Maintenance (for grout, insulation, paint, etc.).

Still unsure how indoor air quality relates to you or how you can easily reduce harmful VOCs? Health Canada has a section containing information, resources, and even a few quizzes to help you get your air quality where you want it to be.

Up next in the Part 3 of the Green Your Home series: the appliances available that keep you feeling good about the earth.

Five years ago, “green” renovating meant three things: increased costs, questionable quality and searching through pages and pages of contractor listings till, eventually, you found a contractor knowledgeable about green building that didn’t also charge the moon. It wasn’t easy being green, but that was then and this is now.

Today, none of these statements ring true: green building materials have increased in quality while decreasing in cost as consumer demand for environmental products and systems keeps climbing. What’s more, environmentally responsible products save you money over the long haul because of increased efficiency and longer life spans; it may cost you slightly more upfront, but you’ll quickly earn back your investment while also upping the resale value of your home.

But don’t just take our word for it. Even Wall Street, traditionally weary of any shade of green other than the dollar bill, agrees: green building is both responsible from an ecological perspective, but also beneficial from an investor’s point of view. Investor website TheStreet.com takes a look at green building from a cost/benefit point of view.

Similarly, CNN’s Money Magazine takes a hard look at green reno costs and return on investment.

Incentives

Still not convinced green renos suit your budget? Well, perhaps the state can help change your mind. Governments across North America are trying to cut back on energy and water consumption, so it’s in their best interest to entice homeowners to go green, which means a plethora of grants, incentives and rebates. American rebates take the form of everything from tax breaks to grant programs, while the Canadian version is pushing energy audits various government rebate programs.

Up next in Part 2 of Green Your Home: the health benefits of green renovation

It seems every time I flip on the boob tube, there’s another happy couple—well, generally happy, but momentarily disgruntled couple—undergoing a home reno while TV cameras roll. Welcome to prime time, where homeowners and professional renovators flip the ugly, the outdated, the unlivable into a contemporary nest in less time than it takes most of us to re-tile a small bathroom.

If home reno shows have done one thing well, it is to expose the bad guys in the business. But while they have raised the status of a few good men, and women, these shows have also given off the impression that renovation is a card game where you need to call bluffs and gamble your savings.

Money Blue Book, a blog about “smart investing, frugal living and credit card offers” offers up what it considers the best house-flipping and house-hunting TV shows. But it should be noted that “best” here refers to “most entertaining.” For example, here’s Blogger Ray (no last name) on A&E’s Flip This House: “I love the show and found it irresistibly entertaining due to the endless stream of scam and fakery controversies [including] Atlanta “real estate developer” Sam Leccima and his Season 2 housing-flip scam debacle. His on-the-air house flipping prowesses were later exposed and discredited as shams by news investigators when it was revealed that he had duped many investors in an elaborate flipping cover up.” “Ray’s” passionate analysis continues on the site.

But I don’t mean to just focus on the negative. Instructional TV has come a long way since the days of Bob Ross reminiscing about wartime while painting his latest water-colour masterpiece. While we’re inundated with a few too many shows these days, there are at least a few worth your half hour.

Canada’s HGTV carries a wide selection of less glamorous, more realistic reno shows, even if they are slightly sped up—hey, come on, it’s television. Most notable is Holmes on Homes, starring contractor Mike Holmes as the tough-talking, bicep-wielding here-I-come-to-save-the-day pro.

The original reno shows belong to This Old House, the New England program starring everyman Norm Abram. Beginning in 1982, this is probably television’s longest-running reno show.

Of course, we can’t really talk TV without mentioning the Kenny Rogers of DIY, Bob Vila. This guy can sell, and unlike us regular folk, his hair never seems to grey and his golf shirts never seem to fade.

Re-doing on YouTube

YouTube is known to be full of “interesting” time wasters—a recent entry, Star Wars commentary by a three-year-old comes to mind—and home renovation is well represented. But it isn’t all jokes on this great digital hope when it comes to renos and design ideas. As soon as a tricky problem is conquered, people want to share their know-how with others. This used to mean telling your softball team or work buddies; now it means sharing it with millions through video. Note: soundtracks apparently are not optional.

• A complete house reno on hyper-speed in two parts

• A before and after video, where this house is transformed from bland to . . . not bad. Hey, it’s the spirit of the job, right?

• This film brings you right to the job site before revealing the final finish

• Ah, the classic bathroom reno, Hollywood style

• Small houses deserve loving care too, especially in the wilds of Alaska

Makeover Madness

Of course, for every stellar example, there is its complete opposite.

• A homeowner is visited by a renovating ghost (warning: scary stuff here)

• A spoof of TV reno show Holmes on Homes (warning: funny stuff here)

• Hammer juggling, possibly a German pastime?

How-to Videos

YouTube is also chock-full-’o installation tips; however, for every useful, thoughtful, safe renovation video there are dozens of ill-conceived, dangerous “tips” and “techniques” from amateurs without proper knowledge of safe, efficient building techniques. Here are some helpful videos:

• How to get the most from your stud-finder, narrated by a, uh, stud

• Curious how contractors devise the framing layout for your house? Finally, real answers

• A time-lapse video showing kitchen floor tiling

• Speaking of tiling, here’s how it’s done in Australia

• How to fix the toilet (not exactly glamorous, but undoubtedly useful)

Before attempting anything shown on YouTube, use caution; if you’re unsure of what’s being shown, ask your contractor or hardware retailer for a second opinion. After all, those same people posting how-tos on YouTube? Well, they could also be the ones posting “Handyman.”