Home Projects

I was born in to a home that was under construction. My parents had purchased a very old farm house and were renovating it. I think I learned to crawl around planks of wood laying around on the floor. Our next home didn’t need work but my parents, given the crafty people they are, gutted the kitchen, family room and several other rooms down to the 2x4s and started over. They are always improving their homes.

As for us, well we’re handy. We can do minor and quasi-major repairs. We’ve had a couple disasters that could have ended badly but didn’t (thankfully). And we’ve totally screwed up.

You see the second “little” hole next to the drop down attic stairs we installed recently? Yeah that hole wasn’t supposed to be there. It’s patched now, but, um… whoops.

But I’ve come to realize what every home owner comes to realize at some point or another – you learn as you go. And everyone has to start somewhere.

We do have a list a mile long of projects and improvements to be made around here.

Next up on our list is to remove the three-sided fireplace that sort of floats between the kitchen table and the family room. It’s not connected to any gas line. It doesn’t have a chimney. It just is this gigantic eyesore that serves two purposes: A place for me to put my autographed Tim Tebow football (I’ll get a nice shelf once it’s gone) and a spot for my kids to sit and tie their shoes. We’re having someone come in and do this project. I think it’d be a disaster if we attempted it.

After that we’ll install in-ceiling surround sound in our family room and eventually put in a built-in bookcase in this little cubby area too.

After that? I have no idea what will be next. We need to re prioritize. But the list (I have to have bullets for Dashoff!) includes:

• Installing new kitchen cabinets and countertops
• New shelving in the laundry room (honey if that’s not on the list, it needs to be!)
• Adding a Pergola to our back patio so we can have some shade if we want to hang some sail cloths.

• Tiling the screened in back porch
• Installing solar panels on the house
• Replacing the HVAC
• Getting more insulation blown in to the attic
• Replacing the roof
• Creating serenity in our garage (bwhahahaaaa)
• Flooring out the attic

Since we’ve moved in (almost four years ago) we’ve added gutters, replaced the fence, installed a sprinkler system in the backyard (because the original owners only installed one in the front and that makes so much sense), re-sodding the entire back yard and half of the front yard, installing the drop down attic stairs, stripping wallpaper,  painting, painting, painting and a host of other little things.

OH! And we had the murder shack removed too!! I forgot about that one. There was this creeeeepy looking doll house yard shed in the back yard that was snake and bee infested. We named it the murder shack because it was just so bizarre. The people who owned the house had a yard service business and stored their tools in it. But, why build it to look like that? It was so weird.

So I went looking on Craiglist and found someone who wanted free scrap lumber to build a shed. I emailed him and said “You want a shed? Come get this one. You do the work to remove it, you have the whole thing.” And you know what? He did it! Then all we had to do was break up the concrete walkway and we removed about 5 feet of the patio slab also so we could give our kids more grass area to play on.

Well that’s what’s on our list. What’s on yours?!