Home Improvement

Husband and I have spent a lot of the summer doing home improvement projects.  I've come to believe that home improvement projects will always take double the time you anticipate they'll take.  There's always some unforeseen wiring issue or patching project that pops up in the middle of whatever you are doing that requires yet another run to Home Depot and at least a one day delay. 

For us, that means almost all home improvement projects take about three times longer than they would take a normal family.  First of all, it is hard to get Husband motivated.  I don't really blame him on this one because more often than not he does most of the project.   It is understandable that after a week of work he wouldn't be looking forward to planting or painting or whatever.  But it is also hard because we only can work on home projects on weekends.  Because of our long commutes, we almost never have time to do any home improvement project during the week.  Seriously.  It takes a mountain of planning and perfect execution just for us to get home in time to cut the grass on a weekday during the summer.  There's no way we're going to be able to tackle anything larger. 

As a result, projects move rather slowly around our house. But despite our snail's pace, I'm proud of all we've accomplished this summer. We transformed our side yard from a hodge podge of random plants and wild flowers to a landscaped bed.

We edged and mulched all of our flower beds ourselves. We replaced and stained the sections of our fence that were blown away in this spring's strong storms. We finished the great window replacement project of 2007 (yay!). We fixed damage incurred from a leaking skylight. We transitioned Sweet Pea from a baby room to a big girl room, which required buying furniture for and redecorating two bedrooms. 

And we replaced our wall-mounted microwave (which doesn't sound like a big deal until you learn that we only replaced it because our original one broke - and it took four - yes, four - returns to get a new microwave that worked properly).  And we did all that, on top of working, kid activities, a vacation and just regular house maintenance.  I'm proud of us. 

Of course, home improvement projects are never done. As I type this, we're one coat of primer into repainting our master bedroom.





Bye bye green

 And early next week, we're scheduled to get our skylights replaced.  And I've got big plans for our bathrooms once non-leaky skylights are installed.  Poor Husband.  There's no end in sight for him! 

Karen