Winter Projects

 As mentioned, I don't know, a couple dozen times before, Ryan and I are not winter people. So we have done our best to try and find small projects to work on to keep us busy. Here are a few of the updates we've made:

New hardware for the kitchen. It's a small thing, but it makes a big difference. We replaced all the wood/bronze hardware with stainless steel. Okay, okay, it's actually brushed nickle, but that's okay. It looks like stainless steel. We replaced all the handles and the hinges (though the pictures still show the bronze hinges.)

Some day we will upgrade to stainless steel appliances too and then it will look really sharp. :) Also in store, new countertops and backsplash. Currently, the backsplash consists of the same yellow Formica as the counter itself. Not very pretty. Unfortunately, all of these upgrades are pricey, so they will come little bits at a time. 

We also replaced the hardware for the vanity in our bedroom: 

Bet you can't tell which one is the old vs new. :) Also in store, new countertops, sinks, faucets, and lighting. 

Our "Black Friday" splurge (it was really just sometime around Thanksgiving - not actually Black Friday) was new interior doors. Home Depot had a sale for a free upgrade to a solid core door. We have been wanting to replace our doors anyway, that getting solid doors for the price of hallow? Heck yeah! The doors we had were the plain stained wood ones - no decorative cuts, hallow, and falling apart. Thanks to the dogs that lived here before, many of the doors had nasty scratches and chew marks. In fact, the door going downstairs, besides not being able to close all the way, had splinters coming off left and right. More than once we had to stop Pierscen from pulling wood off and eating it. We opted to save even more money by getting doors that did not have the holes precut for the handle, or grooves for the hinges. Making the cuts for these certainly made it a much more labor-intensive change, but it was worth it.

All together we replaced 8 doors. Five on the main floor, three upstairs. They still need to be painted. (I really need to get my act together and see if we have the matching white in a can downstairs. The previous owners left us lots of paint, most of which is labeled - just not the white ones.)

Changing them to white doors was a huge improvement. It made everything feel so much more spacious and clean. 

That carpet has got to go... 

I finally hung the first "personal" picture -  The Family: A Proclamation to the World. I have been waiting for years to have a place of our own that I could finally really decorate, but now that I can, I find I am rather intimidated by the process. We actually don't have a ton of art work because we had no need for it before. Yet art work really makes a house a home. You know?

One of Ryan's projects was building himself a work bench. With the exception of the pegboard backing, pretty much all of the wood used was scrap wood from Home Depot at .51 cents a piece. Pretty sweet!

The finished product cost probably $25. Pretty snazy, right? 

On one of the weekends when it warmed up, Ryan decided to tackle the tree between us and our neighbors to the east. We don't have a ladder yet, so this was pretty difficult. We do have a chainsaw, but it was low on gas, so he couldn't lift it above his head without it dying (not that that's safe anyway.) So he climbed up and started sawing away using a bow saw. Talk about hard!

This branch rolled lightly down the roof and stopped where I was able to push it up and over the railing on the deck. 

Going...

Going...

Gone.

With all the main branches down, we gathered them up and Ryan cut up the ones that could be used for firewood later. The rest of them we tossed into a giant pile in the unfinished driveway section. All piled up, it looked a lot like the wall of thorns in Sleeping Beauty Prince Philip has to fight his way through to fight the dragon. In fact, this darn tree it quite thorny. Beside the fact that it is tearing the fence apart, it is a mean tree!

It really is unfortunate that of all the trees we have in our ward, there isn't one that was placed where it wasn't going to ruin the fence or get tangled in telephone or power lines. Bummer.  

We have lots ahead of us, but progress is progress! :)