View allAll Photos Tagged homeimprovements
[ 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....
I went through my old photos and it seems I don't have one of the fence while it was standing. So let me describe it as a series of pallets and held in place with copious amounts of Hedera helix English ivy. I did however take a series of photos for Ice Grapefruit from the roof of my house with my 1.3mpx Kodak 215 -- my only camera at the time -- by coincidence right after it came down and during the period while it was being cleaned up. [EXIF data is meaningless with this camera, so edited date is approximate.]
And other than the wood getting picked up and the ivy being killed, nothing else has happened other than them viewing the newly freed-up space as a way to widen the parking area of their driveway.
Until now.
We hung up our new dining room light this weekend. No easy feat since there was no junction box in the ceiling and they basically attached the (former, hideous, Tyrolean hunting lodge rip-off) light to one of the studs. Several hours, a trip to Home Depot, lots of swearing, and some Xacto-knifing of the ceiling plaster later, this is our new dining room light!
And now, with the addition of our AWESOME fireplace screen, we can safely say this room is DONE. That is, once I hang all the photos I want to...
Sanding in the garage kept the house clean but not the car. I could have moved it out but the garage had a little bit of warmth and I didn't want to lose that by opening the door.
I hauled the wood back down into the basement where I rounded off the edges with the router. Next step will to drill a few holes to allow for cables to pass through for the computer monitors.
We had a home energy audit yesterday and as part of the audit we attempted to depressurize the house to find air leaks.
Ha ha.
Chateau Chaos is an old leaky house, to the point where the blower fan can't keep up with the air flowing into the house. The test wanted to get 50 pascals difference between the inside and outside, but even with the blower sucking air out as fast as it could it couldn't get the differential over 25 Pa.
Oh the bright side this means that when we have the house refitted our heating costs will plunge like a stone. That almost, but not quite, makes up for the teeny detail that we've been throwing $100 bills into the heating system for the past 17 years :-(
Pretty speedy painters.
The color is a grey/gray but in certain light it looks purple. Here it looks a little blue. Hm.
The completed butcher block desk before I moved it into the office. I didn't attach the top until after I moved it since it's quite heavy.
During the installation of vinyl tile one learns that the perfectly smooth subfloor is far from smooth, corners are never exactly perpendicular, and opposite walls are not perpendicular.
this was 6 years ago. I was starting to feel bad during this cure, so I wanted to see what I started out with. I guess I have come a long way. I feel better now.....
I knew it had to happen... I've joked here before about how someday I was going to find the Crackheads'™ stash that they left behind. Well, I found drugs under the stove when I moved it to clean the side of the cabinet. Okay, it's just sinus medication, not something illicit, and there was also a not-worn-at-all potholder (not 'pot') back there.
There was so much pet hair under there that Cheddar thought he'd suddenly become the single father to a litter of kittens.
after a months-long struggle with lack of motivation and paint stripper, the bike room is painted! and the nasty carpet has been removed! now all that's left is to sand and paint the window frames, the windows themselves, pull & paint the baseboards, nail in some quarter round trim, and either re-finish the floor or call it 'done'.
We got a new bathroom set (shower curtain, rug, towels, etc.) for our guest bathroom a few weeks ago and decided we wanted to repaint the bathroom. We took the plunge yesterday and bought paint and Summer painted the bathroom all by herself.
This is one of the after pictures I took today.
I think one more quick coat of paint should be enough for the window. Last thing for this area is to sand down the patches from the removal of drywall anchors and paint the wall. Then we'll have one less eyesore left in this house.
My mother's first response to the pictures of our new house (two years
ago) was "Loose the wallpaper." We just started removing it last week...
only to find multiple layers of wallpaper... and unprimed plaster
underneath.
Message to anyone putting up wallpaper. Putting up a skim coat of
plaster to smooth the walls before putting up wallpaper is cool, but
paint on a coat of primer first. When you go to remove the wallpaper
years later, the water and wallpaper paste remover will turn the plaster
to mush. It is impossible to easily remove the wallpaper without having
to go back retexturize the walls. This is the third time I've had to
deal with it... and it's getting frustrating.
Our first big project is done!
This room is directly outside our bedroom. Of the tasks performed, we:
-Replaced light fixture with ceiling fan
-Replaced blinds
-Patched all holes and painted the walls "Kalamata"
-Replaced outlets and faceplates with white ones
-Installed recessed directional halogens and put them on a dimmer switch
-4"x3/4" baseboards