There are several projects I really want to do to our house, ranging from small to big. From smallest to largest, they are:
1. Install 3-prong outlets where we still have 2-prong ones, fix some outlets that are currently inactive, and install an outlet in the bathroom (old houses and their outlet-less bathrooms…. how am I supposed to dry my hair?? Luckily, I rarely do that in the summer, but in the winter it’s a different story!)
2. Wall off the basement “bathroom.” Right now it’s not really even a bath “room”…. it’s basically a toilet and shower in the basement. That should be easy enough… all we’d need to do would be frame a wall and drywall.
3. Touch up paint in our bedroom, the “baby’s” room and the kitchen. This requires getting paint mixed to match the pre-existing colors in the bedrooms, since we left those rooms the colors they were when we moved in. I also want to repaint all the trim/baseboards/doors/window frames.
4. Paint the exterior of the house. It reeeeally needs it and we should have done it this summer, but the unexpected furnace and AC replacement ate up all our funds. It will have to wait until next year.
5. Refinish hardwood floors in living room, dining room and possibly the kitchen. (Not the “baby’s” room because there’s a huge armoire in it that I don’t think we could move to finish under! And our bedroom is upstairs and carpeted.)
6. Tile the main floor bathroom wall around the shower, so we don’t have to have 2 shower curtains. Also paint the walls a different color.
7. Convert some unfinished attic space (part of the attic is already converted into our bedroom) into a walk-in closet. Right now we have NO built-in closets in our entire house, and basically right now we use the “baby’s” room as a big walk-in closet. That is fine, as long as we don’t actually HAVE a baby… but our plan is to begin to have a baby next summer, so sometime within the next 2 years, we NEED to do this project so we can move our closet upstairs into an actual closet and free up the “baby’s” room for the baby!
8. Pie in the sky: I’d love to replace our windows. That’s not going to happen, though.
Number 7 is the most urgent. I think we’ll try to get that done before next summer. My husband has a buddy who is really handy and could help us out, and he works pest control, which there’s not a lot of demand for in the winter in MN, so his winters are pretty open. I think we can hire him for relatively cheap to be our guide and help us out, so we can do most of the work ourselves but not be totally clueless. The buddy already said he’d install an outlet in our bathroom for us, so I’m sure he can help us knock out number 1, and possibly 2, as well.
Number 3 we can obviously do on our own…. we just need TIME! We’ll paint the exterior next summer for sure. 5 and 6 may never get done, but I can still dream…. I definitely think at least doing the shower would raise our house value, but it would be complicated, because currently our shower’s only against the wall on 2 sides, so we’d have to build a glass-block wall or something on the 3rd, plus one of the walls has a window, so we might even have to glass-block that in. Just tiling the wall wouldn’t be too difficult or expensive, but adding those to pieces would be a pain. Also, the faucet is currently on plain wall, not tile, so we’d have to tile the area where the faucet is, which would man cutting holes in tiles, and that sounds complicated. But having 2 shower curtains is a huge pain, and there’s no where to put shampoo and stuff. We have a shower curtain with pockets on it right now, and it works fine, but doesn’t look all that nice, and I’m really afraid the weight is going to pull the rod out of the wall one of these days…
Oh, that reminds me, the curtain rod in our bedroom is coming out of the wall, and so are the coathooks in the entryway. Those are minor repairs, but they need to be done. And our front door doesn’t open in the summer when it’s humid… probably should get that fixed one of these days….
Le sigh… the joys of homeownership…….
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