Verbisaurus Blogicus

As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 7 years. As I’ve done semi-annually since we moved in, I will hereby provide an update on improvements we made to our home in the past six months.

By the way, if you’re interested, here’s the blog post detailing what we did during the six months prior to these most recent six months.

ADULTS’ BEDROOM
-Replaced two beige outlets with white ones.
One wasn’t even working anymore, so it was time to get a new one.

LIVING ROOM
-New Rug
The previous rug came with the house, so now we have a new, clean rug. It is also a better color (gray, instead of cream).

LOWER STAIRWELL
-Replaced broken window pane
Jennifer threw something downstairs about 5 years ago, and it broke this pane:

As you can see, she expertly repaired it with duct tape, but it was a real eyesore.

After replacing the pane on the mud room window (see the previous home improvement post for that story), I realized that it was easier than I thought to replace a pane. I also realized that replacing this pane would cost me nothing except the cost of the pane, since I had leftovers of all the supplies needed from the mud room project.

SPARE ROOM
-Removed some sheetrock
We’re turning this waste of space into a bedroom for Owen…eventually. In the meantime, work has begun slowly by taking out some of our stuff and moving it to the garage or attic (as applicable). I removed a few pieces of the moldy sheetrock, too.

YARD/HOME EXTERIOR
-Fixed back deck stairs so they are more even.
When I first built these stairs, I miscalculated and the top step ended up being only 2 inches high. Jennifer was very annoyed by this. So, while she was away one weekend, I removed the stairs and adjusted the heights so that now each step is more evenly spaced.

-Installed a hose holder next to the rain barrel.
For the past several years, I’ve had a hose just lying on the ground next to the barrel. Now I’ve made things a bit more classy by installing a holder to the house.

-Installed window holders to dining room windows
Early in the summer, I noticed one of the three square window frames of our dining room was leaning far forward, about to fall out. A similar window did fall out of our mud room last year, and I wanted to avoid a repeat of this. So I once again ventured to the architectural salvage shop and purchased 12 cast iron holders. I then removed each frame, thoroughly cleaned in between the inner and outer panes, and then reinserted the frames. I then screwed on the holders. Here are a before and after image:

Before

After

-Stained fence
Well, there are 22 fence panels, and we’ve stained 6 of them. It’s about an hour per panel with two people working, so it’s slow going. We also are often hampered by the weather. We can’t stain if it’s rained recently, or if it’s gonna rain. Hopefully we’ll get the other panels stained before winter sets in.

-Landscaped an area for our dinosaur
Um, yeah, so I now have an 8-ft fiberglass sauropod. We’ve stationed him approximately centered just in front of our workshop. Using retaining wall bricks, I’ve landscaped an arch our from the workshop to enclose the dino. She’s in there, now, but we need some rocks to fill in the area. It’s a quirky addition to our yard, that’s for sure.

As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 6.5 years. As I’ve done semi-annually since we moved in, I will hereby provide an update on improvements we made to our home in the past six months.

By the way, if you’re interested, here’s the blog post detailing what we did during the six months prior to these most recent six months.

UPPER STAIRWELL
-Replaced smoke alarm

LIVING ROOM
-Replaced broken outlet cover on the north wall

LOWER STAIRWELL
-Hung a curtain at the top of the stairs

We used to have a cheap plastic accordion door there. Then, for a while, we had nothing. This curtain is definitely nicer than the accordion door.

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM
-Replaced the sink and cabinet

Here’s the old sink:

Here’s the new sink:

-Installed tiles under the cabinet

The old cabinet covered the floor, so there was no need to have tiles there. This one is on legs, so the floor is exposed. Jennifer and I grouted some tiles into place to cover the cement floor.

YARD/HOME EXTERIOR
-Replaced glass and stripped and repainted outside of mud room window.
As you can see, I really had no choice but to replace the glass in that window frame…

The window just fell out of the house, and landed on the corner of the central air unit, which instantly shattered the pane. I had to open up the central air to collect the shards. The frame had originally been caulked in place, but all the caulk was dried out. There were also holes where little butterfly clips had, once upon a time, held the window in place. For some reason, the previous owner had removed them. I visited an architectural salvage shop to find new cast iron clips. Stripping the paint off the frame was a tough ordeal, but eventually I did it.

Here’s the window with the new pane installed, when I was midway through stripping off the old paint:

Here’s what the window looks like now:

-Installed fence
This was the big project of the fall. We received a little bit of help from a couple family members one morning, otherwise it was just Jennifer and I working on the fence for hours and hours. I’m happy to say it’s installed, though it will need to be stained next summer.

GARAGE
-Installed 5 wood sheets into the attic for storage

As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 6 years. As I’ve done semi-annually since we moved in, I will hereby provide an update on improvements we made to our home in the past six months.

By the way, if you’re interested, here’s the blog post detailing what we did during the six months prior to these most recent six months.

ATTIC
-Replaced the thread-bare too-short piece of yarn hanging from the light with a proper pull chain.

ADULTS’ BEDROOM
-Replaced beige outlet with white one.
We have some beige outlets in the house, which were installed by the previous homeowner. Beige is a terrible color for outlets since it just makes them look dusty. I replaced most of them with white outlets, but every once in a while, I find one I had neglected to replace. This outlet was hidden behind some furniture, so I don’t see it too often.

-Removed intercom and patched up wall.
Yeah, that stupid intercom messed up about fifteen places around our house. Though I removed the intercom from Owen’s room, the kitchen, and the front door, I never got around to removing the one in our room. Here’s the progress I made:

Here’s the ugly, useless intercom.

Here, I’ve removed the screws holding it in place.

Here, I’ve removed the wiring and thus the entire intercom is now gone.

Here, I’ve patched up the hole. Yes, it’s very ugly. Stay tuned for my continued progress in assimilating this eyesore of the wall to the rest of the wall.

UPSTAIRS BATHROOM
-Installed exhaust fan.

Yay for us! Can you believe we lived over five-and-a-half years in our house without having a fan in our bathroom?
Here’s the accompanying switch that my brother-in-law skillfully helped me install:

UPPER STAIRWELL
-Replaced beige outlet with white one.

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM
-Removed handrail from shower.
Well, one of the handrails, at least. There are two horizontal bars that I like having in the shower, as they are great places to keep shampoo bottles and face cloths. But there was one vertical bar that just got in the way:

It’s gone now.

SPARE ROOM
-Removed wood planks from ceiling.
Not sure why, but there were about a dozen ugly planks of wood nailed to the rafters in our spare room near the fuse box. Each one was about three inches wide and three feet long. I removed them in preparation for having a proper ceiling one day. They gave me lots of splinters. And they were very dusty, so I had to wear safety glasses while removing them.

YARD/HOME EXTERIOR
-Removed security system motion detector from above the back door light fixture.
It was useless. And ugly.

-Trimmed back hose spigot and installed sleeker piping.

The pipe connecting our hose spigot to the house used to be 10 inches long. This was probably to accommodate the side-opening that allowed for the plumbing for the sprinkler system. I removed the sprinkler system years ago, but the valve for the sprinkler system just sat there, turned off, doing nothing. So I cut the pipe so that it now only sticks out from the house by four inches. In doing so, I also removed the side opening. So now it’s both shorter and sleeker.

-Installed hose winder.
Oh yeah, the main reason for doing the work on the hose spigot was so that I could fit this:

-Chimney shortened, tuck-pointed, and top grate reinstalled.
I didn’t do this; I paid someone else to. Actually, to this day, I’ve still never been on the roof of our house. The contractor I hired removed four rows of bricks, which weren’t even cemented in anymore, and thus brought the height of the chimney closer to code.

-Caulked small hole near back door.
Not sure why, but there has always been this small hole just below the doorbell. I caulked it closed.

-Stained lattice work on north side of deck.

GARAGE
-Added bracket to hold up electrical wire piping.
-Replaced broken siding on east side of garage with new pieces.
Actually, they weren’t “new” pieces; they were pieces that had never been used, just sitting up in the rafters.
-Installed sheets of chipboard into rafters for storage.
-Removed keyhole from center of garage.
This keyhole, which presumably used to open one of the garage doors, served no purpose. I removed it. I’ll patch up the hole later.

-Installed keypad for garage door entry.
-Replaced broken siding on south side of garage.
One small piece was broken. I used one of the broken pieces I had removed from the east side (above), and cut it down to size, being careful to only use the in-tact portion.
Here is the keypad itself:

And here it is with the flap closed:

-Replaced outlet on west wall.

It wasn’t working. And it was beige.