Home improvement

I know that the grilling season is coming to an end in many states, but here in California the grilling season is year round. I've been grilling food since i was a little kid. I've started with grilling cookies in a tin can over an open log fire that me and my friends would light up by the lake. When I learned to fish, I’ve started cooking whatever i caught by putting it on a stick over a camp fire.
Today, however, i do it as most civilized people do - on a proper grill. Since the taste is the most important factor, i have been a big fan of the charcoal grills. To me, cooking on anything else was blasphemy.
This year my charcoal grill gave up (burned through) and i couldn't abuse it any more. It served me all of 5 years, which is not bad, but not great either. With that in mind the search for the new grill started. After years of cooking, I’ve learned what really matters in a good grill:

1 - ease of cleaning. Why is this #1 on my list? Because it doesn't matter if it is charcoal, gas, wood if you don't use it because it takes too much time and effort to clean the grill. And if you don't clean your grill regularly, you should not be grilling. It is important to clean in order not to contaminate the food. While microbes will burn off, the charred food bits are actually known carcinogens and are not good for your body. The second reason why cleaning is important is the longevity of the grill. If you don't take care of it - it will fail sooner than later. A messy, dirty grill is also a very unappetizing sight.
2 - convenience - the grill should be easy to start. If you don't know how to do it properly or don't have the right setup - it will turn into a chore that will make you think twice about grilling. Nowadays all types of grills can be started quickly, if you get the right grill of course.
3 - temperature control - you should be able to set the desired temperature in the range between about 230 to around 600 degrees. Some foods you want to cook slowly over low heat, while others should be places on high heat.
4 - quality. A grill should be made of quality materials that will not contaminate food and will not require replacement in at least 5 years.
5 - price. You wan to pay the least amount of money for the best possible grill in its category. This doesn't mean it will cost $50 or a $100 dollars. It means that you don't have to overpay for one that has the same quality as another.
6 - warranty and support. When my grill burned through after 5 years - i could not get replacement parts to get it functional again. It was destined for the landfill, which is a real shame. You should be able to get replacement parts for a grill even after 10 years of use.

We are undergoing some remodeling at our house, namely installing hard wood floors, baseboard and crown molding. Since I'm a big do-it-yourself proponent and a notorious penny-pincher, I've decided to take a look if it makes sense to it myself. At $2.5 per square foot for labor - we would have to pay around $3,000 for floors alone and about another $800 to get our baseboards and crown moldings installed. Not sure if $3800 is a lot of money for you, but it sure is for our family.

In order to install the floors, crown molding and baseboard I will need a miter saw. But which one and where to buy it? I knew nothing about miter saws, so immediately I've made a few mistakes before I got what I needed. So if you need a miter saw - read the rest of the article to learn from my mistakes and do the right thing from the very start

Mistake #1 - I went to Harbor Freight and bought a 10 sliding miter saw. When i got this beast home, unpacked it and turned it on I've discovered a few problems. For starters the blade and fence (the rail against which you line up the piece being cut) were not square, as in they were at an odd angle. So if i cut anything - it wouldn't be at the angle I wanted it to be. The second problem was the unbearable noise the motor on this cheap saw produced. So at $150 it was cheap, but the quality was definitely lacking. 

Mistake #2 - Alright, so cheap saws were out of the question - i needed a quality, name brand tool. I've quickly searched CraigsList and picked up a used Bosch sliding miter saw. After driving about 20 miles each way and returning home,  I've discovered a serious crack in the rail support block.  I was so mad, I couldn't think about anything else. Next day I've returned the old, broken saw to the seller.

Mistake #3 (almost) - this time I've almost made a mistake by buying a single bevel miter saw. The difference between single and double bevel saws is that in single bevel one you can rotate the saw only left or only right. While in dual bevel, it can be tilted left or right. This makes a huge difference when doing a lot of cutting of baseboard or crown molding. Otherwise you will need to flip the boards constantly and hope that your saw cuts cleanly not only on the top surface, but also on the bottom one.

So it was clear - I needed a new saw that wasn't broken, had warranty and from a reputable seller. I went to Home Depot and saw that their selection, while good, was overpriced. I could get the same tools from Amazon.com for about 75-85% of the cost, not pay tax and get free shipping.

After reading various message boards, review sites, blogs and comments I've realized that there are only 4 companies that make dual bevel miter saws of good quality at reasonable price - Bosch, Makita, Ridgid and DeWalt. All the rest were either expensive, lower quality or major design flaws. I've spent a week talking to contractors, sales people, do-it-yourselfers and random people who knew something on the subject. So trust me - I've done a lot of research about miter saws.

At the end I've bought a Bosch 4410 10 sliding, dual bevel miter saw that I'm extremely happy with. This is the kind of tool that will last you a lifetime.

Between the Bosch, Makita, DeWalt and Ridgid you should really only look at one of the three kind of saws: 12 dual bevel stationary, 10 dual bevel sliding or 12 dual bevel sliding. Only these three kinds will cut through 99% of all things that are meant to be cut with a miter saw. Others either won't have enough capacity to cut some of the bigger pieces like the tall baseboard and tall crown molding nested against the fence.

Here are a few notes about each brand:

Quite a few people are just like myself - want to have a nice looking and functional place to live. So in our quest for a first home we have purchased an oldish (1972) house in Southern California. It needed some work, but that didn't scare us away. After a year of living in a place of our own, I have started fixing minor things here and there around the house. But since I'm really interested in saving money whenever possible - I had to make a decision every time to do it myself or hire someone to do the work. While I enjoy doing almost everything myself the question of time and money always comes into the equation. Is it worth my time and how long would something take me to do. Very few things were done by contractors, but I've felt that I'm just so unqualified to do the job, that it simply be rather foolish to even try it. For example removing asbestos infused popcorn from the ceiling or plastering it later with a texture. In cases like this where the work would be way over my head (pun intended) or if there is a health risk - it is better to pay the money and let someone else do the hard stuff.