Exercise Room

Part of the addition was an extra space adjacent to the den that we had no purpose for until now.  It was a general storage area, but we're trying to move all the rarely used stuff into the attic.  So we turned the space into an exercise room!  Step 1 was lighting, so Chris had to wire in a switch, a socket, and a light source.

Step 2 was flooring - we got this really cool rubbery foam stuff that fit together like a puzzle. 

Now all Chris needs is a punching bag!

Fascia and soffit re-up

The first step of our summer project was replacing all the fascia and soffit on all three levels of the house.  We got our contractor to do this for us since getting up to the third story would have been complicated and dangerous for me and Chris.  We changed the color on our front porch to give the house a fresh look too!

Before:

After:

Shoddy work

We spent an inordinate amount of time fixing some of the crappy work our previous contractor did.  The first was a light in the master closet that was loose and falling off the ceiling.  They basically didn't attach it correctly so Chris had to go into the attic, clear out the blown insulation, and screw everything in securely.

Then the big disaster with the master shower drain.  This had been leaking ever since the addition was completed, but we thought it was cracks in the grout around the shower base.  The problem was continually getting worse, though, so Chris finally opened the ceiling in the kitchen to take a look and the shower drain was not sealed to the shower base!  I mean, there was a quarter inch gap between the two sections so every time we showered, water was dripping down around the drain instead of into the pipe.  Sheesh.  It was a disaster of a plumbing job.  How did this get approved?! 

Anyway, there was major drama trying to redo the pipes because plumbing glue is ridiculous to work with and there were some ceiling joists in the way.  It took a few days, some very late nights, and multiple trips to Home Depot, but we got it nice and fitted. 

We tested it for a few weeks to check for leaks and then our good contractor came back and made it all pretty again.  No problems since!

Irrigation System

I haven't written on the blog for months, but lots has happened!  I was sort of just collecting pictures of all the improvements, but I think we're done with the major work for now.  Here's one of our early spring projects:

The irrigation system is supposed to water the half of the lawn that gets the most sun, so all the rain that falls on the roof is now directed away from the house.  We're also going to connect the gutter from the upper roof to the front lawn, maybe in a slightly different area.  It hasn't actually rained that much this summer so all the grass we reseeded is dying...again...  Poor grass.

TV in the Kitchen

It's true.  We're addicted to TV.  It's basically on all the time, unless we're on the computers.  So we had one CRT in the living room, which is our main TV and one flat screen in the bedroom for morning news and bedtime, and another CRT downstairs in the basement that hasn't been watched in years.  So we decided we'd put a TV in the kitchen so we could watch TV while we eat on the peninsula or while I'm cooking or doing dishes.  This ended up being a three month process because Chris wanted to hide all the cords and make everything look neat and clean.  There was a lot of measuring, holes in the wall, and some redos.  But it's done!  Comcast was really good about it too.  They just transferred our service from the TV in the basement to the kitchen.