Category Archives: Home Improvements

Five Things

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  1. This has been a better week for me. I have been able to enjoy work and am actually staying somewhat caught up.  I hope to continue this routine as the first of this school year has been rough and I am glad to not dread coming to work.
  2. We are headed to Florida for Thanksgiving. We have travel alot more years than we have stayed at home on Thanksgiving. My only disappointment is the temperature in Florida are suppose to be in the 70s , I was hoping for 80s.
  3. Thanksgiving is late this year, the last week of November so I have decided to go ahead and decorate!   I hope by the end of the weekend to have all the decorations that I am going to use both inside and outside in place.
  4. Zach has already started practice for Baseball in the Spring,  He is continuing to swim.  This means that staying at home all evenings was short lived but much enjoyed. I am glad that he finishes baseball around 4:45 instead of 5:45.
  5. I think we have settled our plans for Christmas/ New Years so now I definitely need to get my plans together for the beach next year!

5 Things Friday

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  1. Matt and Zach are planning to finish up the gazebo on our brand-new back deck tomorrow. We purchased the gazebo back in July during prime days.   When we started to assemble, we realized that. We were missing a box need to finish the top.  It has taken almost a month to get the new material needed. I am very hopeful that this project will be completed tomorrow.
  2.  One of the things that is suggested is to check to see if you can reduce any of your subscriptions/ regular bills. Our internet service has been with Spectrum for more than 10 years, I am thinking it is closer to 20. Our cost increased by $20 in the month of November. Matt was able to locate, and we should be switching to a different provider in the next week. This should save us approximately $20 a month for the next 24 months. The biggest hurdle is that we will loss access to our main email accounts. I am hoping to spend some time tomorrow while the guys are working outside and starting changing emails to a free account, we should have access to forever!
  3. We are continuing to experience the warmest November that I can remember!   The high today was 79 and the low was 64 which is the average high temperature.  I think we will be back to more average temperatures by the end of next week.
  4.  Monday is Veteran’s Day. In the past this has been the day that I start with Christmas decorating specifically my snow village.  Because of our current travel schedule, I don’t think I am going to put the village up this year. My current plan is to put out my Disney village stuff, one large Disney themed tree and the kitchen sink will hold a rod of Christmas ball ornaments.
  5. I dislike daylight saving time. The time change has been difficult for me this year!

A Saturday of Preparation

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I am not sure if it was Hurricane Helene or the fact that we had frost two mornings this morning or that our deck is finally complete, but I really feel like I need to get lots of preparation done. It may be preparation for the winter or for life in general I am not sure.  But today we were able to mark alot of things off the list.

We did have one big failure; we were not able to finish the gazebo on the deck because we were sent two identical boxes which means we are missing pieces.  Matt did contact the company so hopefully it can get finished soon.

Matt did finish painting the shutters black. We pulled out all the remaining tomato and pepper plants from the raised beds. I am not going to cover the beds this year and am hopeful this will kill off some of the bugs.  Zach tore apart the bucket garden as it was falling apart.

I was able to can 8 pints of hamburger meat these are nice to have inside and by doing so, it made the freezer work less as it was not over the top full.  I made beef stew for dinner in the crockpot which turned out well. Matt also made a gallon of tea.

We continued to battle the racoons. We lost one chicken so have been working to secure the coop as well as try and trap the racoons as there is more than one. Zach added another piece of wood which makes things tight and secure at the moment.

A trip to Costco ended the day. We filled all four of our propane tanks and also filled our last gas can. I purchased paper towels, bath tissue and a stockpile of drinks.

We are officially ready for whatever adventure is ahead!

Weekend

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Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

Last weekend was lots of fun as both Haley and Lily were home. We celebrated Braxton’s birthday, had a family dinner which included a haunted house decorating contest and lots of good conversations.

This weekend was about catching up and getting ahead.   Saturday- Matt, Zach and I spent all day outside. Matt focused on getting started on assembling the new gazebo for the back deck.  Zach and I tried to catch up on the yard work as well as helping with the gazebo.   Unfortunately, we also discovered that one of the chickens was attacked.  Which meant we spent about an hour working to repair and strengthen the chicken coop and run.    The gazebo will require at least one additional Saturday to complete.  I am very hopeful to finish up pulling out the summer garden and possibly throw some seeds in the ground for fall.  I am seriously just debating ripping up what is there and calling it quits for the year.

On Sunday, I convinced Matt and Zach to help me tackle food prep for the week.  I started a huge pot of rice as well as two boxes of pasta.   While these were cooking, I cooked three pounds of ground beef.  I combined most of the rice and the meat in the slow cooker to make taco rice.  This ended up making 5 meals!   The remaining rice will be used for Mongolian beef this week.  Matt and Zach both help chop up onions, cucumbers, tomato and pepper for the pasta salad.  Matt also grilled chicken.  Zach made mini muffins as part of breakfast.     I pulled out a dish of stuffed shells and a bag of chicken broccoli casserole for the week as well.

Plans for this week including packing- more details on that adventure soon, removing the rest of the garden, Baseball game for Braxton and Football game for Zach.

Saving on Saturday! New Closet

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We finally have a completed bathroom! One of the major areas that we ended up saving money on was the closet in the new shower room.

A short history lesson, when we were building the addition, we only contracted out a couple of things. First thing was the footers and block foundation. Our thought process was that this needed to be perfect and right otherwise the entire addition may have problems. Turns out we were right. Unfortunately, the foundation is 3/4 an inch out of square between the part that touches the house to the end. The second part we contracted out was roofing, as we had the old roof replaced as well, we also had the HVAC put in at the same time and both of these are awesome.   So, with a 50% batting average we decided that due to the size of the shower room we wanted to the tile work to be done by someone. Unfortunately, this did not work out. the shower ended up leaking and we have needed to replace the entire floor for a while. This is one of the two remaining items on our summer list.

We are loving our new shower!  We also knew in order to save money we would need to rebuild the closet ourselves.  We have had a rolling laundry basket and metal shelves in place for years.  Both of which have been sitting in our bedroom since the beginning of June.   We actually attempted to put the wire shelves back in place but that did not work. We spent all day Saturday and approximately $150 for this!   I do love the results

5 Things Friday!

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Bonus this is my 4th BLOG post this week!  Maybe I can continue!

1. The list of home renovations/updates is shrinking but it feels like we will never finish!   Left to finish
1. paint master bathroom
2.. build shelves in the master bathroom, move items to shelves and relocate metal shelves from the bedroom.
3..Electrical wiring for both front and back
4. After the deck is rebuilt, purchase a new grill.
5. built a covered area to run the generator from.

2. I really enjoyed getting the extra help with the cleaning last week. I am planning to hire another cleaner once the master bathroom is complete. My goal is that this will put me back on a level field and I will be able to maintain the house. This is likely going to become a treat for me maybe every 3 or 6 months depending on my own schedule.

3.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous!  I will likely be opening the window probably during the next week or so.

4. We are heavily into football season.  Zach is currently playing JV, his games are on Thursday night.  Matt, Kendall and Zach are all enjoying attending home varsity games as well.

5. Next week is full of new adventures, the plan is for Kendall to take her driving test and get her provisional license. Zach to get his driving permit!  We also will be traveling to Alabama to attend our niece’s wedding.

 

5 Things Friday

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  1. Things have not slowed down the first week of July. I ended up attending 3 additional medical appointments with my mother.  But I have started to catch up and feel like although I don’t have alot of free time, I am making progress on my summer goals and projects.
  2. The floor has been finished and I will have everything back in place by Saturday.  I am still in negotiation with Home Depot, so I am reserving the story and pictures until everything is settled.
  3. I was able to make progress on preparing meals ahead.  I made a chicken spinach lasagna and 2 million Dollar Spaghetti Pies in those are in the freezer.
  4. Garden update- My garden has been struggling. The squash bug won their battle and I ended up pulling up, spraying with bug spray, adding a couple new bags of soil and replanted both the squash and zucchini. We attempted to go organic but that was not successful. We are starting to get some tomatoes but they are not the prettiest. I also feel like I am throwing out just as many as we pick.  I did make my first full batch of spaghetti. My goal is to can 52 quarts of spaghetti sauce so still a long way to go.
  5. The weather has been so hot!  We reached 100 degrees today!

5 Things Friday

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  1. The past two weeks have been stressful and exhausting.  Exhausting both mentally and physically exhausting.  I am looking forward to a slower pace next week.
  2. We have been working on doing some remodeling in preparation for new flooring to be installed this week. The install is still not complete!   I will be so happy and pleased once this process has finished but currently it is one of my main stressors.
  3.  We have painted the hall, hall bathroom, kitchen, dining room, and laundry room.   The doors are the last on the list to be painted. Hopefully that occurs tomorrow.
  4.  Today we had the septic tank pumped. This should help with drying up our yard!
  5.  We have been eating out ALOT over these last two week just to survive. I am hopeful that staring today, we can get back on track for eating and I can get back to sticking to a budget!

Thursday Thoughts

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One of the big things happening this summer is home repair and renovation. Because I am available during the day to watch and move things, it makes sense for most of this to occur in the summer. We started a line of credit this Spring to help make this easier and more efficient.   So far we have painted the hall bathroom and hallway and installed a new shower rod. We have purchased a new cabinet and faucet with a plan to install this week.  A new toilet will be installed when the floor is replaced.  The floor in the hall, dining room, kitchen and laundry room is scheduled to be replaced on June 18th.  The goal is to repaint the kitchen and dining room prior to the flooring just for convenience sake.  We already have the paint for this but I don’t think it will happen this weekend. We also have received a quote to have our shower room fixed and expanded. This is likely going to occur in June as well. We will be having our old deck replaced as well.   We have scheduled to have the septic tank pumped on June 20th.  The next item on the list is to replace the front door.   I am not sure if there is anything else we will tackle as this is most of our “dream” items.  Except for a “garage” on the front.

I have been focused on slowly starting to build back up our freezers and pantries. I am trying to complete one item a day.  Sunday- frozen bananas (another 3#), Monday- beef broth (15 quarts and 3 pints), Tuesday and Wednesday- survived life.  My goal is to get a gallon or more of strawberries frozen tonight.
We are starting to get some squash from the garden as well. It is always a good side dish but I would also like to get some bags of squash casserole in the freezer or better, yet I will have to see if I can them!
The summer count down is officially 11 days but I have 9 workdays left!