In Which We Finished 11 House Projects...

This has been one heck of a few weeks. We decided to take the last few weeks and bust out all of our partially done home improvement projects. This list was bigger than I thought when we started, but I'm happy to say we did them all. This list ended up something like this:

• Put baseboards up in the hallway
• Fix cupboard doors in hallway
• Paint the baseboards in the guest bedroom
• Hang a new light in the vanity nook in the master bedroom
• Hang a new mirror in the vanity nook in the master bedroom
• Finish painting the vanity nook in the master bedroom
• Put up those strips that bridge the gap between two different floor types in a few places upstairs and one in the kitchen
• Fix/Hang a door for the utility closest
• Fix the place where the was a door frame downstairs (we had to remove it to get furniture in the basement)
• Find a home for Tom's nick-nacks
• Find a home for some of the boxes dad brought out here when we bought the house

I totally feel like I'm leaving something off, but that was the list.

Put baseboards up in the hallway:

Our dear neighbor helped us out with this one. It turns out that our walls are a little weird so this took an extra set of wood than expected because we were having trouble getting the right angles cut. But Kelly helped us figure it out and he and Tom got it all done in a few hours. We got all of this painted and finished within 24 hours of them being hung.

Finished hallway with baseboards and strip

Fix cupboards in the hallway:

Okay, so we have a few storage closets in our hallway and they were all sorts of ugly. So, we decided that a quick coat of paint, new hinges, and new handles would spruce them up nicely. Sounds easy, no? Well, it turns out that the original hinges were a weird size and we couldn't find replacements that were quite right. This left each door overhanging about 1/8 of an inch. This almost worked without being too annoying on our towel closet because there is only one door. The food storage closet though has the two doors that meet in the middle, so this overhang meant that the doors wouldn't be close to shutting. So, Tom had to get a chisel out so that the hinges hung flush with the doors. Somehow though they still didn't quite fit, so he just chiseled away at the edges until they would close. Not sure what kind of magic those original hinges had, but changing the hardware on a closet/cupboard door should not take that much effort.

Paint the baseboards in the guest room:

Remember when we re-did the floors? Well, I was a little sloppy and got stain up on the baseboards, which made the guest room look shabby, obviously. So, our friends Nate and Hillary were kind enough to come over on a day off and help us get started painting the baseboards. There help allowed Tom and I to finish the rest in that room in about a day. They were great for coming to lend a hand. Although the walls have not been repainted at least the room doesn't look like it is half done now, so that is really wonderful.

Painted trim and baseboards in guest bedroom (some of Tom's pretties also visible)

Hang a new light in the vanity nook of our master bedroom:

Our house has a weird vanity area in our master bedroom that sits between the room and the bathroom. I'm guessing this was the 1964 moderate sized home answer to the idea of a master suite with bathroom. Anyways, we've been in the house for 3 years now and this vanity area had never been used. This is not because it is a bad idea or too small to be useful, it was simply do the fact that I pulled the light and mirror out when we painted the bedroom so I could paint the nook and never finished painting or replacing said mirror and light. Well, we finally went down to the store and picked out a light and we've replaced many a light at this point so we figured, "no big deal". Yeah, there were things going on that had my brother-in-law the electrician confused behind that one. But Scott was at least able to fix it up enough to be safe and we popped the new light on.

Hang a new mirror in the vanity nook:

As mentioned above, the mirror got removed and tossed awhile back. Now that our vanity area had a light, it needed a mirror. We found a cute little cabinet one. This was an awesome win because when I say vanity area, I literally mean a sink with 2 tiny drawers and the under the sink cupboard. We were wanting to move most of our hair care, teeth care, and other toiletries into the vanity area so that when we have guests no one feels like they are in the way of anyone else. So, a small cabinet mirror was a must. Glad we found the one we did because even though it isn't large it holds a surprisingly large amount.

Finish painting the vanity nook:

So remember up above where I said that I got rid of the original light and mirror so I could paint. Yeah, well, I didn't actually finish that. I have had the blue tape and un-painted areas for 3 years now. I'm happy to say though that once we had a light fixture and mirror I suddenly had motivation to paint again. And, everything got painted prior to hanging anything, which means there are no annoying surprise "color" match areas should I need to downsize one of the fixture later.

New light, new mirror, and finished paint in vanity nook

Put up the strips that bridge the gap between areas with different flooring:

We have lovely hard wood in the hallway upstairs. This is some awesome stuff and what we spent re-finishing a few months ago. The bathroom on the other hand has this terrible, heavy, stone tile. And of course their was a little gap between the bathroom floor and the hallway floor. We have been putting off putting one of these strips down because the tile wasn't cut or laid evenly, but we did finally find something that would work and got it stained to match the hard wood and laid the other day. We had this same issue with the bathroom tile in the vanity area, except that the vanity flooring is this awful laminate. Can't wait to replace that. Anyway, we also put a strip between the vanity and bedroom and downstairs in the kitchen.

Fix/hang doors for the utility closet:

When we moved in the utility closet had a broken door. This is one of those two panel folding doors and there are two doors that meet in the middle. One of these doors had the peg that holds it into the frame broken off. It looked like someone had shaved down the frame-side of each door and had simply cut to far over on that one. So, we took the broken door out to the garage with the intent of throwing it out during spring cleaning (which up here is when the county garbage guys leave dumpsters on your street for 24 hours and you can throw any non-toxic material away). That was three years ago, and apparently it never got put out at spring cleaning, because I totally found it about a week ago.

I wanted to replace the doors at the utility closet so that we had a nice new fully functioning doors, but apparently the previous owner didn't shave down the original doors for nothing. Someone framed out the doors for the utility closet and made it 2 inches too narrow or 6 inches to wide for standard doors. This meant that I simply nailed the broken door into place so that we at least have a closed off area now, but only one half of the system opens, which is sort of sad. But it sure looks better than the half door and dog gate that's been there for years now.

Fix the place where there used to be a door frame downstairs:

Okay, when we moved in there was a door frame at the base of our stairs going into the basement, but we couldn't get our couch or deep freeze past it, so we ripped it out. This left the raw frame in its place. And, you can guess, this stayed that way for 3 years. We decided not to rebuild the door frame because we figure we will want to get said couch out in the future. We simply finished it off like a part of the wall and painted it. It is far from perfect but there are no raw framing nails visible, so I am counting this one as a win.

Utility closet doors and fixed door frame area

Find a home for Tom's nick-nacks:

If you have never been to our place let me explain something. Tom owns a lot of pretty shelf sitting items. I'm not joking, you can fit my nick-nacks on a single shelf and his are every where. When we moved in he found a home for all of his statues but not all of his weapons (he used to collect pretty daggers, swords, and other blades). They have been sitting on the bench that wraps around the fireplace in the basement since we un-packed them. 

I spent most of last Saturday "spring cleaning". This was mostly about re-organizing the bookshelves int he living room so that I could clear up a book shelf upstairs to display Tom's pretties on. I was successful. I moved all text books and the like up into a closet that has some built in shelves, placed all our church books on one shelf, and then organized what was left. This now means that all of our non-text books are in one room and easy to find. I can't explain how happy this makes me. And, I was successful, I did clear up another shelving unit and it is now upstairs filling a weird nook and holding family photos and Tom's collection. 

Find a home for some boxes dad brought me:

When Tom and I first moved in dad drove out here with his friend pulling a trailer stacked with the boxes that held my childhood. When he first brought them I was able to go through all but 2 of those boxes and decide what was genuinely junk and should be thrown out or donated and what I really wanted to pass along to another generation someday. The keepable items ended up in the 4 or 5 nice clear plastic storage bins dad brought. They now live under the guest bed in the guest bedroom. I'm not sure why or how I missed these two boxes, but I sure did. They have been stacked in a corner in the basement this whole time and about once every 6 months I remember I need to go through them. I still haven't managed to do that, but they are at least now tucked away in a closet and out of the way.

It has been a whirlwind of 2 weeks getting all of this done and we've had a lot help along the way. Nate, Hillary, and Kelly all helped with the interior. And we couldn't have gotten it done without the help.

I'll save the outdoor work for another post because I know this is crazy long already, but a special thank you to Kathryn, Mike, and Nate for helping us with that too. I have to admit that in the year since I changed jobs and have made an honest effort to reach out and make friends that Tom and I have been blessed with some of the best friends in the world. We have had to say goodbye to two in the last few months when they moved back to her families' neck of the woods, but we are so very grateful for those in our lives. Thank you all!