Home improvements (and repairs)

Since we bought our new house, the rennovation list (and repair list) has slowly been growing. Who would have thought a brand new house could equate to such a big "to do" list?

The first night that we moved into the house, Christmas Eve 2008 (for those of you that aren't familiar with our moving saga, I'll fill you in on a later post), I discovered that the builders of our house had failed to connect the hot water to our master bedroom shower. This did take me a few minutes to confirm, as Matt and I had consumed a few celebratory drinks, and I wasn't sure that I was turning the water on correctly. After calling for Matt to take a look, he validated my diagnosis...the hot water was not working! Now eight months, and a busted up wall later, we still don't have hot water running to the shower pipes. I think we just pretend that the shower isnt' there!

Here's a small selection of some other items on the list...

• Adding a return vent to our furnace in the basement You have to double the TV volume when the heat comes on.


• Paving the driveway We are putting this off until we hit the lottery...does anyone know how much it costs to pave a 1/2 mile long driveway!! The potholes just add to the atmosphere. Besides, I am really looking forward to it freezing over again this winter, the half mile walks up and down the icy hill to get to the car were such a special treat in the mornings and evenings :)


• Adding a garage door opener (and leveling out the 12in gap between the ground and the garage) I tried to convince Matt that our new 4WD would be able to jump the curb without leveling it out, but he's not going for it.


• Adding a garbage disposal who can live w/o one these days?


• Fixing the dishwasher I first discovered that our dishwasher tends to leak right in the middle of cooking dinner one night. Walking back into the kitchen, I slipped on a large pond of water. We soon discovered that for some reason you have to close our dishwasher with two hands, one on each corner of the dishwasher door. This was a quick fix, but it seems to be working for the moment.


• Painting The builders of our house thought it best to only use the cheapest flat white paint available throughout the house, need I say more? We've gotten through about 80% of it now though. Of note, Matt did spill an entire tray of green paint on our bedroom carpet. You can still see it when the sunlight hits it a certain way. Kind of ironic how I did the same thing in our old townhouse, and he lectured me for about 2 days on being more careful when painting- hmm, I think it was very nice of me to not return the lecture when he did it.


• Mattresses We decided to splurge on some new bedroom furniture to help fill some of the bedrooms in the house. Matt convinced me that since we were splurging that we should treat ourselves to a King Bed, but we decided to save up for a bit before we bought the King mattresses. Since March we have been sleeping on a King Bedframe with a Full mattress.


• Purchase a new Grill When we got married in October 2007, a friend gave us a new grill as a shower gift. We decided to leave the grill in the box, and continue using our old grill until we moved. A year and half later, Matt tried to put this new grill together (a Kenmore by the way), only to discover that the instructions were completely in Spanish, and many pieces were missing!


• Building a deck This project is currently underway, and I am so excited about it! Its about a five foot jump from our back slider to the ground right now. Stay tuned for more information about its progress!