House projects

We buckled down this weekend and got some stuff done around the house. I mentioned in my last post (about Fitbit) that I had worked on the house last Saturday and what we did then, and it took all day was to get the wood up for the board and batten in the living room. It was a lot more to it then I thought, my plan was to just glue and then nail the vertical boards to the wall. My stepdad, however, had another idea where we attached them to the horizontal pieces and then nailed the horizontal to the wall. It took a lot more work but I'm sure it looks way better than what I would have done.

We woke yesterday and sanded some spots on the wood, and then went and caulked the board and batten since the vertical pieces weren't attached to the walls, Cheri wanted it to at least look it was so we caulked all around the pieces. I had to make another hardware store visit just to pick up more caulk, we had no idea how much it would take. We originally bought 2 tubes and ended up using double that. After the caulk dried we painted again. Cheri painted the wood while I followed her and painted the wall between it. We were afraid that if we just painted the wood, then the wall wouldn't quite look the same since they were painted at different times plus you could see where she painted around the wood. It took a few hours to paint and we were both dead once we finally finished but it looks great.

While we were waiting for the caulking to dry so we could paint, we finally got around to hanging up the clock Cheri had purchased as well as another vintage type shelf. I'm not sure what other decorations she has planned for the living room so I don't know how close it is to being completed. I know she wants to hang the TV but she wants the cords to run behind the wall so that's a little more than just hanging it and there is also a mirror and hooks for coats that she wants to hang by the door. The mirror is off the dresser we bought a few weeks ago and then we are attaching coat hooks to the bottom of it so it looks like one piece. The mirror is really heavy which is why we haven't hung it yet, it's a little more than just pinning it to the wall. Cheri wants to do a couple of touch ups with the paint on the white and we need to touch up the gold where we caulked on it at the top of the rail.

Here's before and after.

Before

 

After

Ignore the picture sitting on the railing at the left of the picture, I like to put stuff on the railing just to annoy Cheri. I keep telling her I'm going to put my baseball cards on it. You can see we changed the colors plus see the board and batten. You can also see the new clock up there, or down here

It says Laws & Co., Est. 2010

This is the other corner, she hung up the vintage shelf looking thing up there. Cheri has a few books on it (from the 1800's) but she's not sure what else to put up there.

Today our new dishwasher was delivered. I had planned on disconnecting the old one and connecting the new one. That didn't work out to well. I got the old one disconnected pretty easily but once I got the new one in and started hooking up, I noticed one small problem. The old one plugged right into the wall where as the new one is supposed to be hard wired. I'm not messing with electric so needless to say, it didn't get finished and I have to wait for my stepdad to get home from his anniversary trip to help me out. I had shut off the water to the kitchen in order to work on it but since I didn't get it hooked up, I had to figure out a way to get our water back on. I went ahead and hooked up one hose to the dishwasher figuring that would hold and the other hose I'm not sure where it goes. I almost wonder if I need a bigger hose to hook up to the new dishwasher so I took a drill bit and stuck it in upside down into the smaller tube just to plug it. I placed the end of that hose in the sink just in case it manages to spit out the bit. I went downstairs and turned the water back on and no leaks so yeah for me.

I really wanted to get the dishwasher hooked up because I am widely known in my family for not being handy so I was really hoping to be able to do it myself just to say I did. Of course, that didn't work out so now that I had to call for help, I failed, again.


House list

• Den - Paint.
• Dining Room & Kitchen - Paint and Stain the cabinets.
• Garage - Rearrange and clean (clean probably won't get done till spring.)
• Living Room - Put some kind of tile at the front door (there's carpet there now).
• Main bathroom - Paint, possibly restain the vanity.
• Master Bath - Paint, possibly restain the vanity.
• Master Bedroom - Paint walls and possibly ceiling.
• Outside - Reseed grass (spring), stain the deck and the porch, put up a column, paint the door, replace the lamp post.
• Samantha's Room - Paint, take down fish wallpaper, put up chalkboard paint on one small mall.
• Trevor's Room - Completed.