Homes

Dear Reena: I wanted to paint my living/dining room which currently has oil base on it. When I went to get my paint I asked what I would have to do to prepare the walls for latex paint.

Q: I was looking at a new condo with "cherrywood flooring." No illusions that it is solid wood. I was told it's engineered flooring.

Helen Chesnut >F10

When you first fell in love with that lofty condo, you couldn't imagine anything better. Oh, the freedom of undivided space, the Bohemian spirit of exposed brick walls, and those scraped and gouged wood floorboards have such stories to tell.

Walk out the front door of a house under construction in Santa Monica, California, and the bridge over a koi pond in the front yard leads to stepping stones, then a meditation deck that appears to float in the water.

San Francisco looks to test pint-sized apartments

You keep a pretty clean home. Sure, sometimes your rigid cleaning schedule has to bend here and there to accommodate life, but your house/apartment/condo stays pretty darn tidy. You clean all the usual suspects: kitchen sinks, counters and floors.

Fall is the best time to prepare lawns for the next growing season by mowing, raking, aerating and fertilizing. The game plan changes, though, if drought-stressed grass has been dormant for a long time.

For small, mom-and-pop shops that produce goods for the home but don't have big advertising budgets, the Internet helps level the playing field, attracting customers who are looking for something different.

Tjernlund Products' AireShare transfer fans let you move heated or cooled air from one room or level of your house to another.