What We’ve Been Up To
Feb 20th, 2014 by Sarah
Wow – I was thinking it had been a while since I’d posted anything to the blog and it was probably time for an update, but I had no idea it’s been almost a year. Crazy. I guess time just got away from me. Anywho, needless to say, I’m way past due in sharing what we’ve been up to, so here’s a quick look at some of the projects we’ve worked on over the last year.
1) Refinishing Hardwood Floors
This one makes the top of the list based solely on the impact it’s had to the main floor of our house. We had the original hardwood floors refinished in the dining room and foyer (replacing some pretty worn carpet). In hind sight, this turned out to be one of the more disruptive projects we’ve done since living in this house, but now that all of the inconvenience is behind us, I can safely say it was totally worth it!
2) Grown Up Curtains
We have curtains – real, grown up window treatments – in the dining room and living room! This is something we’ve talked about since we started redecorating the main floor, but I was a non-believer. Custom curtains aren’t cheap and I (apparently) am. But, after 6 years of living with teal fabrics that no longer matched anything else on the main floor, we decided it was time to bite the bullet and update them. We figure old ones lasted 20 years, which is a pretty good run for curtains … and the new ones have made a world of difference. Needless to say, I’m now a believer in “the power” of curtains.
The “before” pictures:
And, the “after” photos:
3) The Basement
We’ve started working in the basement … sealing it up, cleaning it out, and generally making it nice, bright, and less buggy. So far, we’ve had new windows installed, sprayed foam insulation around the rim joists, and rearranged all of the stuff down there about 5 times to get better access to the couple of rooms we’re starting in.
4) New Porch Door!
We have a real door on the side porch now! Since we moved in, it’s always been a screen door, which really wasn’t a great solution. The door would get caught in the wind and blow open, it didn’t seal well at all, and generally felt like a “duct tape and chicken wire” solution. So, we decided it was time to do something more permanent and went with a fiberglass 3/4 glass door that swings into the porch (to avoid the wind issue). We’ve had it through the winter and have LOVED how much tighter the porch is now that we have a real door.
The old storm door:
And the new door:
5) No More Window Air Conditioners!
It might sound silly, but this was huge! We had a couple of window air conditioners mounted in the wall – one was in our bedroom and one was in the sunroom. They were probably a really great feature when those rooms were converted porches to living space long before the house had central air conditioning, but we’d never used them. As far as we were concerned, they were loud (we could hear everything outside like it was happening in our bedroom), they were no where near air (or bug) tight, and they didn’t look very pretty. Once they were gone (and the walls patched), we realized we’d lived with them entirely too long. They are gone, but definitely not missed!
The master bedroom:
And the sunroom:
6) New Liner for tbe Pool
This wasn’t exactly a planned upgrade, but we found our pool empty and the liner collapsed when we went to open it last spring, so a new liner it was. We knew the liner was getting up there in age, so it as really just a matter of time. Hopefully this means we’ll have some uninterrupted seasons of pool use ahead of us – these pictures make me so excited for warmer weather! I can’t wait to go swimming with Haley this year – I think she will have so much fun with it!
Anyway, many apologies for the lengthy absence. I think this brings the blog (roughly) up to date … more to come (hopefully without a year passing in the meantime)!
Filed Under: Decorating,Home Improvement,Pool