So my slacker-ism knows no bounds. I actually started this post way back in September and it turns out that it probably took longer to finish the blog post than to finish the actual projects. Even back in September, it was way past time to finish up and cross off some of the home improvement items on the list that I’d had started but weren’t finished. That has changed.
77. Finish the pocket door on the bedroom closet.
Ok…. well this one isn’t done quite yet, but some more progress has been made on this front. My mother came to Montana for a couple of weeks back in September and like all of her trips here she spent most of her time working on some aspect of the house. This time she tackled the daunting task of removing the texture from the walls in the bedroom. We all knew that it would be a very tedious and extremely dusty job. But none of us particularly liked the texture or the color on the walls.
As part of this project, I put in the last 2 pieces of drywall around the new pocket door as well as the new door jamb. (The old door was a few inches shorter than the new sliding door so we could not re-use the old jamb.) My hope is to cross this item off of the list very soon. All that is left is to tighten the hardware in the sliding mechanism and to put the remaining trim on the door. Although I’m now thinking that it might make sense to go ahead and take care of number 82 - Install new carpet in the living room and bedrooms before putting the trim back on the walls. It just seems silly to put the trim on when it is going to need to come back off again to install carpet. That said I think we’d only do the bedrooms at this point. There is a lot of other stuff to do yet in the living room / kitchen before we’re ready for a new floor in there. Also, I think I’ve been convinced to go with hardwood floors of some sort for the entire main room (kitchen and living room.) More on that as we figure it out.
80. Either finish or remove the silly fence in my front yard.
I spoke fairly extensively about this project in an earlier post: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors, Bad Fences are Just Annoying. I worked steadily on this project for several weeks. I’d take a few minutes before work to take out another section or a couple of posts. Finally on August 27th, right before our trip to Wisconsin, the last of the posts came out of the ground. There has been some additional work that has gone one since then like filling in the post holes and disposing of the concrete blocks around the bottom of the posts. I gave several of the sections of fencing to my neighbor and his girlfriend and sent the rest to a local ….. place. I’m not sure how to categorize it. They do a little bit of all sorts of stuff. They repair small engines; They sell propane; they collect and sell “scrap” wood. Many times I’ve needed just a small piece of plywood or 2×4 or something like that for some portion of a project. Instead of buying a whole piece that I don’t really need, I can often buy a piece just big enough for what I need for much, much, much less money. This is recycling at its best. I’ve salvaged the posts from the fence and they will be used as part of # 83: Build a new deck / porch.
It took a while to get used to the fence not being there in the front yard, but I definitely like the yard better this way. That fence just never seemed quite right. Now that the fence is gone though it makes it more obvious that I need to work on a couple more of the Home related items on my list: number 86 - Build a nice driveway and number 87 - Build a nice walkway from the driveway to the front door. The one nice thing that the old fence did accomplish was to define the parking spaces. It was very clear where people were supposed to park. Now it is a little more vague – a great deal more vague when there is 2 feet of fresh snow on the ground. Those two items have moved up on the priority list. I’m hoping to make a lot of progress on the outside of the house this spring including the new trees (#84) and the new deck (#83).
89. Organize the storage shed. (Including good kayak storage.)
This project had been more or less done for quite some time. I just needed to add some finishing touches, like a couple of more shelves and a new light fixture outside. I finished those last few touches on September 21st. The shed is now much more usable with plenty of room for storage of all sorts of things including my kayaks. It is so much easier to get to the things that I’m looking for as I no longer have to move nine items just to get into the building. I’m very happy with how this project came out.
