First Time Here? Welcome! Here’s a First Look at One Project Closer

January 1, 2012 | by Ethan (email) |

Welcome to One Project Closer! We’re glad you’re here!

As you’ve probably noticed, our focus here at OPC is DIY home remodeling. We build comprehensive project guides that help homeowners like you tackle the most challenging home improvement projects. We think there’s no better way to learn remodeling than than by watching expert professional contractors in action, so my full time job here at OPC is following a group of Expert Pro Remodelers through real life remodeling projects, documenting their steps, tips, and techniques in individual project-specific guides. Since I follow these contractors on actual job sites, most guides take at least a week to build, and some take much longer. Here’s two examples of finished guides you can find on our site.

As I follow the pros around from one project to the next, I capture their daily progress in regular updates on our site. I usually publish 2-3 “Pro Follow” articles each week. Here’s an example from “Day 2” of a Deck Build Project. These day-by-day articles allow you to ask questions on the project, follow along with the step-by-step progress, and help us make the resulting How-To article at the end of a project that much better. If you’ve never followed through an ongoing project before, we think you’ll discover that it’s a great learning experience. Many of our readers here have professional experience. If you’ve got a question on a project, the whole group of us is likely to be able to help.

In between our Pro Follow articles, the other authors and I also publish DIY How-To’s based on projects we tackle in our workshop, our homes, or our friends’ homes. Here’s two examples, one from epoxy coating our garage floor, and another based on a hardwood flooring installation in one of our homes.

You can search the Complete List of How to Guides we’ve developed any time. We’ve only tackled a small handful of the projects we’re planning for OPC over the years ahead. We focus on quality over quantity. We believe there’s enough time-wasting junk content on the web, so we strive to make every guide in our library the best possible product we can produce.

In between our How To articles, we also post reviews of tools or materials that manufacturers send us to try out. We strive for complete objectivity in our reviews, so you can make informed decisions about whether a tool is right for you. We never accept payment for reviews, although you should know that many manufacturers and retailers sponsor our site, and most of the products we review are provided for free.

Subscribe to Keep Up with the Latest!

If this sounds like the type of stuff you’re into, we’d love to make you a subscriber on One Project Closer! You can subscribe via email or RSS using the links below. You’ll be joining more than 2,000 people who’ve already started following us! You can also connect with us on Facebook or Twitter, although we use these services more to augment our regular email subscription than to duplicate it.

• Subscribe to OPC via Email
• Subscribe to OPC via RSS (in a reader)
• Follow OPC on Facebook
• Follow OPC on Twitter

Join Our Rewards Program

Beyond subscribing, we’d love to make you a member and regular commenter on our site. We have a pretty awesome offering to encourage our visitors to get involved and contribute to the discussion. It’s called Project Rewards. Essentially, it’s a participation system that rewards you with points for visiting our site and leaving [hopefully great] comments on articles. You can spend the points you earn on auctions in our Rewards Center, which usually features 5-10 gift cards, tools, or other home improvement materials. There’s no cost to sign up, no shipping fees on goods, etc. You truly get free stuff just for participating! If you’re ready to start, you can sign up here and start earning rewards today!

Contribute Content to Our Site

Many of our readers are really enthusiastic about participating in our site, and we love reader submissions. It’s one of our favorite things, actually. Read here for more information on submitting content. That article explains everything you need to know!

Who Are the Writers Here? How do I contact you?

The best place to start for this question is our About Us Page. There are four of us (left to right in the pic below: Me (Ethan), Jocie, Kim and Fred).

We’re two couples living in Baltimore County, MD. Fred, Kim, and Jocie have “real” day jobs. I work OPC full time. Our email addresses are public, and we strive to answer every email we receive. You can contact us at name@oneprojectcloser.com, where “name” is our first names.

Help Out OPC – Spread the Word

We’ve had a number of readers in the past ask how they can help OPC grow. We’re truly grateful to the dozen or so readers who have really stepped up to the plate. If you believe in what we’re doing here, the best way to help us to grow is by mentioning us to your friends. The easiest way to do that for most people is by sharing our site with friends or followers on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus!

Thanks for visiting, and happy home improving!