Home Improvement - Year 2

I'm not sure how we were able to get so much done with two small kids running around, but thanks to Sam's muscles and some help from several contractors and our parents, we have tackled some serious projects in the past year.

The Porch
Our porch had been an eyesore since we moved in.  It was (badly) painted red and peeled so horribly we would track it into the house.  The old (original?) wrought iron railing that went around it was loose, squeaky, and had no handrail up the stairs.  It was only a matter of time before Morgan, who liked to climb on it, would go tumbling off into the bushes with it in her hand.  So, way back last spring we got it scraped (the guys said there were about 5 coats of paint or various shades of red, beige, and a weird lime green), tented the porch, and painted. We stuck with the red and it looks SOOOO much better!  I hope that it will hold up over the years.  We also had new iron railings installed and they look beautiful, not to mention much safer!

BEFORE

After a day or scraping by two guys

It was tented for painting

AFTER!

The Yard

Every year, Sam seems to have some quota of old shrubs that he has to remove.  It is such a pain to cut them up and even more painful to dig out their roots.  Last year he did it to put in the fence, and this year he again answered my request to remove the HUGE laurel in the back yard as well as a really old, annoying bush right by our driveway.  The laurel made a huge difference, since it was 12 feet high, 12 feet long and about 5 feet deep.  (And in our little city lot, that is a lot of real estate!)  So thanks to some serious sweat equity by my awesome husband and our neighbor's truck, Sam removed them to make way for a new planter box.  

BEFORE: last summer with Laurel and old raised bed

After removing the laurel, Sam built a beautiful new raised bed for our garden veggies (and extra seating, he likes to point out!)  We also planted two clematis on trellises behind it to add some interest to our neighbor's garage wall.  The next step was removing the old red raised bed and leveling the soil.  We were able to distribute the extra dirt to the back of the yard, where Sam did another project: extending a small retaining wall to make a raised bed.  The last part of the back yard project was to reseed or lay sod on the dirt patch.  It was one of those "we should do that this summer, but probably won't" kind of projects, until.....  I happened to be walking to the park one day and a neighbor had about 10 rolls of new sod with a "free" sign on it!  What luck!!!  It was exactly the amount we needed!  Of course Sam was working late and I was worried that someone would take it, so I attempted to go and get it myself.  With Sasha napping and Morgan at school, off I go about 3 blocks away with my wheelbarrow.  Uh, ...sod is really really heavy!  After one trip with 3 rolls and my arms burning, I decided to drive there and get it.  But before I could, one of our neighbors saw me and offered to go get it for me!  He totally went out of his way and got all muddy in the process, but he insisted.  I love our neighborhood even more: free sod and an offer of help when I needed it most!

A well earned beer!

Sasha oversees the new retaining wall.

Free sod!!!

The girls love having more space to play!

Good Bye Oil, Hello Gas!

This last project was MAJOR, and one we planned on tackling several years from now.  But thanks to the unbelievable generosity of my parents and some good energy-saving incentives, we were able to convert our home from oil heat to natural gas this summer.  I was not familiar with oil heat until we lived in our duplex in NW after we moved from Eugene.  Then we discovered this house had it when we were buying it.  It wasn't a deal breaker, but oil, as gas prices prove, is very expensive to heat with and not very efficient.  Add to that a leaky old house, and our winter heating bill last winter was into 4 digits.  

So, after several estimates, negotiations, and decision-making, the oil furnace and the old oil tank that took up a lot of room in our storage room was drained and removed and a nice new gas furnace was installed along with a gas water heater.  It was a big learning process for both of us since we hadn't ever made that kind of purchase before and were dealing with a wide variety of contractors.  The big decision we made, though, was to relocate everything to the storage room.  They used to be right in the center of the house, next to the chimney (which I learned used to be for coal heat in our 1926 house back before oil!)  Now that we didn't need the chimney anymore and would like the potential of remodeling the basement someday (many many years from now when/if we have the money), we wanted the mechanical stuff to be out of the way.  

Old water heater, chimney, and oil furnace

Empty storage room

AFTER: Gas furnace & water heater (and all our stuff!)

Now we have more space and much more efficient heating, including better heat in the basement.  We also got lots of insulation put in our attic space, which had virtually nothing!   I keep thinking back to when we moved in during a very cold spring, and poor newborn Sasha must have been freezing.  I am so thankful that our rooms upstairs will be much warmer this winter and our house has been modernized to the 21st Century!