Drum roll please……I am excited to invite you to The Better Half! As you may have heard, the boys have been working on creating a dedicated section of OPC to focus on the finer side of home improvement. For a long time, we have been struggling with how to reach both the men and women who read our site. We’ve found that most people (myself included) are not interested in both the hard-core home improvement projects (like Pro-Follows) and also the crafty, decor stuff (like making fabric flowers). In the past, both have... 

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If you’re new to OPC or haven’t looked around much, you might have missed our Rewards Center. In a nutshell, it’s the page on our site where you can score 100% free tools, and I’m not talking about some namby-pamby flashlight you’ll never use. Right now, the Rewards Center is stocked with a Johnson level, Channellock pliers, a Stanley utility bar, a Ridgid orbital sander, and more! To get in on the action, all you need to do is sign up for a Project Rewards account on our site. What’s the program all... 

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Hello Men Folk. (Ladies, I wrote this for the guys, but would always love your thoughts too! ) I’m going to take a not-so-bold leap and assume that since you’re a guy, you aren’t that familiar with Pinterest. Basically, it’s this big social picture-sharing network that lets you “pin” things you like to a personal pin board. The service is dominated by women (we’re guessing 95%+ of users are female). Both Kim and Jocie use it (Jocie most extensively), and some of OPC’s stuff is pinned up... 

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DAP is headquartered right here in downtown Baltimore and a couple weeks ago, they had me out for a “caulk talk.” It was a visit for just me, and we had a great time talking about caulks, sealants, adhesives, foams, and drywall repair. DAP was born out of the merger between the Dicks-Pontius and Armstrong companies in 1957. DAP was based out of Ohio but moved to Baltimore 14 years ago. They have five manufacturing plants in the United States, Mexico and Canada including one in Baltimore. Besides being an industry leader, DAP... 

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Milwaukee Tools has given the go-ahead to reveal some more cool developments they shared at the 2011 Milwaukee Tool Symposium. Between the new hand tools and fluorescent bulb tester, they’re lifting embargoes about once a month (which sounds like good marketing to me). I normally stay away from press released but once again, Milwaukee is doing something I think is worth sharing. New Milwaukee M18 FUEL At the tools symposium, Milwaukee temporarily confiscated our cameras and blindfolded us before going into a super-secret portion... 

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Sorry, there is no active giveaway at this time. A Quick Note on Home Improvement Coupons Most of our home improvement giveaway entrants are also big home improvement deal hunters. If that’s you, you may be interested in checking out our Home Improvement Coupons, and particularly our Lowes Coupons, Home Depot Coupons and Sears Discounts. We update these pages at least once per week, and often much more frequently! We also work to expand our inventory of home improvement retailers. All of our updates are done by hand, by one of the... 

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The votes are in for the 2011 Before & After contest, but before we announce the winner, we’d like to extend a humongous, gi-nourmous, epic THANK YOU to everyone that shared a project, spread the word, tweeted, voted, left comments or anything else related to our series. It’s obvious that the success we see each year is only a result of your participation. We hope you’ve enjoyed the inspiring DIY projects and learned a few things about Habitat for Humanity. Again, thank you for another great Before & After series! We... 

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I had the pleasure of attending the 2011 Kobalt Tools launch in New York City last week. There were a couple of tools that really caught my interest including a new double-drive screwdriver that you can expect in stores soon and a sweet battery charger. Read on for pictures, video and full descriptions. Most of what we saw was already on the shelves, but one exception was the new double-drive screwdriver. You may have seen my recent article about the new Channellock ratcheting screwdrivers. Well Kobalt took a different approach, and the... 

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Bum-Bada-Da! It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for- the 2011 Before & After vote! Summer is at an end, and so is our Before & After series. All that’s left is to select the grand prize winner! Every year we have some truly fabulous before and after stories, and I’m very grateful to everyone who helped make this year another success. All together, we donated $1300 to Habitat for Humanity on behalf of our winners, gave away $650 in gift cards and helped raise awareness of Habitat’s mission in our... 

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A couple of weeks ago I ran a short post asking people which big box supplier they preferred: Lowe’s or Home Depot. There was some great debate about brand loyalty, customer service, knowledgeable staff, and more. A few people even chimed in that they prefer Menards. Too bad they’re only found in the midwest. I enjoyed reading the back and forth, but I’d argue that the majority of people would sacrifice those desirable traits listed above for a consistently better price. So which retailer has the better prices? That’s... 

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