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