I have used window screen, too. It works well. Kwie - all of my landscaping is with river rock, except for the required lawn. I have small pea gravel size, medium size and large rocks for a border. I grab some of it for top dressing. They sell bags of it at HD and Lowes. It is very dirty - muddy, really. You have to wash it well. And it does get hot in the Florida summer sun. I've burned myself pulling weeds without a beach towel to sit on. But I have not noticed it damaging any of the plants. If you don't want 25 lbs. of river rock, they also sell smaller bags of soil cover. Some is quite attractive. I bought some called "pearl stone" that are white, clean and look nice. I haven't noticed if they are hot in the summer. I didn't notice my lava rock feeling hot, either, tho. Maybe that's because I didn't sit on them! LOL

Ditto on checking the roof, particularly the chimney flashing. Most of the damage sounds water related. Depending on how bad the cracking is, it could be from many causes. My bet is that the renovation covered up lots of surface defects with patching and heavy coats of paint. Now the real surface is coming through. Other causes could be structural changes the prior renovators undertook, normal or abnormal settlement, or simply repainting the plaster in a lighter colour that highlights the natural imperfections.

My 9 year old stepdaughter doesn't refuse to DO her homework, but she has been 'forgetting' it or has flat out lied to me & said she didn't have any, when she hid it in her desk. So, in that way... she's not doing her homework. When I asked her why she lied (and I think the forgetting was also a lie & that she just left it in her desk so she didn't have to do it), she told me she didn't want to do it. So, I told her that I don't want to do some of the fun things she enjoys (like baking, helping me with dinner or most recently, carving pumpkins) if she isn't going to do the things we want her to do. It has only been a week and she's been caught in a few lies already... again. I personally think it works better to give it less attention or no attention and shrug your shoulders and say, "I guess you'd rather not watch tv with us, since you don't have your homework done." My husband used to spend half his evening frustrated beyond belief because SD would guess at the answers or write down the wrong answer that made absolutely no sense & DH would erase it, try to explain it & end up yelling at her out of frustration. One evening, he was running around, angry/frustrated looking for another eraser. He was all worked up and SD was calmly sitting on the edge of her bed, humming to herself. I grabbed DH aside & pointed out... if she isn't stressed out or upset over her work not being done, why are YOU? I walked into the room & told SD that daddy is NOT helping you with your work. When it's done correctly, the two of you can sit and play a game or watch TV until bedtime, but if you screw around until bedtime, you will take it back to school unfinished & I will call your teacher & tell her why it's not done. There were a couple of days that she took her homework back to school not done & I talked to the teacher. Her teacher said that it's explained in class & she should not need help, she should know what to do. She then lost her recess and did the work in class. After that, she would get it done correctly the first time.. sometimes with minor corrections, but she'd get it done & want to spend time with dad. While in counseling, she admitted she wasn't doing it right on purpose because it meant dad spent the majority of the evening focused just on her. She didn't seem to care that it was negative attention. He was too frazzled to realize what she was doing & after I pointed it out, he's better at recognizing it. Now, when she comes home and says she has no idea what to do, he knows she wasn't paying attention when the teacher was explaining it. She's had an ongoing problem with talking in class & not paying attention. It really helps to have good communication with the teacher.

Triple track storm windows take a lot of patience. If the sash won't move at all, try to tilt it in carefully. If there is no clearance at the top to tilt it in that won't work. Last resort......go outside, remove the screws that mount the storm window frame to the trim. If you can free the frame on one side, spreading the frame, the sash should gain clearance enough to be removed. I have a can of lubricant called AlumaLube I spray on the frame tracks. Go to your local hardware store and look for something like that. If you are going to live with storm windows you will learn some tricks or end up throwing them away. Good Luck!