Girl with a drill

With Rich away, I've been actually getting things done -- including touching up the stairwell and painting the ceiling. Thank goodness for Renee coming over to help; I may never paint without her again.

That done, it was time to finally put up the shelves and photos that have been sitting in a box in the basement ever since we moved in.

As usual, I had plenty of ambition to start, and naturally assumed that this project will take no time at all (an assumption I make with every project despite the fact that I know it will take at least six times as long).

Edited to add: Just to highlight the difference, here's the stairwell before we even owned the house.

Inspection day, May 2010

I did have the patience to make brown-paper templates so I could properly place the shelves and photos, instead of the usual "let's nail it to the wall and see if it sticks and rip it down later if I realize I screwed up" mentality.

I mark my drill holes (yes, I went and bought my own drill; Rich will have to deal instead of borrow) ... and realize that my walls are Damn. Stubborn. We'll pretend there isn't a new hole in the wall. After an interminable amount of time screwing anchors into the wall with no progress, me getting mad and wondering how the hell I was going to finish this on my own, I took a break.

A little "Project Runway," some sauvignon blanc, and I got my courage back.

Oh, yeah.

Somehow I even had the luck of starting a drill hole into an already existing anchor. I almost laughed, and then I made that wall my prisoner.

I can be a little messy.

But, at last, success!

Underground

This is the blog equivalent of airing your dirty laundry.

(Ugh, so embarrassing.)

The basement is your typical one, especially for an older home; there are layers of paint on the floors and walls, it's dirty, there's old stuff left behind from the previous owners -- and when I say previous, I mean the last two or three sets of them.

We use it for storage ... and then, starting last fall, we just started using it for "anything and everything we don't feel like dealing with right now."

For as neat as I consider myself, the basement did not meet my usual standards. But before I show the really gross state, here's our first major appliance purchase: the water heater.

YAY! (And boo to the bastard who screwed us the first time around ... but I suppose that's a story for another day.)

Here, the state of our basement just a few days ago:

April 2011

Anyone want an old fridge?

Well, that was cathartic.

But here it is now:

May 2011

Just a little neater, and empty-box-free. I'm making this a long-term project: Section by section, I'll strip off the old paint, clean, and paint the walls and floor. Because we have to use the space and we can't exactly move the washer and dryer upstairs, this'll be the easiest way to do it, and I won't put too much pressure on myself to get it done so quickly.

The very, very beaten path

This week, our township will announce which bid it's going to take for repaving our neighborhood's streets. At the same time, they've offered residents the chance to use said company to redo their sidewalks. We're jumping on this opportunity . . .

. . . for obvious reasons.

The sidewalks were one of our inspector's biggest issues. Truth be told, we hate them, too (and I fear the liability issues), but we didn't think we'd be ready to replace them for another couple of years. But if we're going to get the chance now, we're going to take it.

May 2011

Because we have a corner lot, we've got a little more concrete real estate to cover, but it'll make a huge difference, I think. And I'm hoping we can find a way to salvage those trees in the front: We have some of the oldest existing trees in the neighborhood, and it would just be a shame to take them down.

Backyard progress

Remember all of this?

At inspection, May 2010

Summer 2010

Well, the pool has been gone for a while now, and Billy aerated and put seed down for us in the fall. On his advice, we fertilized in the spring . . .

May 2011

And now you'd almost never know a pool was here.

Yes, it's spring, and everything is growing faster than we can keep up with at the moment, but we'll get outside today and do some trimming, mowing and sweeping.

This is Bob, the Japanese maple.

I ripped out the cover plants and the ones that were too crowded to thrive, and put down mulch. Many bags of mulch.

Cilantro!

We're off to a good start of a summer of wine in our backyard.

Now, about that damn bunny . . .