If you own a historic home — or just an old house like I do — and you are all thumbs like I am, here’s your chance to get help for you and your house.

The City of Columbia just received a grant to put on workshops that will help homeowners learn the ins and outs on renovating homes with sessions planned to cover windows, paint and flooring.

Want to find out when the dates are set for this upcoming seminars? The Historic Preservation Commission has a Facebook page.

Why renovate older homes? This article, City gets state grant to conduct historic preservation seminars, in the March 31, 2014, a report is cited that each year, 2,400 tons of waste goes into the city’s landfill from the demolition of historic buildings.

That’s $108,048 a year, using a cost of $45.02, the average price of disposing of a ton of waste in U.S. landfills according to the Waste Business Journal.com, an industrial research analysis site.

So renovating a home can save the city some money and since we all pay the environmental and tax costs of operating landfills, these classes will save all of us some money. So what is your biggest home renovation challenge? Windows? Paint? Flooring? For me, the biggest challenge has been knowing where to start, what I could tackle on my own and when to get help.

Here’s to hoping these seminars touch on that, too.