Renovation Pictures

I am due to blog post, but I thought I would share some of the renovation pictures. I'm trying to remember to take some before and after pictures but it's not so easy when your in the middle of it.

I did grab an old pic of our house to use as a pre-picture....

(Click on the picture to see a larger view)

So here is the list of things we did....

1. Change outdoor lights from those god awful sensor lights that never stayed on, to regular nice outdoor lights that work by a switch, stay on when you turn it on, stay off when you turn it off...energy efficient I am not! But I can turn off a switch, so energy efficent I try to be.

2. Cut out hole in garage by front door for an entryway into the garage, no more running in 3 feet of snow just to throw out the garbage.

3. Build stairs because the new door is WAYYYY higher than the floor of the garage and build new supports for the garage so it won't fall down on us after cutting out the hole. As well we have a second floor on our garage so we had to re-support it after cutting out a big hole so you can walk up and down the stairs.

4. Organize garage (okay I know it doesn't look organzied but it is) and put up cupboard in garage. After having the garage as a shared space for 6 years, we had to sort out Dan's tools from ours, and after he moves on August 1st, the kitchen cupboards are all going into the garage! Good idea eh? What a way to recycle! So the garage is organized, just most of it doesn't have a home yet...

5. Rewire the garage so that there is a garage door opener and light switch on the top of the stairs inside the garage. We got a keypad entry for the outside of the garage door in the front.

6. Take out ugly half dead tree that leaks sap all over our cars (see picture of whole house above), and put in pretty little umbrella tree that I had at our old house and missed so much. Not a berry one...just a regular weeping mulberry tree.

7. Take out weeds in little garden and put in lilac bush

8. Redo concrete front porch/patio...notice the before and after pictures? No we did not do that one, we hired someone.....concrete projects that big, need some know how we don't have.

9. Fill in all screw/nail holes or little breakage of brick with motor fix.

10. The long neglected SIDE of the house. Now this is on the left side, it was a mess. You see we use to have neighbors who were total slops...okay her husband was. Now this is a shared space between the two neighbors, and well he took our space too. He collected so much junk from broken bikes, to rocks, to wood things and carpet and vinyl tiling (which was his business). I had asked him several times to clean it up, and when he moved last summer he said he was going to take it all....ahem. He didn't!

So it was time I did. My new neighbors didn't really use that side, but for me it was our best access to the yard and I wanted it cleaned up. First step....dig a hole to fill in the crack in our foundation. It wasn't a necessary fix as nothing was leaking, but a preventative one. Especially since we'll be redoing the bsmt next month.

Then we have 3 nice size bsmt windows, but one was missing a window well...so we put on in.

Not done yet....you see, what if it rained and we all forgot to CLOSE the windows. What a mess that would be. So we thought will put in window well covers! Okay, seriously, it will not keep out all the rain, but will help shield it.....the only problem was you can't buy window well covers for a window that big. So we had to get creative......

Last step, grass.....we got rid of a lot of the garbage on our neightbors side too....kinda sort of straightened out the patio stones...okay I did a shit job but dang those things are heavy! All in all, it looks 100 time better than it did and most importantly it's useable!

Next project........big garden in our backyard is going to get wayyyyyy smaller. Green thumb I am not!

2 weeks worth of blood, sweat and tears...okay no tears, but there was blood a few times..you should see my knuckles. But well worth it. My husband and I worked side by side most of the time, and it was time we had together to work as a team, some points tested our teamwork ability and man did we do great!

He's already asking, what's next!?!?! What a guy. Just like arts and crafts...only bigger!