In honor of a new month (August already?!) and since we have now owned this place about two months and lived here one month, I figured it was time to revisit THE list and see what can be crossed off and what should be added. The red is commentary and the blue is new stuff!
the must dos
- tear out weeds in whole backyard and plant grass seed. hopefully grow grass. (Jeff did tear out all the weeds and it looked amazing, but we didn't plant grass yet and in the meantime almost all the weeds have grown back. so that stays on the list)
trim/cut down all branches/weeds and everything else that is overgrown throughout the yard (i'll cross it off because Jeff and his parents, while they were visiting, did an awesome job clearing everything out, but i do realize that this is a reoccurring task as a homeowner)- scrape and paint around windows and doors (all but the top two on the front)
- hang mailbox
- install carbon monoxide testers
tear down terrible rotting shed and replace with new shed (see post entitled "Seventh Wonder of the World")tear down terrible ugly metal awning on back of house (how do we do this?? with a giant crow bar. that's how you do it)- take out terrible broken chain link fence and replace with pretty wooden fence so we can't see into neighbor's yard
- redo upstairs bathroom (that's pretty general and i'm sure will be a pretty easy one to check off...)
kitchen and hardwood floors on main level are being redone by professionals- paint kitchen
- kitchen tile backsplash
- fix gutter in back so it slopes more
- curtains! mainly for the living room and bedroom. there is so much sunlight coming in this house, which is a good thing but also can make it kind of hot and hard to sit on the couch at times
- clean and organize basement
- clean and organize guest room (these two rooms have become collecting spotsfor stuff we don't know what to do with)
- paint exposed brick wall inside white (like 90% done. that other 10% is pretty high up there...even with an extension roller and a ladder precariously balanced on the stairs)
- tear out grass in between concrete strips of driveway and replace with gravel
- tear out grass strip to the left of driveway and replace with gravel/stepping stones
- somehow make it so car doesn't scrape on driveway every time you back out (turn car while backing out. only took me a month and a half to figure that out)
- make cute white flower boxes for windows
- paint back door white
- make upstairs second bedroom closet into an office nook
- replace bedroom closet doors with...something better than what's there (took off closet doors - that's progress!)
- replace baseboards and put in crown moulding in living room
- paint bedrooms
- make new house number sign for front
And right now as I'm writing this, 1-800-GOT-JUNK is outside hauling away all of our trash and I'm so excited. We have had piles of junk sitting around outside for months now and I can't wait for them to be gone!
So clearly the list got longer, but I was expecting that. At least we are still having fun doing all this stuff!
(oh and found two more dead baby birds outside, in case anyone was keeping count)
