Welcome to One Project Closer! Thanks for Visiting!
Anyone who’s owned a home for more than a few years knows that the list of house and community projects never ends. But that doesn’t stop us from tackling them, because every project moves us One Project Closer to the perfect home, or community, or life.
That’s what the site is about: tips, advice, experiences, products, reviews, giveaways, finances, how-tos, tools, and more that help us build better homes, communities, and lives.
Whether we get to the perfect end, well, that’s not really that important, is it?
So Who’s Writing Here?
Most of the time, it’s one of the four avid do-it-yourselfers who own this site — Fred, Kim, Ethan, and Jocie. We’re four friends living in the same community in the suburbs of Baltimore County, Maryland. We’re married (Fred to Kim; Ethan to Jocie), and have three homes between us. Fred & Kim live in a four bedroom traditional colonial in the back of a cul-de-sac. Ethan & Jocie live in an end unit townhome that backs to the woods on another court. Fred and Kim own another townhome in a nearby community that they rent out.
On occasion, we ask others from the home improvement community to write here too… Sometimes we publish press releases and product information we think would be useful to our readers. And every Summer, we run a Before and After contest to raise awareness for Habitat for Humanity that brings in more than a dozen independent authors.
Our site is unique because we relate to real people. We’re two families who work on our homes and communities primarily at night and on weekends.
We’re early adopters of tools and materials. We like doing home improvement projects ourselves. And we love telling readers about both. We use professional contracting services when they make sense, and we do our research so we and our readers get a lot out of every experience.
Contacting Us
You can always e-mail us at oneprojectcloser@gmail.com. We check that address regularly.
If you’ve a question/comment about a particular article on the site, you can just leave a comment on that article. If you’re looking for help with your own project, we suggest posing a question in our DIY Help Forums. We read all of the comments on the site (even if the article is old) and respond either with a follow-on comment or by replying directly via e-mail.
Advertising with Us
We’ve partnered with dozens of popular home improvement companies to gain exposure for their brands. You can learn more about gaining exposure for your product, service, or web site on our advertising main page.
FTC Disclosures for Testimonials and Endorsements
The Federal Trade Commission recently updated their policy on endorsements and testimonials to require bloggers like us to disclose when we receive compensation (direct or indirect) from a company for which we provide a testimonial or endorsement for a product or service.
Accordingly, here’s our process:
- When a company provides us a product for free as part of a media test kit, we always disclose that within the article we’re writing.
- We may also purchase products or services on our own that we review. Sometimes, our reviews include links to the product on another web site (for instance, Amazon.com or Home Depot), where we receive a commission if that product is purchased.
- We strive for fairness and objectivity in all of our reviews. We even update our reviews if a product or service we used in the past develops issues in the future, so that the information available on our site is as accurate as possible.
- On rare occasions, we accept payment for performing a review if the review will require a substantial time investment on our part or we otherwise wouldn’t even try the product. However, we always require payment prior to providing the review, and we let the company providing the product know that our reviews our objective — which means we tell readers about the highs and the lows for every product we try. We do not allow payments to influence the objectivity of our reviews.
If you’ve any questions about our policy, please send us an e-mail at oneprojectcloser@gmail.com and we’re happy to explain further.
Comments & Conversation on this Article...
4 Responses to Welcome to One Project Closer! Thanks for Visiting!
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Ask your question in our Home Improvement Help Forums.
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December 15th, 2009 1:22 pm
Hi One-Project-Closer,
We are Baltimore lovers too and write about the B-more environment and tree care for homeowners. Our blog is no where close to the size of yours but I thought I’d ask anyway if you would consider exchanging links (we’ll put you in our blogroll and you can do the same for us – maybe in the DIY Blog section)? Email me if you are interested,
Kristen
http://baltimoresbesttreeservice.com/wordpress/
May 26th, 2010 12:57 am
DO YOU GUYS HAVE A REGULAR NEWSLETTER OR BLOG PAGE ND HOW CAN I SUBSCRIBE?
JimBow from Delaware
July 6th, 2010 12:28 am
Great site! I just subscribed. I’m a native to the Baltimore area myself. Old Bay all the way. My wife and I work in the D.C. area and we just bought a house in Columbia, MD. I’ve done a lot of home improvement in the last year and a half now and decided a little over a month ago to start my own home improvement site. http://www.breakandmake.com/
So, now I’ve been searching for other blogs of similarity. You guys popped up in Google first. Congrats! Just wanted to say that I know this takes a good amount of effort. Keep up the great work. BTW I’m jealous of your hardwood flooring. We went with the laminate. I like it, but you just can’t beat the real thing.
August 9th, 2010 11:27 pm
[...] Ethan. They write with us (read “usually Ethan and Fred do most of the work”) on our other blog, and we’re really close. Good thing, given what we did to their house while they were [...]