A few nights ago, I noticed a small puddle under the sink. A check with a flashlight revealed that the water was leaking out the exit hole for the power cord. Hmmm…not good! I went to Home Depot the next day and bought another Badger 5. That night I asked the obvious question about whether it was wise to buy the same model as the one that just started leaking. A few reviews on Amazon led me to believe that eventual leaking was not unheard of for the Badgers.

Yesterday I stopped in at A-Boy and picked up this “Waste King” instead. It’s supposed to be more durable, but I guess we’ll know whether that’s true or not in time. If you look closely at the picture, you can see where I had to cut the temp/pressure relief pipe for the mini-tank heater, since it was too close (my fault) to the waste line from the disposal. I couldn’t put it back together with that pipe there, so I had to cut it and made a mental note that I need to fix it soon. We’ll see how long it takes me to get around to it…

And so far, we like the Waste King better than the Badger. It seems a little slower, but it is much smoother and far quieter than the Badger ever was. It’s a little classier, which is to be expected for an appliance with “Legend Series” in its name.

The Waste King!

We can never resist entering a contest (a few of you may remember our infamous Blair Witch/Home Depot video) so when we read that Houseblogs.net was sponsoring a sweepstakes in partnership with True Value we, of course, had to enter.

We’ve done so many DIY projects here at Bungalow Insanity, it’s hard to choose a favorite, but one which stands out among many is our kitchen remodel. Basically, we designed the entire kitchen around four $10 salvaged windows.

When we purchased our house way back in July of 2004, the kitchen was sporting a face-lift acquired in 1962. The cabinets, flooring and appliances were all fairly hideous, but what we hated most were the sliding aluminum windows. Totally inappropriate for an 1911 bungalow!

So, when we found these windows at the ReBuilding Center for only $10 apiece, we were ecstatic.

Of course, finding the windows was easy. Installing them was the hard part. First we had to re-frame both exterior walls.

We then had to insulate, drywall, stain and install a whole kitchen’s worth of stuff before we were ready to hang our $40 set of windows:

In retrospect, our “bargain” windows may not have been such a bargain in terms of time or money (considering all we needed to do to incorporate them into the kitchen), but we love them nonetheless. Unlike their sliding aluminum predecessors, they look as though they have always been here.

Now if we could just get around to tiling our backsplashes, our kitchen would finally be complete!

This post was written for Houseblogs.net as a part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value. If you would like to submit your own contest entry, visit click here or visit www.StartRightStartHere.com.

We selected copper-foiled Tiffany-style stained glass shades from Rejuvenation for our living room sconces, box beam fixtures and dining room chandelier.

In our kitchen, we used five Arts and Crafts style pendant fixtures from Progress Lighting. (To tie the fixtures together with the rest of the room, we installed matching carmel-swirled glass panels in the cabinets flanking our refrigerator.)

For our ground floor bathroom, we chose sconces and overhead lighting from Schoolhouse Electric

In our front entry hall, we used another stained glass fixture from Rejuvenation which incorporated all of our paint colors from the entry hall, living room and dining room, which really helps tie the ground floor together.

 No more plywood or holes in our kitchen wall!