It’s been about 2 months since the purchase of a home, I’ve detailed the first few projects tackled here, and while I haven’t slowed down, I’ve fully internalized how much of a marathon this is, or rather, how much it’s NOT a sprint.
I clearly exhausted myself the first 6 weeks, and not only that, began to not see the beauty of the house, but only projects, which isn’t a very good place to be in.
I’ve happily found a bit of a rhythm the last few weeks, working on a little bit each day, specifically taking at least one day to not do anything, and more importantly enjoying the process, [still fully working on this] the home, and the rest of life.
It’s interesting what a mini stress breakdown will do for you once you move past it, the grass is greener if you take the time to really see it.
The quality of your thoughts impacts everything in your life, and you are in complete control of them.
Never-the-less, here’s what I’ve been working on!
Blinds
I took them all down in our bedroom, all 5 windows. At first I searched for tools and ways to clean them without removing them, but it was clear they hadn’t been cleaned in years and a quick hit with the vacuum wasn’t going to do it. I ended up taking each down [and the mounting brackets for painting] taking them outside, spraying them down with a hose, then wiping them with a rag, and laying them out on the deck to dry.
Alarm Plug?
I’m not sure what this thing is but I can guess, it’s a plug for the alarm system battery or the wall unit itself, It was screwed into the outlet jack, looked odd to me at first, and now I’m not sure how to remove it besides pulling it through the wall.
I’m not sold on the security unit, it’s old and ugly, and while I’ve heard it may reduce insurance, comes with an additional yearly cost, something I’m not happy with…I’d rather rig up my own camera system.
Ice Bucket
The former tenants really messed with my head on this one. They had a bucket in the freezer, that when you turned on the ice maker, only caught half the ice cubes. The other half would collect under the sliding frame, and spill out everywhere. They clearly bought something somewhere that did not fit the ice maker model. I called up several re-sellers, but to my dismay, the original part was no longer made, and I could not source one anywhere. What is a homeowner to do? I made my own. It works beautifully.
Desk Setup
I lucked out, the office building next to my 9-5 was leaving, they let me walk away with this nice modular desk. It took some cleaning, but came out nice, the long almost room length desk is great for brainstorming and organization.
Learning the House
You walk through a house you’d like to purchase and look at everything, nod your head, it looks normal, or not, you don’t think much of it. Now you own it, now I need the model number of everything, the exact color of the ceiling, the size of the AC filter, know how much life is left in the major appliances, or even what to call them…is this an air handler, or a cooling unit, do these lights fit in these fixtures? All things that take deeper digging, research and pulling off labels to figure out…or you can not…and just wait until they break, and then pay out the nose to get it fixed and figure it out, but that’s not me.
Door Knobs
Turns out we have old door knobs, which are called mortise locks. It took some time, and help from my father in law, but I have them figured out. They all need to be removed, cleaned, refinished with a silver color paint to match our desired style, and if we want them to lock, they need to be brought to a lock smith so a skeleton key can be made for them. They are charming, and now that I understand them, I really appreciate them. Along with this work was replacing the hinges, removing and painting the doors, and reinstalling them.
Etc.
The projects are innumerable, here are various others I’ve captured in the first two months of home ownership.
