Odds and Ends

We have officially owned this house for 8 months. At first glance it doesn't look like we've done much. Besides updating the upstairs floors, what else have we been up to?

Beside chasing around this booger, a whole lot.

If you didn't guess it, this house was disgusting. So the first thing we did was clean. Inside and out. Josh made a lot of illegal trips to surrounding dumpsters during those first several months. And we practically had a fire going every weekend.

 

Fun fact: Our hot water heater busted on Night 1. After hours and hours of exhausted tinkering (and preventing our downstairs from flooding), Josh finally got the leak under control. That first weekend was spent replacing the hot water tank and tearing down the surrounding shelving. That was a fun $500 spent. 

The fridge that came with the house was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. So we tore out some kitchen shelves to make room for a new, shiny refrigerator. If you can look past the exposed ceiling, it is the prettiest spot in the house. 

Most recently Josh has been doing a lot of work on the furnace and duct work. In the first week of December the temperature dropped to the single digits and our 15+ year old furnace decided to quit. Timely. With the help of YouTube, Josh replaced the gas valve and pilot assembly to breath new life into our ancient friend. Thus far, it has made it through the rest of winter.  

And as of this weekend Josh rerouted the main return air. The old return air was routed into the steps (see picture below), which we plan on rebuilding in the near future. 

The biggest, most expensive improvement we made is we replaced the roof! We choose a classy Black Walnut to bring out the blue in our eyes. It came with an expensive price tag, but it's well worth it not to have a leaky roof.

 And that, lady and gentleman, is what we've been up to the past 8 months.