House List Update

Here's the first of the monthly updates on how we are doing on the house!  The list changed a bit over the month - we added putting in a light in Avery's room (and then subsequently crossed it off - yay!).  We decided NOT to change the front closet into a mudroom, so that's a free cross-off.  And a bad turn of events let us mark off a lot of little front-door related projects.  In the last month we:

1.  Fixed the door that connects the kitchen/dining room to the deck.  Like the front door, water had leaked in and was rotting out part of the door frame.  Jon removed the rotted part, attached new wood, reattached, and painted.  We considered french doors for this part, and they would definitely look nice, but when you see the whole list, it became one of those "nice-to-dos" not a "need-to-do"

2. If there's one thing that Hurricane Sandy taught us, it's that it's pointless to fix a front door when water is leaking through it, likely rotting out our subfloor.  Again.  So, we got to remove all the "fixes" to our front door from the list, but had to add on getting a new front door and putting in a storm door.  We got the new front door installed (and by "we" I mean "Jon installed it himself") and are hoping to get a storm door installed soon.

3.     Hung our flat screen on the wall.  This is mostly for safety because my sister-in-law reminded us that lots of kids get hurt every year by pulling things down on themselves.  Avery is pretty rambunctious, so better safe than sorry.  We bought a great corner mount for the wall, only to discover that behind one of the walls is metal or something that we can't drill into....despite  trying many times and creating many holes.  So, we attached the whole mount to just one wall, but the one we bought moves so much, it centers perfectly in the corner.  Being able to attach it and scoot back the cabinet where we keep the DVR, Wii, and other television related things gave us a smidge more room in the living room.

4.  Organized the master closet.  The previous owners gave us nice shelves, but attached them in such a stupid way that there was no way you could fill them up and be able to enter your own closet.  So, we brainstormed and ended up moving a rack up much higher, being able to move useless shelves below the first, and really opened up the space.  We opted not to paint because 1) it's a closet, 2) the paint wasn't in bad shape, and 3) it was low priority.

5.  Paint Avery's room.  Doing this by myself took much longer than the nursery where I had some help, but it eventually went from powder blue to more-green-than-I-thought Mochachino in two coats.

6. Open up laundry storage.  Our laundry room seemed a bit small because there was a big open space not being used behind a pegboard wall.  Jon took half of the pegboard down, which allowed us to open up a place to store some of our things.  Handy!

7. Childproof Avery's room.  After Avery nearly electrocuted himself in front of his pediatrician grandmother during her visit, we realized our outlet covers weren't tough enough and she bought us some heavy duty ones that I can barely remove.  We put those in Avery's room and cleared it out of any big furniture that could tip over on him.  We also bought a special outlet cover for the IKEA lamp we attached to the wall so he can't grab it and pull it down.  Cause our sweet angel would NEVER try that.  Ha ha.  Note: we have misplaced it, so we are just hoping he doesn't become curious until the new one arrives!

8.  Childproof the upstairs bathrooms.  The new doorknobs we are installing throughout the house allow us to lock it from the outside, giving Avery access only to his room when upstairs so he can go up there by himself.  But, just in case, we made sure he can't open the bathroom cabinets and partake of any shampoo/cleaning supplies.  We also put all our medicines in a tool box and locked it with a combination lock.


9.  Fix the front porch railing.  The Homeowner's Association pointed out that our railing was rusted through (like we hadn't noticed).  We opted NOT to DIY this and got a company to come out and fix it up.

10.  Painted those sweet sweet bathroom stripes in our first floor bathroom.

All that being said, our list now looks like this.  Still daunting, but being chipped away.

• Fix kitchen door leading to deck
• Put the laminate flooring in the kitchen
• Get new kitchen countertops
• Get new appliances
• Paint the kitchen walls
• Paint the kitchen cabinets
• Get a cool backsplash
• Finish the living room floor by adding the molding around the edges **
• Paint the living room walls
• Hang the television on the wall
• Attach furniture to walls (babyproofing)
• Turn front closet into mudroom (we opted not to do this)
• Paint the stripes in the bathroom
• Patch the front door(no longer necessary)
• Attach a kickplate to the front door(no longer necessary)
• Fix the front porch discrepancies that our HOA reported
• Paint the front door frame (no longer necessary)
• Fix the cracked master bedroom wall
• Paint the master bedroom
• Put a ceiling light in the master bedroom
• Organize and paint the master closet (opted not to paint)
• Replace the master bath floor
• Paint the master bath
• Redo the master bath vanity
• Replace the master bath faucet
• Paint the 2nd bathroom upstairs
• Replace the 2nd bathroom floor
• Redo the 2nd bathroom vanity
• Replace the 2nd bathroom faucet
• Paint Avery's room
• Change out all door handles in the house (getting there slowly!)
• Childproof Avery's room
• Childproof the upstairs bathrooms
• Fix the master bath toilet **
• Paint the downstairs guest room
• Get new carpeting downstairs
• Replace the basement door leading to the backyard
• Organize our storage area in the basement **
• Replace laundry room door (Dash destroyed in during a thunderstorm)
• Open up the laundry room storage
• Fix air conditioner
• Adjust window in guest room
• Replace/paint the deck
• Fix the outside window frames
• Install new front door
• Install storm door 
• Put a light up in Avery's room  (This was an addition from the initial list)