Home Improvement Projects

[name]

very, very nice!

[King_Maul]

Wow, impressive.  I only wished I could be that handy and professional with my home improvement projects.   

[Matt_Fury]

We've just had a bunch of home improvement projects done:

- New carpet on the main level of the house, plus new furniture for my wife's home office.

- New shades on some of our windows, plus vertical blinds on the walkout door in the media room...I can now get it as dark as the inside of a cow!

- Replaced the pantry doors in the kitchen.  I've never done any staining before so it was a fun little project.  I now want to replace all the doors on the upper two levels of the house!

Next up is getting a nice high quality sliding glass door for our kitchen and we're getting the exterior of the house painted.

[Jesse James]

- Replaced the pantry doors in the kitchen.  I've never done any staining before so it was a fun little project.  I now want to replace all the doors on the upper two levels of the house!

Did you hand rub the stains?

I'm a pro with that.

This Summer I patched my gf's foundation exterior, we're paintin gthe porch wood and then the concrete (still working at that, as we're running into wasps), then painting the front/back of the garage, plus I'll put a new back attic door on the garage then to access the rafters.

I laid 2'x2' rebar reinforced concrete slabs then as a patio/walk on her back yard to/around the pool.  I'm then digging out the hill beside the garage where the stones end and putting in a railroad tie staircase to the back of the garage.  

I'd like to then pour a concrete slab, and I'm making a mold to make my own stone blocks and build a stone block fire place/chimney/pit thing to grill on, and stuff.  Just a little fire pit/grill thing...  I've envisioned it and will do it.

She wants a waterfall built to a retaining wall on the back hillside too, but that's going to wait for another year I think.  She also wants her pool deck expanded to the house...  I'm reluctant to work on that some.  I've not built a deck, and nd I'd largely have to do this myself as well.  So i'm just reluctant to do it.

All the while I'm still shelving my office/collection room here at my house...  Also going to be painting under the overhang of the back roof, and I have some mortar repair work to do at my house as well, plus tearing down the old shed out back that was the original washhouse to my home...  I'm sure it's a snake pit too underneath, so that ought to be fun.  All the while we've been dealing with stray cats here too, all year.    

Oh, and you'll dig this Matt...  When I repaired the foundation with the mortar at my gf's place, I scribed in the kid's names and the year, and beside the lettering I carved a Killroy into the mortar. 

I laughed my  ass off to myself.  Diane got home from vacation, saw it, and just shook her head at me.  I couldn't resisit to make sure Killroy was there.

[Matt_Fury]

**** Jesse, with all the work you're putting in at your girlfriend's place, you beter marry her!   

I put the stain on with a brush, then wiped the excess off with a rag...not a big deal I guess, but like I said, I've never done staining before.

BTW....love the killroy!

[Jesse James]

I've redone her living room already...  her dad/uncle did her kitchen and bathroom, and built her a big walk-in closet and stuff.

her house is old, probably 150, which is typical for homes around Pittsburgh really, unless you're buying in a plan.  So it's got a lot of stuff wrong with it, that's for sure.

Most of the stuff's minor really...  painting, putting the patio stones down.  The major stuff I keep avoiding like the plague (building a larger deck, gutting the living room and redoing it).  Some bonehead just put drywall up over the old slat-wall plaster in her living room...  The walls are flush with the trim in there.  Whoever owned the home before did work half-assed all the time.  Just fixing those people's mistakes is a full-time job.

[Matt_Fury]

Sounds like my basement.  It was completed by the original owner.  He put in a sauna which is awesome, but some of the stuff he did is just odd....layouts of rooms, doors, etc.

[Jesse James]

Oh man, basements...  Hers is a dungeon.  I don't have one at my place since I'm in a flood zone and my house is pretty darn old.  Hers though...  I think she'd be better off without a basement then.  Sandstone foundation, cement (barely) floors that aren't level at all.  It's basically storage.  I do some metal work down there in winters, and that's about it.

[Matt_Fury]

Most basements aren't level....ours has a couple of small spots where the concrete settled wrong....it happens and isn't that big a deal.

[Jesse James]

You'd be amazed at this one, trust me.   It's virtually an off-road course.

[Jesse James]

Finished my desk tonight...  glued felt to the feet of the two upper shelves I built for it, and put them up, and started loading books onto the one, and software discs onto the other one.    Finding I have even more room now than anticipated.

From here I'll put up shelves I have intended to mount to the same wall, and I'll also be building a small box to set on the desk top for my radio/satellite radio mounts and hold CD's I have hanging around still.

Been a busy year doing stuff, so I'm glad I got this done this year.  I am, at the same time, trying to build my work area into what I want for customizing too, I've done umpteen different concrete-patching projects between my house, the large garage on my family's property, and my gf's foundation...  and the concrete-work is never-ending because I have a sidewalk to make next year.  Oh joy. 

But the desk is done...  I'm at it as we speak.  I'm enjoying it.  I'm going to have room to set a figure here and write about it and stuff.  Inspect my toys and appreciate them with less clutter.  Oh and maybe get work done too since this is, well, sorta, my work space too.   I can even reach my reference books now.  Go figure.

[Chris M]

Jesse you gotta post pics of what you've done.

I haven't done a ton this summer, although I had initially planned to.  I spent a good chunk of my remodeling budget paying what debt we have left and going to war on carpenter and fire ants.  I've never seen them as bad as I have this year.

My projects for the winter though are to try and get our bedroom painted.  My wife and I bought new furniture so it's time to do that.  I also am going to finish my daughter's playroom.  I just need to finish installing the foam play mats and then put up a couple of picture and add a couple of toy boxes and we'll be set.  Shouldn't cost more than $100 to do.

After that, it's off to the front porch where I'm going to poor concrete and lay meshed stones and create a nice sitting area.  Hardest part of that will be getting the damn thing level. 

I've also got to pull out all the cedar timbers that I put on the side of my house to hold my flowerbeds (my foundation sits on an incline).  Those things are all eaten out by ants so I'm going to replace them with cinder blocks and then cover the front of them with some sort of foliage or put landscape rock in front to cover the ugly blocks.

[name]

Oh man...I have got to get some pictures taken and posted.  Since last update we have completed:

Hallways (including painting the 25 foot or so stariwell wall)
My son's room (which you will all enjoy, I'm confident...Star Warsy)
Our Master Bedroom
The kids' bathroom.

We have two projects that are also underway - ripping the ceiling out of the back room, and repurposing some of that lumber (the ceiling was lowered and drywalled over a heavy two by four frame) to build a window bench for my daughter's room. 

[Matt_Fury]

Nice work Jesse....can't wait to see pictures.  One other major thing I did this year was to turn an empty bedroom (that had basically turned into a giant walk in closet) into a nursery for Colin.  I still need to put in some shelves, but there's plenty of time for that.

[Jesse James]

I'm trying to do pictures, and they're not coming out well because of my camera and the size of the object combined with the somewhat limited/narrow space.     Sorry.  It's not flashy by any means, so you're not missing anything, it's just my first piece of functional furniture, more or less is all.

Currently I'm loading the shelves and finding that I now don't know what I want to do with books and things, haha.  Go figure.  It's a very small room though, so using space to maximum effectiveness has been a joy here.     It's a necessity really, between the sprawling collection and things.