General House Project List Update

This list I swear never ends!

Here is my last post about our house projects.

And I will just paste that list over here. Because looking at this long list of DONE is AWESOME!!

Done from 2010

• put in a tankless water heater (and thus pulled the old water heater out),
• new furnace and AC (was formerly swamp...so that was a project...)
• painted the bedrooms (and the molding in them) and 2 exterior doors
• totally retextured the walls and painted in the front room
• pulled out the last of the gross carpet that was downstairs
• put in new basement windows
• pulled out old sprinkler pipe, various debris, and HUGE dead trees in the backyard
• took down a ratty old over grown chain link fence from 3 sides of our .46 acre lot
• tore out and poured a new driveway
• pulled out various bushes and creeping jenny that was taking over the fence and trees
• regraded the dirt to slope away from the house in the back
• dug some trenches for future sprinkler pipe
• and added insulation to the attic.

Done as of August 2011

• went tractor crazy on the yard and moved a LOT of dirt to give us a better back yard. We got some Adriondak chairs the other day and plopped them down where we can sit and look at the dirt and plan. It's kind of beach-esque. And I'm sure kind of amusing for everyone that drives by and sees them.
• FINISHED the basement!!! We hired someone to come put all of the molding in, hired someone to paint (umm... no, we didn't want to prep and paint a 3 tone paint job in 1000 sq. ft. of living space), and Jon picked out some fabulous carpet (which only took us about 3 weeks to decide on). 
• And since the basement got finished, we got to UNPACK!!! Yes, that counts as a project. I fully admit there are still boxes down there that haven't found a home (and a lot of it is seasonal stuff anyway), but having a room that you can actually walk into and around in is marvelous.
• Painted the baseboard and door trim in the family room
• Took out a freaking load bearing wall, re-textured the whole hallway, and did a 3 tone paint job. YAY for white doors, ceilings, and trim. So so wonderful.
• Put in a stair railing. This wasn't supposed to happen for like 5 years. But we love it and we love our sectional, so it was nice that I didn't have to wait 5 years and that I got a fabulous couch.
• Pulled out MORE fence along the back of our property and had our property surveyed and learned that we have a little more space than we thought.
• Planted some bushes in the front. Grew weeds everywhere else. 
• Finished the art room and made plans for the future bedroom/bathroom/closet/storage room that will eventually take over that space. 
• Organized my new crafty space and hung the first things on the walls. Still haven't hung any other pictures/decor. Moving and trying to find places for things that were bought specifically for spaces in the old house is hard.

Here was my list of to do as of August 2011.  I will add my commentary in bold for each one.

• Kaitlyn's room. I'm itching to get started on that. I have the paint all ready and waiting. I just need to convince Jon that cutting mdf is fun. And really... we need to do that before it gets cold. So... this turned into Addilyn's room before we got to it. And it's adorable. Finished November 1, 2012.
  
  
  

• The yard. Oh the yard. We still need to level it out and get a final grade on it. We need to figure out just what we are doing with the massive elm trees that are riding the property line (next door to a rental). After that is a fence (next door to a rental on a .48 lot...). Then planning out where all the plantings are going to go so that we can plan out the sprinklers. And if we're digging for that, we have to consider landscape lighting. Until then, Alex and Kaitlyn like the dirt. Kaitlyn likes to sit and dump it on her legs which makes Alex freak out that she's getting dirty and putting it all over herself. Our yard has been our biggest project! We pulled out the elm trees and their massive stumps. 
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  We broke this tractor doing this job. Yay!

  
  
  
  
  

  

  My dad is pretty awesome. Thank goodness he really likes tractors. 

  
  
  Jon built this retaining wall so that we could maximize our grass space on that side of the house and also have a higher fence. He also built some rock steps. So Jon is also pretty awesome. 
  
  
  
  

  

  
  

  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  
  We got our fence put in. Sweet enclosed child bliss!
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We tore out a small cement retaining wall and the chain-link fence on top of it and then fixed the grade on our neighbors side so it was a slope that didn't need a retaining wall. And then we put grass in the front. We opted for grass there just so we had less cement. It is fine for occasional driving and parking on. Maybe we'll eventually make it all cement so our single drive isn't getting as much wear, but for now it works great.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  The front view is looking pretty good!

  
  
  
  
  

  And then we graded and did sprinklers.
  

  

  
  

  
  

  

  That's a whole lot of sprinkler pipe

  

  Looking North-East

  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  Looking West (house is on the left)

  
  
  
  

  

  Looking South-West.
  I love seeing the play set just out there looking so raggedy in the dirt knowing what's coming. 

  
  
  
  
  

  

  Looking West on the South side of the house

  
  And then the best part. Hydroseed! After 2 years of dirt I would finally have sprinklers and grass!!!
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  The pretty part of my fence. Though I think I'm going to part with the header eventually. It's a little much for me.
  Check out that baby grass growing in though!

  

  All stained!

  
  
  That was in August of 2012. Last year, in 2013, it looked like this. A little sparse and weedy and a few spots we struggled with.
  We also built some garden boxes and did our first ever garden! Also, Kaitlyn is awesome.
  
  
  
  
  And then Fall finally came and we took an all day trip to the nursery and picked out a whole lot of trees. And bushes. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  Goodness, I love having trees! It's terribly ironic that when we were looking at houses, we wanted an older house so that we would have a finished yard and mature trees. And here we are with little baby trees just like if we had bought a new house. 
  
  It has been really fun to see all of the trees blossom and get leaves this spring. 
  
  
  Last week we started laying down landscape fabric and mulch. It it going down on most of the perimeter of our fence and house, and then on our hill as well.
   

  

  In order to have more flat area, we did a steeper slope here. The mulch is only on the very first part here, but runs up the fence line further. This will eventually be filled with more bushes and plants. When you have a half acre lot, you get to do very large scale borders and landscaping. 

  
  

  

  I wish everything would grow faster! These look so small right now. 

  
  

  

  Mulch along our back fence trees

  

  Hoping those junipers give some much needed insulating properties. Our back bedrooms are always really warm in the summer and really cold in the winter. Still have to add more plants here too.

  
  
  Our yard has come a LONG way in the three years since we started moving dirt around. I'm so happy to have it finally in a mostly finished state. Our grass looks like it will do better this year. I'm hoping that having a thicker lawn will help with getting rid of the morning glory and mallow that is still currently popping up.
  
  NOW.... onto the rest of the list!

• The storage/bedroom/bathroom downstairs. We'll get around to this when we decide we're tired of not having a bathroom downstairs. We've gotten some bids for this and I laid out a plan. It's a little expensive. So we keep putting it off. But hopefully next after we get the laundry/mud room done.
• Hanging pictures and general decorating. It took me 3.5 years in Texas. I have plenty of time to get things right. I finally got the frame containing the blessing outfits intended for Isaac and Evan hung up in my crafting area. Love that.
  
  

We also had some new family pictures taken in June of 2013. I finally enlarged them and got them hung up in September. Here is what we have hung so far!

This is a terrible terrible picture. But all I have. So that's what you get. 

Also not great.  We moved our sofa table under these and it looks great!

• Texturing and painting the kitchen. And doing SOMETHING about my cabinets.
  I've decided to go with a full redo. Taking out door into the kitchen from the garage kind of set that in stone. The wall directly above that my childrens' pictures are hanging on will be removed. We'll add an island, and a couple extra feet into the kitchen and rework the entry to make it it's own space. I'm hoping we'll be able to do that in about 2 years.

• Taking out the hallway carpet and refinishing the original hardwood. The mismatched carpet which was fine when there was a wall and door separating the 2 was fine. Now it's a little weird. We'll see if I get crazy enough to want to refinish the bedrooms too. (shh... don't tell Jon I said that.)
  This is still on the plan. I'd like to do hardwood treads on the stairs as well. I think it will tie things in really well and I won't have to freak out about matted carpet anymore. We probably won't do this until our youngest is 3 or 4. 

• Rework the laundry room into a more usable space. Plans right now involve some wall removal, a utility sink, and possibly a shorter counter and bench. I need to use it for another year or so before I figure out the best solution. Oh how the plans have changed! This is happening now (as in we have a contractor who will do hourly so that we can do what we can on our own. He was really reasonable and can start next week)! See HERE. 

• Texture and paint the bathroom. The drywall patching in there is horrible. And not quite sure what the deal was with the primer, but we have major paint bubbles (due to moisture getting under the paint) and paint chipping off. It's pink underneath. Bright 70's bubble gum pink. The built ins will also be painted white and may possibly be reworked. The drawers are old and don't work super well. I'm hoping we can update the main bath when we do the kitchen. I am planning on new tile (maybe tub as well) and a new vanity. We will probably reuse the existing vanity in our rental that could use a new bathroom vanity. I'll call that a win win. 

• Eventually figure out how I'm going to have a bigger/more open kitchen and still have a workable front door with an actual foyer area. Check and check. Plan all laid out and feeling good! I may even get a fireplace people!!!
  
  
• And of course a garage one day. It may start with a single by building in our carport, but eventually we'll have a real 2 (or 3...) car garage again (though it's totally going to have more clearance than our garage in Texas had so we can actually park 2 cars in there and have storage space.) We got our carport converted in October of 2013 and it has been fabulous! I'm not sure if we'll ever add on a bigger garage on the other side of our house. Depends on what our long term goal is. The main issue is the cost and if it would improve our home (in market value and/or for us personally). For now we are happy to just have A garage at all!

And the master bath and closet are definitely on the list, but that likely won't come until we're making garage plans, so we may move downstairs into the suite that we are planning for down there before we get to the garage and possibly adding on. For now, we are making the unfinished bathroom and bedroom a master suite. It's separate from our other downstairs rooms and will have a large window (right underneath the kitchen window you see in the picture above actually). It won't have it's own private bathroom, but that will do for now. It's not quite as big as our current bedroom, but that is because I cut a 6'x6' piece out of the space for a walk in closet. If we end up wanting more space or a more private space, we will consider an addition upstairs at that point. It's not like we don't have two girls who will one day be teenagers and would love a walk in closet connected to a bathroom.


Not on my previous list that we got done:

Moving the master bedroom, painting the master bedroom and getting a new bed.

Putting supports in the closet shelves in my craft room.

New appliances.





Okay, so a new list of projects to do. 

1. Expanded and reworked mud/laundry room. 
2. Paint the siding and garage door. (hopefully in the next couple of weeks!)
3. Bathroom/Bedroom suite downstairs
4. More bushes and plants.
5. Desk tops in the office and play room nooks.
6. Kitchen/family room/entry.
7. Upstairs bathroom.
8. Refinish hardwood in the hall.
9. Hardwood treads on stairs.
10. Crown molding.
11. Can lights and fans without light kits in the bedrooms.

And some ideas that are less likely to ever happen.

1. Possibly replace some windows in bedrooms (we have long narrow ones which you can see in the pictures).
2. Possibly dig out some bigger basement windows.

I think that's about it. It seems so short!
But most of those are pretty big and expensive projects, which means they take longer to get to. We are in the process of buying a second rental which is wiping out our available large project money for another year or two. I told Jon that it's probably better to spend that money to make money rather than just spend it. Real life, right?

Just like I wanted my plants to just be fully grown, I really wish I could just get all my house projects done. That would be so nice!

Thankfully, time seems to go pretty quickly as we feel like we are always busy with something.