It's been an expensive month around our house. First we paid for the 7 new windows which have yet to be installed. Then paid for the cabinet doors coming from CA that my dad is going to custom build for laundry room storage. Then our refrigerator has been slowly dying, and instead of yet another craigslist fridge that lasts a year we got a new one. And now our AC is broken.
I guess I can still be thankful that we have good jobs and are able to pay for these things, and that I am blessed with a husband who in 90+ degree weather goes out in the weeds behind our house armed only with crappy harbor freight tools, his laptop of "how to fix your air conditioner" youtubes and a lot of gumption and determination. Yes, I'm very thankful for that. So Doug got a couple new fuses and is planning on installing some other part today to try to fix it. Hope it will work! And the new fridge was delivered this morning.
I can't help feeling down about some house projects that have gone wrong lately. I'm super bummed my deck/porch paint is already peeling. And I had gotten these cool solar bulb lights for the deck and both of them already snapped. Sad! And the violets mom transplanted around the deck have either been eaten by the groundhog or just dried to a crisp in all this hot weather despite my almost daily waterings. Too bad.
Another sadness is our nursery wall we've been working on and is just not turning out as we hoped. More on that another day.
One project that is finally done is the crown molding in our bedroom.
This is how the room looked before Doug and I got married and I moved in:
absolutely disgusting
We painted it "shark loop" grey and moved in.
This year during the late winter we decided to add crown molding. It was a tricky task as it went up on a slant and you had to cut all these inside/outside cuts with the miter saw.
The ol' measure twice cut once apparently does not apply to crown molding. It was like measure several times, cut several times. So often we would measure, cut, and bring the piece in just to have it still be bowing out and too long when we'd try to put it up against the wall. Truly mind-boggling.
yes, this kinda stuff happened a couple times.
We also hung curtain rods and curtains that mom and I lined with old salvation army white sheets to make them more light blocking.
And then we lived with it until the last weekend.
I spent one afternoon puttying all the little nail holes and cracks. Another afternoon painting two coats of white trim paint. A third afternoon applying the caulk between the trim and the ceiling. And maybe I should've stopped there, except our walls must not really be square and I could see cracks underneath the trim and wall that were bugging me. So this morning I caulked that crack. But bummed again because unlike my bathroom caulk job which turned out awesome this caulk looks wavy in some areas and it's just not as good. Hopefully I'm the only one who pays such close attention.
It does feel good to have one more thing checked off the to-do list.
But all these things, and working hard just to have things still 'off' just make me dream of a brand new house.
This last weekend Doug and I went with a realtor to look at a house. All I could see as I walked around was project after project. Maybe if the price were right, possibly, but to be an expensive house and still have tons of work to do, no thanks. I guess it's just as well, I think it's crazy to move now with the baby coming and I want to stick around and enjoy our home improvements and see my gardens grow, at least for now.
I can't help feeling down about some house projects that have gone wrong lately. I'm super bummed my deck/porch paint is already peeling. And I had gotten these cool solar bulb lights for the deck and both of them already snapped. Sad! And the violets mom transplanted around the deck have either been eaten by the groundhog or just dried to a crisp in all this hot weather despite my almost daily waterings. Too bad.
Another sadness is our nursery wall we've been working on and is just not turning out as we hoped. More on that another day.
One project that is finally done is the crown molding in our bedroom.
This is how the room looked before Doug and I got married and I moved in:
absolutely disgusting
We painted it "shark loop" grey and moved in.
This year during the late winter we decided to add crown molding. It was a tricky task as it went up on a slant and you had to cut all these inside/outside cuts with the miter saw.
The ol' measure twice cut once apparently does not apply to crown molding. It was like measure several times, cut several times. So often we would measure, cut, and bring the piece in just to have it still be bowing out and too long when we'd try to put it up against the wall. Truly mind-boggling.
yes, this kinda stuff happened a couple times.
We also hung curtain rods and curtains that mom and I lined with old salvation army white sheets to make them more light blocking.
And then we lived with it until the last weekend.
I spent one afternoon puttying all the little nail holes and cracks. Another afternoon painting two coats of white trim paint. A third afternoon applying the caulk between the trim and the ceiling. And maybe I should've stopped there, except our walls must not really be square and I could see cracks underneath the trim and wall that were bugging me. So this morning I caulked that crack. But bummed again because unlike my bathroom caulk job which turned out awesome this caulk looks wavy in some areas and it's just not as good. Hopefully I'm the only one who pays such close attention.
It does feel good to have one more thing checked off the to-do list.
But all these things, and working hard just to have things still 'off' just make me dream of a brand new house.
This last weekend Doug and I went with a realtor to look at a house. All I could see as I walked around was project after project. Maybe if the price were right, possibly, but to be an expensive house and still have tons of work to do, no thanks. I guess it's just as well, I think it's crazy to move now with the baby coming and I want to stick around and enjoy our home improvements and see my gardens grow, at least for now.
Yeah, sometimes I get down too about things going wrong. It's just the world we live in. I have friends who have done new home construction, things still break or were done wrong. The nice thing about an older house is you can be pretty sure that if the foundation or something major was going to go, it would've long ago. :)
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