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The finished fence is very tall on our side and looks normal on our neighbors' side. We tried to achieve the same privacy level as was offered by the ivy on fence scenario. It looks somewhat like being in a squash court, but I don't mind. We did drop the fence a foot down the length of the side along the house because it was too severe. It turns out to be nicer to be able to see our neighbor to the side if they want to stand on their balcony and talk to us. The neighbors in the back are happy not to see us at all.
The bottom of the fireplace will be covered with fake stone so I installed concrete backer board for that. The top will be drywalled and painted next.
Masking the linen closet to keep the linen clean. The dropcloth would then get moved to the bathroom.
There used to be a big water heater all but blocking the doorway, making the little room unusable. But, we got a new outdoor tankless heater, and I'm finally getting around to finishing the pantry.
Last night/this morning, I finally got a bug up my ass and put down subflooring and the floor.
This weekend: 1/4 round, wire management, light installation.
Since I took out the five old wooden shelves in the pantry so there'd be more available usable space (and access to the water heater), the suitable replacement is restaurant-grade shelving. Available widely in several sizes of pole height and shelf width, I settled on this from The Container Store because they offered 24" wide shelves (IKEA had 18" and 36", and the water heater is 33" from the left wall...) with 72" tall poles. And it's a swell black, too. This is capable of holding 500 pounds.
Now that it's all put together... hmm, I think I need to get back there to obtain one more shelf and one more basket, there's more free vertical space than I pictured. :)
[update 11/12/08] And that vertical space is now utilized (and only getting one basket would have been sufficient).
This is what they never show on those home improvement programs where new tile is being laid. I wonder why?
Turning a vaulted ceiling above the living room into a media center. The downstairs ceiling is still plenty high.
The Energyguide labels are almost completely useless because they do not contain the same information. Only the newer label has the estimated yearly energy use in therms. While this would be useful in comparing other new water heaters, without the same information on the lable from 1983, there is no easy way to figure out how much more efficient the new tank is over the old one.
But, with some math, maybe I can figure it out.
On the old model it calculated $237 as a yearly operating cost and, in the upper left, it bases that on a rate of $0.627 per therm. That comes out to 377 therms
Which seems to be a third less efficient than the 254 therms of the newer unit. But with the price per therm having doubled ($309/254 therms=$1.22 per therm) we are theoretically still coming out ahead overall.
But even so, is this water heater not as efficient as a one built nearly 3 decads ago? What's with that?
7 hours or so later, it is way past the open time of the construction adhesive. So, I can step on the odd treads now, and it is time to glue on the even steps.
I hauled the trimmed piece upstairs into the garage so I could minimize the mess made from sanding the wood. I have no idea at this time how much it weighs but it's a lot. I have no enthusiasum for making that move up or down again.
Photos of our original basement floor before painting. At this point, the floor has been thoroughly vacuumed, scrubbed with TSP and mopped.
Added a doorbell. Wish I'd taken a before, there was just a broken doorbell button under the base and new button that I painted and added.
I spent my entire Sunday replacing the columns on my porch. They were rotting from the bottom and were pretty ugly to begin with. We decided on some colonial style columns from Home Depot. All that's left to do is give them a nice coat of exterior paint. The next project is trying to get my power washer to start. The house is filthy and needs a paint job.
[ October 25, 2009 ] Our current home improvement project: upgrading anything and everything under the house.. insullation, vapor barrier, etc. This is us looking confused at Home Depot....