Sunday, November 18, 2007
Meaningful Changes
We've been doing a lot of home improvement work around the house. When we bought the house, we knew there was a lot to do. I don't think we realized it would consume 3 full years of our lives (and counting), but we knew it would be a lot. Our most recent project is finishing the basement. It's coming along, but it's a long, slow process.
I'm taking this week off of work for some much-needed "vacation." I never EVER thought I would take a vacation and not go anywhere. But since I have about 14 vacation days left this year and can only roll over 10, I need to use them up. So here I am, vacationing at home. Yay! The plan for this week was to spend some time working on the basement. But after a trip to The Home Depot, The Wife and I changed our minds.
First of all, we've decided to add some insulation to the attic. What we have now is very sparse and results in a very cold second floor in the winter. Home Depot has a deal. If you buy 20 bags of loose insulation, they let you use a free machine to blow it into your attic. We decided to go ahead and do it, but then I had a thought. If we put in all the insulation we're SUPPOSED to, it'll be about 10 inches thick. In other words, you won't be able to see any of the support beams, thus you won't be able to move up there. And that directly conflicts with one of our other home improvement ideas, putting overhead lights in all the bedrooms.
For some reason, there's a real dearth of overhead lights in this house. There's one in the living room (the former dining room), a few in the kitchen, one in the hallway and one in the front hall. That's it. For some reason, we don't have any lamps either. So our house is DARK. It drives me nuts, which I know secretly makes The Wife a little happy.
In the summer, our second floor has virtually NO circulation. So we're going to add a ceiling fan to Luke's room and to our bedroom. We're going to put lights in the other 2 bedrooms. This essentially involves me cutting holes in our ceilings and then spending 6-10 hours in the attic playing with the wiring.
It's been a bit exhausting, but I've gotten 2 of the lights in already. They work GREAT. And they make me SO happy. You flick the lightswitch and you can actually SEE something. It's an incredibly novel concept. The best part about it, though, was that it only cost a couple hundred dollars for all the supplies. It'll take me 10-12 hours, but it'll make a HUGE difference in our lives. Now, that's the type of return I like to get from my home improvement projects.
I'm taking this week off of work for some much-needed "vacation." I never EVER thought I would take a vacation and not go anywhere. But since I have about 14 vacation days left this year and can only roll over 10, I need to use them up. So here I am, vacationing at home. Yay! The plan for this week was to spend some time working on the basement. But after a trip to The Home Depot, The Wife and I changed our minds.
First of all, we've decided to add some insulation to the attic. What we have now is very sparse and results in a very cold second floor in the winter. Home Depot has a deal. If you buy 20 bags of loose insulation, they let you use a free machine to blow it into your attic. We decided to go ahead and do it, but then I had a thought. If we put in all the insulation we're SUPPOSED to, it'll be about 10 inches thick. In other words, you won't be able to see any of the support beams, thus you won't be able to move up there. And that directly conflicts with one of our other home improvement ideas, putting overhead lights in all the bedrooms.
For some reason, there's a real dearth of overhead lights in this house. There's one in the living room (the former dining room), a few in the kitchen, one in the hallway and one in the front hall. That's it. For some reason, we don't have any lamps either. So our house is DARK. It drives me nuts, which I know secretly makes The Wife a little happy.
In the summer, our second floor has virtually NO circulation. So we're going to add a ceiling fan to Luke's room and to our bedroom. We're going to put lights in the other 2 bedrooms. This essentially involves me cutting holes in our ceilings and then spending 6-10 hours in the attic playing with the wiring.
It's been a bit exhausting, but I've gotten 2 of the lights in already. They work GREAT. And they make me SO happy. You flick the lightswitch and you can actually SEE something. It's an incredibly novel concept. The best part about it, though, was that it only cost a couple hundred dollars for all the supplies. It'll take me 10-12 hours, but it'll make a HUGE difference in our lives. Now, that's the type of return I like to get from my home improvement projects.
