Home Improvements

After our month and a half of Northwest summer wrapped up back in September, my Adventure Quotient (number of weekends with an outdoor adventure divided by total number of weekends) has dropped from 100% during the summer to something in the 50% range. The reason for that can be summed up with two of the most reviled words in my vocabulary: home improvements. Stinker!

Roanne and I have had three ongoing projects this fall, and while we haven't done the majority of the work in either case, there is still enough time spent on things like doing trim, painting, etc. that seem to hoover up time on the weekends. The first project involves installing a gas fireplace and two new windows in our main room. Here is a shot partway through the work:

And another more recent one with it almost finished:

We have since re-painted and the only remaining thing is to fix the baseboard trim along that wall. The fireplace is not yet operational (we still need to have the thermostat installed), but it looks really good as do the windows which are constructed with leaded glass to match some of the original windows in the house.

The next project involves redoing the closet in our bedroom, for which we had to move a wall that seperated it from the closet of another room, add another closet door, and redo some flooring. The demo, framing and drywall was done by contractors but we (used very liberally in this context, Roanne did most of the work on this one) had to install shelving, do electrical (I can take credit for this one), paint, do trim, etc. I don't have a photo handy, but this one is finally done apart from the trim on the doors so it is nice to be moved back into our bedroom now that the dust has settled.

The third and final project is one that I am excited about, as it involves refinishing our one basement room so that we can move the TV down there and get it out of our main room. In my opinion TVs are only good for watching Tour de France movies while doing workouts on rollers, so I will be happy to see it exit the main room. For this one we re-did the stair case going to the basement to eliminate an un-needed landing and exterior door, changed some duct work to improve head height, and re-did a bunch of drywall. Here is a shot of the new stairs:

This one is now almost done also, it just needs to have the carpet installed and to have the trim done on window that replaced the door. Can you pick up a theme here? I think I am going to be doing trim all winter (at least on days when the avy danger is to high to farm backcountry powder).