Home Improvements
We are currently in our second house together. We did many home improvements on the first house, and are doing many home improvements on this house as well.
2008 projects: We still keep discussing the Porch. We had one contractor come over, and it sounded like it was going to be a wonderful porch -- until we got the estimate about 3 weeks late and double the budget we kept telling him he had to work with. We tried contacting another contractor this year, but he cancelled his appointment and has not rescheduled. This year will probably be maintenance projects, yard work and some of the stuff from 2007 we did not get accomplished last year. We did replace our stove fan with a microwave venting unit, which turned out very well.
2007 projects: Not sure what is planned yet for this year. We started talking about a front porch, though this will probably be a contractor job. I imagine we will come up with more things, and the basement bathroom will get done some year. :-> Pending possibilities include some modifications to my pond, retile the laundry room and replacing lighting fixtures in the first floor. Projects are hard with Andrew still so young, but I think part of it is we have the house really close to what we want... (other then the porch and a MUCH bigger garage). In the end, we ended up redoing the pond by adding a larger waterfall basin, rebuilding the waterfall surround and building up around the pond. It looks much nicer now. We also replaced many of the lighting fixtures on the first floor. They are a major improvement.
2006 projects: The only project we managed to accomplish this year was to re-do our master bathroom, and that was mainly the wife's project. She stripped off the ugly flower wall-paper, patched and sanded the walls, and then painted it a dark purple. She made a new shower curtain and window curtains from some bright batik fabric in blue, pink and purple -- very colorful! The room was finished off with grape leaves around the mirror and lots of plants, and new rugs and towels. It was a cheap, easy project but has a large impact.
2005 projects: Our main project during this busy year was to demolish a large closet and doorway in the bonus rooms above our garage. This combined the two rooms into a single large room. Before, one of the rooms had no windows and was a dismal place. The open plan now provides for better light and better flow from the single heating/ac vent. We replaced a lot of drywall and had the whole room re-carpeted. Then we painted it and sponged on a glaze finish, then added shelving and created a corner closet for storage. The new closet is concealed behind matching fabric panels. This room is the wife's craft and sewing room. We also added a home gym and the wife refinished an old sofa (she started with futon covers we got really cheap!). We furnished the room with flea market and thrift store finds and ran cable for a TV. It took almost a year, but we finally got this project finished!
March Project -- We did some spring cleaning, and cleaned up the garage. This included moving everything in the garage so we could paint the walls and ceiling. We also built a hanging storage unit to hold spare wood, added more shelving and fixed up the work bench. Finally we added more peg board to hang more stuff. The fun part was in July when we bought a new Nissan Titan which would no longer fit on the small side of the garage I used to park in -- so we moved the freezer and all of the shelving to the other side. The Titan fits in now, but takes too much room that it is hard to get by -- so even after moving everything it still parks outside. Perhaps it will move in during the winter when the kids will not need to get bikes out etc. Update: Now that it is winter, the answer is 'no' -- the Titan still doesn't fit in the garage and is staying outside, and I am getting tired of scraping ice from the windows in the morning.
Other planned projects include finishing the 2004 projects :->. We are also discussing hiring contractors to install a bathroom in the basement. It was already prepped for a bathroom, but we will still need to add plumbing, electric, walls, floor, ceiling etc... The wife would probably like us to tackle this ourselves, but I like the thought of hiring a contractor for this one -- I would rather not wait too long, and it's hard to both work with an infant in the house.
2004 projects: Our goal for 2004 was to turn part of the backyard into a wild life habitat, complete with a small (12' x 16') pond. We managed to relocated two HUGE butterfly bushes and two evergreens. Both evergreen's appear to be doing well. One of the butterfly bushes did not handle the move (or the prior season pruning) so well. Many of the branches died, but it appears the bush itself did survive. We also purchased and planted eight forsythias. This became a 2005 project.
I made decent progress on the pond this summer, but since I was digging it by hand realized it would not be completed too much before it was time to close it for winter. As such, I put the project on hold and will finish it in the spring. At this point the digging was almost complete, but I needed to go a little deeper to account for liner padding and still needed to level the pond ledges and top rim. I already had the pump, liner and built a homemade waterfall / bio-filter from a large storage container, some duct work and plumbing pipes. I really wanted to hire a excavator to handle the digging, but the wife did not want the yard ripped up with heavy equipment.
As you can see from the photo above, the pond was finished in 2005. We also added some berry bushes and fruit trees (the deer and rabbits love them) and are allowing a section of the yard to grow naturally for more of a wildlife habitat. The pond currently has some goldfish, bluegills, catfish and a couple of frogs -- including Mr. Trickster, our resident bullfrog.
We also built an expansion to the girls play set. The expansion is a large elevated platform / fort. We added another wood swing and a round disk swing and climbing rope combination.
2003 projects: 2003 was probably are biggest home improvement year so far. Here is one photo of one of our 2003 projects, specifically the installation of Bilco doors to make it easier to get pinball machines into the basement. Other projects for 2003 included demolition of our existing deck and construction of a new deck (actually two attached decks) and the installation of an above ground swimming pool. The wife designed the deck, and we did all the work ourselves. Nicole would even help mixing the cement. She was primarily in charge of water, but would also get her hoe out and help mix too. For installation of the pool we recruited a couple of friends to help get the wall up. The hardest part was probably getting the ground leveled, which was a lot of work (I suggest hiring someone to do this part :->).
For the Bilco doors we actually hired contractors to help, though I acted as the general contractor for the project. I think that cut the over all cost in half (I was amazed at the savings)! I had an excavator dig the hole, professionals cut through the poured concrete wall and the Bilco door people attach the doors. It was fun watching them swing the preformed concrete steps over our newly finished deck. I did the brick masonry work (see picture below) and installed an exterior door at the bottom of the steps. With the money I saved doing the contracting we had our air conditioner replaced since the old one started giving us trouble after moving it as part of the door installation.
Click for a larger view of the photos!