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.