Carriage lights for the garage

Installed carriage lights on the garage to match the one by the front door (see past post). All are wired to one switch, thanks to my neighbor Bob who happens to be an electrician. Thanks Bob!!!

A rundown on projects...

Time for an update on projects around the house. :
(1) The Laundry room: Done. More pics coming.
(2) Brecken's room: Done. Pics to come.
(3) Seneca's room: Just started removing wallpaper
(4) Daxton's room: Getting ready to paint
(5) Family room: Done
(6) Office: About halfway there. Library paneling needs to be primed and painted, pictures hung and furniture replaced.
(7) Master bedroom: Just started. Gretchen recently began ripping down some wallpaper. And that's about how far we are with that.
(8) Master bath: Halfway there. Doors need replaced, painting, refinish tub and hardware, refinish shower base, and a million little things.
(9) Basement: Kinda, sorta ripped up, but that's it.
(10) Three season porch: Done, and pics posted on the left under "project pics".

Time to air our dirty laundry...

Another project done. Our latest involves moving the laundry room to our concrete bunker aka Emma's closet. The room was originally a darkroom for the owner who was quite the photographer. Now it will be a nice-sized laundry room for our little family of 6.

Goodbye to a dear friend...

Our family suffered a tremendous loss today. Our beloved dog, Jake, passed this morning of unknown causes. He was a wonderful, loving, loyal dog that was a perfect fit for our family. Born on 9/9/99, Jake was just happy to be around family and hang out. He will be missed more than words can say.

You can put lipstick on a pig...

...but not on my carpet, please! OK, so you need to remember this one. Brecken and Seneca tracked red lipstick across the carpet and up the stairs. Both with white carpet. Yeah. Great. So off to the internet we went. Most sites said Goo Gone, but we didn't have that. Next we read about WD-40. I must have 3-4 containers of that. Tried that with paper towel. Worked pretty good. Then we read about diaper wipes. Works minimally. Then we stumbled upon the holy grail of lipstick removal...WD-40 AND a diaper wipe. Yes, you heard it here first. OK, so here's how you do it. (1) The sooner you get to it, the better (2) spray WD-40 on stain (3) IMPORTANT! Blot the stain multiple times with clean areas of the wipe. And I don't mean dab and rub. I mean push down, repeatedly, with clean areas until its almost gone. Then you can wipe in a small circle until gone. Works great. I promise.

'Tis the Season to Seal

File this under the category of tip that I should have known. I took on the task last night of installing rubber gaskets around our basement outside doors. Wanting to keep the cold (and millipedes) from coming in, I bought the premium rubberized gasket that provided heavy duty protection when the doors are shut. What I DIDN"T do was check the size of the door gap I had before installing them. Yep, the doors wouldn't shut all the way once it was installed. So after ripping it off and reinstalling it differently a few times, I got it to work. Now time will tell if there is enough adhesive still on there to keep them in place. So the tip? Well, invariably you are going to have some gasket left over after your project. So before you even start, snip a 1 inch piece off and install it where you intend to install all of it and see if the thickness will allow you to close your doors fully. If they do, that's great. If they don't, go buy something thinner and save that thicker stuff for somewhere around your house.

Hey buddy, got a light?

Our latest project was replacing the carriage light (white) next to the front door. The existing one was 4 ft. tall, ugly, installed improperly, and did I mention ugly? After I unbolted it from its cheap painted plywood backing, I stumbled upon the "floating" electrical box. Yeah, it wasn't even attached to the brick. Well, after installing a wood backer behind the brick, I attached a new electrical box and installed the new carriage light. Good to go.