As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 5 and a half 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.

LIVING ROOM

-Sanded, painted, and re-installed trim around windows.

-Sanded, painted, and re-installed baseboard trim.

This really, really created a lot of dust. So much so, I was able to employ that time-tested joke of writing “CLEAN ME” onto a surface so dirty that a person can actually write by removing part of that which needs to be cleaned.

In fact, in the photo of the bush that is right next to our house, you can see splotches of white that resulted from our box fan which blew sheetrock dust out of the house all day while we worked.

-Painted ceiling and walls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MUD ROOM

-Stained putty that had been the wrong color for about three years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the before photo, at left, the wood putty is barely noticeable. It’s in that crack in the top right corner of the trim. Notice, in the right photo, I’ve stained it the proper color. I inserted that putty into the trim in, probably, 2013. Not sure how I forgot to sand and stain it until just last month but it’s good now.

LOWER STAIRWELL

-Removed accordion door.

There was an accordion-style door at the top of the stairs. We used it very rarely and, last summer, it tore. It was in pretty cheap, sorry condition and I’m actually surprised it’s lasted this long (it came with the house when we moved in). Jennifer finally tore it down last fall.

YARD

-Installed lattice work on north side of deck.
Here’s a picture from last September, following the installation of the beams that hold up the lattice (you can see the lattice leaning up against the house, just waiting to be installed): 

-New retaining wall installed.

This project began in early September, and actually spilled over our  year anniversary in our house. So here I’m showing the new retaining wall, installed just after our five-year anniversary here. The wall is longer than the previous one, extending up the whole length of our driveway on the east, and continuing to just shy of the little free library on the west.

As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 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.

OWEN’S ROOM

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

A friend of mine came over and helped me replace the valves on 8 radiators in the house. We replaced 6 of them in July and, a few weeks later, the two others in August. So, there’ll be a bit of repetition here…

ISLA’S ROOM

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

ADULTS’ ROOM

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

UPPER BATHROOM

-Installed a new wax ring under the toilet.

Everyone I spoke to about this project, including an employee at the hardware store, claimed that this was such a difficult task that it wasn’t worth it unless my toilet was actually broken. They said toilets are phenomenally heavy, I’ll get water everywhere, I’ll make a terrible mess removing the old ring, and it will be really hard to get a proper seal when I’m done.

Turns out, this is all untrue. I removed 95 percent+ of the water from the toilet before I began removing it (get this: there’s actually a way to flush the water out of a toilet). I also removed the tank from the back, which added about 15 minutes to my task, but it meant the toilet was now in two easier-to-lift pieces. The toilet was heavy, but not impossible to lift. In fact, I – by myself – was able to hoist the toilet over the side of our Jacuzzi and set it in there while I worked (that way, any remaining water would simply run down the tub drain). As I suspected, there wasn’t much of a ring remaining, but I scraped it off while wearing disposable gloves and put it all into a plastic bag. The mess wasn’t that bad at all. After reassembling the throne, I dropped in a dye tablet that detected any leaks. There weren’t any. If you need to change out the wax ring on your toilet, let me know, I’m there for you.

-Replaced toiled seat.

Granted, this was a considerably easier task than the wax ring replacement.

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

UPPER STAIRWELL

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

LIVING ROOM

-Removed molding from ceiling.

These first three photos show what our ceiling looked like since we moved in, and the other two show us removing the molding:

 

 

 

 

 

-Installed a piece of sheetrock and several patches and taped and mudded ceiling and walls to fix holes and cracks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These two items are a project that’s still in progress. We hope to get all that mud sanded, and then paint the walls sometime in the next couple of months.

-Replaced all outlets, switches, and accompanying covers from the old, cream color, to the fancier white.

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

DINING ROOM

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

KITCHEN

-Replaced the doorbell.

What I mean by this is the actual mechanism, not the buttons on the outside of the house. Here’s what our doorbell system looked like originally:

And here’s what it looked like on February 7th, right after I removed the ugly one that came with the house:

And here’s what it looked like on February 21st. I had to build a frame around the opening so that I had a place to secure sheetrock (since the new doorbell isn’t as large as the old one):

And here’s what it looked like on March 1st. Yeah, it looks worse. That’s because the wall to the right of the light switches needed some repairing, too:

And here’s what it looked like on March 25th. The new piece of sheetrock is installed, and we’ve taped and mudded. And mudded. And mudded…

This picture was taken on April 30th. The mudding and sanding is done. Or, at least, it’s as done as it’s gonna get. All ready for painting:

This picture was taken on May 12th. The wall has been painted, and the light switch cover has been replaced. The only thing left is to hook up the doorbell:

And here’s what it looked like on May 14th. All done! Just in time for Owen’s birthday (I set the doorbell to play “Happy Birthday” that day):

-Installed a new valve on the radiator.

MUDROOM

-Installed light in closet.

LOWER STAIRWELL

-Removed accordion door.

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM

-Installed new toilet seat.

-Replaced outlet and light switches and covers.

Again, went from dirty old cream to flashy white.

YARD

-Swapped old, rusty, ugly light fixtures for newer models.

I replaced the outdoor light fixture on both our front and back doors on April 22nd. Here’s a picture of the back door’s original fixture, at left, and the new model, at right (the front door’s models look the same):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-Installed wire mesh around chimney.

Okay, not me personally. I’ve actually never been on the roof of my house. But I hired a guy, and he pulled out a large plant that was growing in the chimney, and he affixed a wire mesh around the opening to prevent squirrels from going inside of it (which they were doing).

-Had air conditioner unit serviced.

So, not much in the way of visual appeal here, but at least the unit is super clean (it was really dirty) and it has a brand new motor. Oh, and AC motors are crazy expensive.

-Installed lattice work on south side of deck

This makes a nice barrier between the deck, which has no railing, and the air conditioner. Emmett, for one, likes to jump on the AC, so hopefully this will prevent that. It also provides a bit of protection in case someone (Emmett!) isn’t paying attention and falls off the side. It affords a bit of privacy, too, from those pesky neighbors walking on the sidewalk who insist on saying hello as they pass.

-Installed beams on north side of deck.

Uh, okay, so this might seem a bit odd, but that’s because, like the work in the living room, this too is unfinished. Jennifer and I intend to install the lattice work you see leaning up against our house, but before we do that, we had to put in these 4×4 beams. We did that just this week. so, I’m very confident that this will be completed soon – it’s just that it will happen to fall in the next Home Improvement update I give.

-Removed retaining wall.

As one of the most pressing issues facing our yard, we needed to repair or replace our old retaining wall – the big one that stretches over 75 feet along the length of the south side of our yard and wraps around to the west side an additional 6 feet. This wall was coming unglued and has been slowly leaning more and more toward the sidewalk with each passing year. Really, it’s been a danger to people who walk on the wall. It’s also ugly. We’d also like to put a fence on it, but we can’t do that until the wall is fixed.

Like the lattice work project above (and the living room project way above), this is a project that is straddling two six-month periods. In fact, as I type this, there is a team of professionals working on the bricks right now. Here’s a collage of photos showing the work they’ve done so far:

Here’s the view from the second story:

 

 

 

 

 

This project should be completed by mid-month, so expect photos of the completed work in my next Home Improvement update.

-Removed brick from the ground under the retaining wall.

Yeah, I’m not sure why, but under the retaining wall that wraps around the air conditioner unit, there was one square brick at ground level. Removing one brick sounds easy, but it was under three layers of bricks. So, I had to temporarily remove 13 bricks just to get at this one brick.

 

GARAGE

-Changed out the old light switch.

At left you can see the old model. Some dirty, nasty, corrugated plate on top of two switches one of which (the one on the left), didn’t even stay up anymore.

At right you can see the replacement. The one on the left now works fine, assuring me that I can turn on the garage’s outside light with confidence! The one on the right, meanwhile, which is for the garage’s inside lights, actually has a nightlight on it so that I can see it in the dark.

 

As of this week, we’ve lived in our home for 4.5 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.

OWEN’S ROOM

-Removed intercom.

ISLA’S ROOM

-Swapped out a wall plate.

It’s debatable whether this is really an improvement; maybe it’s merely a change. Either way, Isla found these free for the taking at an event we were at back in January. So, the next day, I asked her which electrical plate in her room she wanted to replace, and she selected the one nearest her door. In the photo, you can see her – under supervision, of course! – swapping a boring old white plate for the more decorative option.

ADULTS’ ROOM

-Installed light in closet.

UPPER BATHROOM

-Installed new toilet seat.

UPPER STAIRWELL

-Swapped out light fixtures.

Okay, here’s what the light fixtures looked like when we moved in:

I know, I know: it’s solid brass and ornate and Gothic and all sorts of cool stuff. But…it’s also ugly. I never liked this fixture, nor it’s companion fixture at the top of the stairs. So on February 2nd, I changed it out with a model that, granted, is cheaper, but also better looking.

See?

LIVING ROOM

-Removed Security System sticker from window.

Why do security systems always skank up a place so bad? When we moved in, there were ugly, plastic fixtures on the wall and even one on a nice wood pillar. And most of the windows on the main floor had these nearly-impossible-to-remove stickers. I peeled off the other stickers soon after we moved in, but as you can see from the above photo, this one just wouldn’t let go. This is what it looked like for most of the past four years.

So I took some Goo-Gone and a rag to the window and applied copious amounts of elbow grease. The above photo shows what it looked like after about five minutes…

…and here’s what it looked like five minutes after that. All better! (By the way, there’s still one more sticker on another window, but I have to wait until warmer weather to remove it. Jennifer was not pleased with the lingering fumes.)

KITCHEN

-Removed built-in stereo/intercom system.

-New doorbell!

Here’s our old doorbell. The speaker was useless as an intercom. And though it could be used to pipe some music out into the yard, the sound quality was terrible. So, since I removed the intercom system, it seemed only right to also remove this speaker/doorbell.

Here’s the doorbell we now have:

Okay, two things you might notice here. First, the doorbell isn’t, technically, “new,” it’s just new to us. We bought it at Northwest Architectural Salvage. Second, it’s screwed onto a thin piece of plywood. Yep, it is, and that’s because removing the intercom left a big hole that I had to cover for safety reasons. We’re gonna put all new trim around the door frame – eventually. In the meantime, this will suffice.

BASEMENT

-Put lighting wiring into a box.

When my brother-in-law came over a couple months ago, he noticed the wiring for the lights in the commons area was not up to code. So I fixed that.

Not up to code…

Up to code...-Removed excess wiring.

Yeah, my brother-in-law, who works with security systems and is probably mad at me right now for what I said about security systems above, came over and tore out about 100 feet of useless wiring in the basement and helped to clean up some of the remaining cluster of wires.

-Installed three-way switch so light in the commons area can now be turned on/off while downstairs.

-Moved outlet from ceiling to wall.

If you go way back to the post I made four years ago, about the improvements we’d made in our first six months living here, I posted this picture:

My purpose in posting that picture back then was to show that I had moved the light switch (for the light above the washer and dryer) from the ceiling to the wall, and updated it with new features. See that empty spot on the right? That’s because I hadn’t yet moved the outlet from the ceiling to the wall. Oh, I tried, but I couldn’t figure it out. So, last month, an electrician did it for me.

DOWNSTAIRS BATHROOM

-Replaced hinges on vanity cabinet.

-Installed cabinet door catch on vanity cabinet.

-Replaced toilet paper dispenser.

-Replaced shower head.

SPARE ROOM

-Added chain to light.

A few months ago, I re-discovered that there’s a light under the stairs. I had forgotten about it because it’s sort of hidden, and the chain to turn it on was about 2 inches long. So I replaced it with a chain that’s about a yard long. I even have it going through a loop that puts the chain in a more convenient location. I also added a decorative weight to the chain so that, when I pull it, it won’t retract through the loop. Yep, sometimes I’m awesome.

-Removed fluorescent light fixture.

Yes, I finally removed the last of the fluorescents. This one wasn’t even hooked up to the power anymore, so it really needed to go.

-Removed some wooden planks from ceiling.

Above the fluorescent light fixture were a bunch of planks. They’re ugly and dirty. I removed about half of them. For the rest, I need to get out the crow bar. Stay tuned.

-Added box for light fixture.

Yeah, this one wasn’t up to code, either. Now it is.

YARD

-Built stairs for back side of deck.Here’s the back side of the deck. It has stairs now, so there’s not a 2-foot-plus drop off anymore. No, I don’t have a picture of that. Primarily because I need to fix them, first.

-Removed southern section of decking, and placed on new, all-weather decking that is actually level.

This photo, above, shows the deck boards that were on the southern end of our deck. Not sure why the previous owner suddenly switched from all-weather decking to wood, nor why he didn’t level it, but there you go. It was a real beast removing these planks, but I finally got them all out, put in some thin strips of wood to level it off, and…

…here’s what it looks like now.

-Capped all-weather decking planks.

Look closely:

See how the end of each plank has three rectangular holes in it?

Not anymore!

-Repaired outside light.

Well, not me – the electrician. Now when people come over, we can actually turn on the outside light for them so that they don’t trip on our cement steps.

-Installed little free library.

GARAGE

-Installed bracket to hold up electrical tubing.

Here’s a “before” picture:

 

Notice the metal tube hanging down? It’s carrying the electrical wiring to the lights in my garage. It’s attached over by the wall of the garage, and it’s attached near the light fixtures, but in the middle, it was sagging about 9 inches.

 

 

 

Here it is now. A close-up is below.