Let's start with the house...
We moved 2.5 months ago, and in a lot of ways it seems like we've been there much longer... until you look at all of the boxes that haven't been unpacked, and oh yeah... we just moved. Part of the "problem" is that up until very recently, I couldn't really help to get anything unpacked or set-up. Now that I can move, I'm hoping to get things in shape around the house.
However! We have still managed to make some improvements in the short time we've been there. Andy has turned out to be very good at house things (thanks to Google and YouTube, lol). Here are some of the projects we've worked on so far:
1) "Pantry"
The kitchen has a LOT more storage than our last kitchen, however once we unpacked all of our weddings gifts, we ran out of space for food! And so, we have been working to turn the basement stair wall into a pantry. Here's the before...
...and (sort of) after!
I say 'sort of' because we have since cleaned it up and added a lot more to the shelves. Our plan is to add one more shelf, and also to give the whole area a fresh coat of paint. :-)
2) Kitchen
Unfortunately I don't have a picture, but one of the best things that we've done to the kitchen is added some shelving inside some of the larger cabinets - and the shelves are customized to the items we wanted to store. I'll have to take a picture because it really is very cool. But that's not all! We also put handles on all of the drawers (that was WAY harder to figure out than it should have been...).
But wait, there's more! When my mom came, we made a trip to Ikea. Thanks to a little Pinterest inspiration and a lot of elbow grease on behalf of my mom, we have a wall o' pots and pans. We love it!
3) Closet
Andy took out the wooden rod in his closet, and replaced it with a wire closet system that gives him double the storage. This picture was taken halfway through the process, but you get the idea...
4) Paint
We still have a few rooms to go (bathroom and our bedroom) but we got the living room painted. The shade is pretty close to what existed before, but the old color had a peachy undertone and our new shade has more of a yellowy undertone. The only reason I know this is a before picture is because the paint rollers are clean, but you can see the paint in the tray is veeeery similar. Honestly it really doesn't matter - the new coat of paint really made the room look a lot cleaner and I'm very glad we did it.
5) Laundry
Of course our dryer died after about a month of being in the new place. To be fair, both the washer and dryer looked like they were from the stone age, so I am not entirely surprised. We found a used appliance store and managed to get a matching washer and dryer at a very good price. Bonus - we were able to switch from an electric dryer to a gas dryer, so it will be less expensive to run!
6) "Farm"
There were two raised garden beds in the backyard when we got the house, so once the weather was cooperative, we planted vegetables! I'm not very good at keeping things alive but I really hope they grow. Unfortunately I've caught a few squirrels in the beds since we've planted, so I'm not feeling very optimistic, but it's fun nonetheless.
Here's what one of the beds looked like before...
...and here they are now!
We also got a planter and planted some herbs.
Farm montage!
7) Lamppost
I don't know if we missed this during the inspection or if it broke sometime between that and our closing, but when we moved in the front porch light and the lamppost light didn't work. Andy has a friend who's an electrician so he came over and was able to get the porch light working again. He looked at the lantern of the lamppost and said the wiring to the house was still good, but the light fixture itself needed to be replaced.
Here was the lamppost with the broken fixture...
The old one was black, and of course the new fixture we picked out was a dark bronze. The paint on the lamppost was badly chipped anyway, so it didn't really matter. Andy stripped the pole and repainted it!
Lamppost montage!
8) Garage Door Opener
No photos of this one, but we replaced the garage door opener. The one that was in place when we moved in was so old, it didn't have any safety sensors to make the door go back up if something was in the way. There also weren't any remotes for your car so the only way to make the door go up/down was to press the button that was installed... in the kitchen. Now! The button for the garage door is in the garage, we each have a remote for our car, and there's a keypad on the outside of the house we can use to make the door go up/down as well! And instead of a chain, the door opener uses a (rubber?) belt so it is much quieter.
Pretty good for only two and a half months huh???? Oh but there's still this to tackle...
Pretty much all of our boxes etc ended up in the three-seasons room. UGH.
What have I learned from doing these projects?
- Every project will require 3 trips to Home Depot and/or Lowes
- You cannot make an initial trip to Home Depot for less than $100
- YouTube is the new Bob Villa. It will show you how to do everything (at least so far)
Andy and I will chip away at unpacking over the next few weeks, but then the big guns are coming. My parents!!! Not only will they bring a U-Haul of garage tools, patio furniture, THE TREADMILL (!!!!!!!!) but they bring their 30+ years of DIY home improvement expertise. The plan... to tackle the basement! Stay tuned for more pictures of how we hopefully transform a concrete spider paradise into a clarinet studio. :-)
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