Monday, November 3, 2008

Some more renovations

Don't we all do this:

We see something that needs to be picked up, cleaned, fixed, or changed. Instead of taking 30 minutes to solve the problem, we look at that problem over and over for months, getting annoyed by it more and more.

It seems like the renovations easily grind to a quick halt, whenever I don't keep pushing along with real intent. There are so many unfinished projects, but here are some I have made a little progress on:
  • New front door: I bought an unfinished front door right after we moved in. It sat in the garage, untouched, for at least 4 months. Then I finally pulled it out, and sanded it. I think I gave it 3 coats total (1 on one side, and 2 on the other). Since that, it's been sitting in the middle of my garage, untouched. Today I gave it another coat. I think it probably needs another 3 (so 3 more days)
  • Wood floor: When we moved in, I ripped out most of the flooring. We got carpet put in relatively fast, and settled into living in the house. The wood floor was laid in the front hall way, and dining room, but progress halted when I got to the family room. One of the windows in the family room leaks whenever there's a big storm, and we hadn't been able to figure out why. 2 days ago, Joe finally found out. He finished fixing the leak today. We also started prepping the back hallway by removing old baseboard, and icky glue from previous laminate flooring
  • Baseboards: we got a little overzealous, and ripped out all the baseboard. It was kind of gross, and we probably could have gotten away with just repainting it, but I was in the "ripping out" mood. Half the rooms have baseboards, half don't. Saturday I bought about 100 feet of baseboard, and that won't even be enough to do all of it. (maybe half). At $1.49 a foot, that bill added up quickly.
  • Painting: when we moved Joe into the girls' old room, I repainted it. Excuse the mess, Joe still needs to organize it
  • Being in the painting mood again, I drove all the way down to Plano's Kelly Moore paint store, and bought 5 more gallons of paint (at a whopping $175!). After I told them I wanted that much, I realized I really only need 1 gallon, but they were already mixing, so I cursed myself and handed over my card. I haven't touched that bucket of paint yet.
  • Rearranging/cleaning: after I took some furniture out of my office and bedroom, there was a lot of dust hiding in those spots. A little bit of vacuuming and dusting: problem solved.
On my list of things to get done in the near future:
  • finish painting in nook and kitchen
  • install baseboards
  • finish front door, and hang
  • install threshold under new front door (I am getting tired of having a towel laying in front of it to stop the wind from howling in)
  • hang art in Joe's office and girls' room
  • lay wood floor in back hallway, and kitchen
  • texture wall in master bathroom (where I ripped the wallpaper off)
The list really is a lot longer, but I don't even want to think about it anymore. Tomorrow Joe has the day off, and we plan to be able to cross off 1 or 2 little things of the list.

*disclaimer: I just showed you some of the worst areas of the house, some parts do look nice

3 comments:

The Mama said...

Jessica,

I can so relate. The thing that I finally had to do on some things is hire it out. Max always has said, if you want a professional job, hire a professional. The thing is, you guys can do most (if not all) of your projects or is it home "improvements"? We either needed another tool, more help, or just needed to have our friend (who gave us their "friend discount") actually show up. That was my life for the last half of the summer.

After I "hired" the professional the work got done and it looks great. Now it is still waiting for me to finish up (putting things away). It will get done, eventually, as other things on the dreadest list do too.

You're awesome. I miss Visiting Teaching you. You were always so inspiring. I was amazed at what you could do, and if you couldn't, you would find a way how.

Julie

Kaitlyn said...

Wow, so this is why they say homeownership is a never ending job! Good luck with getting it all finished :)

Will of the hill said...

OH man girl your are killing me. I laughed so hard--cause I can totally relate--I should document it in pictures to --then i will feel like i have accomplished something when i can take a picture of it finished!!

Good Luck--I am going to start charging my camera... and perhaps breath some life into my blog--lol

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