Old House, Home

lisa August 29th, 2003

I’ve uploaded a bunch o’ pics to the gallery.

We are halfway done. We bought this house two years ago, and we’re halfway to finishing the main renovation projects. We celebrated last weekend with a big party that was well attended and a huge success. We’ll have an after party in another couple of years.

Since June, a lot of things have come together - we’re pretty much totally plumbed and electrified, although we still need the electrician to finish putting up the fixtures in the mudroom and the hard-wired smoke-detectors. The fire-sprinkler system is ready to be activated, I think. We’re going to have to hire some other electrician to put in the whole-house surge suppressor I want.

As for our labor projects, (this list is totally incomplete)
- we need to finish painting the stairs
- mudroom (thinking about wallpapering with nautical maps)
- our bedroom, the upstairs sitting room, and the servant’s bedroom all need a total cosmetic overhaul
- finish cabinetry in the kitchen

As for the outdoors, I have 55 bulbs to plant this fall, but I’m cool with the garden this year - not stressed at all.

Other things we need to do, short-term:
- Re-finance. We have an application in process with East-West Mortgage that looks like it’ll happen, but if it doesn’t we only have a few more months to take care of it before Mark’s student loans start showing up as a debt.
- Sandblast and re-paint the radiators and reinstall them, before it gets cold (we might start needing heat in … 3 weeks?)
- Tile the shower and floor in the upstairs bath
- Deal with whatever dip-tank stuff we should do for woodwork and trim we want to stain instead of paint
- Woodstove. We have to get the fireplace lined and buy a woodstove and build a decorative thing around the woodstove. I don’t know if we’ll do this before winter - it depends on whether we can find a reasonably priced, used, post-1996 woodstove to buy.
- Sand and refinish the hardwood floors throughout the house

Future projects include:
- The back deck, with a sliding glass door from the mud room (priority:1)
- A garden shed (priority:1)
- Refinishing part of the basement as a playspace, which involves lowering the floor(priority:1)
- Building a conservatory from the basement out into the back yard (glassed-in three-walled conservatory/ greenhouse) (priority:3)
- A garage of some sort (priority:1)
- A woodshop for Mark (priority:1)
- Re-finishing the attic as a master suite with bathroom (priority:3)

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