We've been enjoying the last few weekends of winter by getting a jump on our spring cleaning. I'm happy to say it's complete and the house is feeling functional again. The two major cleaning projects were in our storage room and our closets. In the storage room we have piles and piles on construction materials that were stacked up and discarded by our parade of contractors, thoughtfully left for us to deal with. It was at the point where you could open the door to the storage room, but you couldn't actually walk inside. There were also materials and boxes stacked all the way to the 6 foot ceilings so if you needed something on the bottom of any given pile you were pretty much screwed. Eric and I pulled every last thing out of that storage room and cleaned the whole thing from top to bottom, then systemically set up shelving and cubies to reorganize all the materials and products we wanted to keep. It's so clean and organized now I could weep! The only thing we are missing is some sort of small drawer organizing system for sorting various small screws and nails, but I'm sure the next time we are at Home Depot we can pick one of those up.
We also proceeded in emptying our closets with tons of stuff neither of us had either seen or thought about in the last 5 years. This is funny since I have moved 4 times in the last 5 years, but I kept moving all my stuff with me without actually going through it and weeding stuff out—that was dumb. Oh well. Plus move from Manhattan to Brooklyn has certainly changed my style a bit, as well as Eric's, it's so much more laid back and comfortable here. In addition to this, I don't go into the office nearly as much as I used to so I was able to donate lots of old work clothing that I doubt I will ever have occasion to wear again. 8 huge bags of clothes and shoes just got picked up by the Salvation Army and our closets and drawers are now manageable again. Hooray!
With all the cleaning and clearing done it's time to start thinking about the two major spring/summer projects on deck for the coming months.
- Front Patio – we need to level out the concrete and tile over the area in the front of the house where the concrete was left unfinished. It cracked quite a bit over the winter and is uneven so water pools in various places if it rains hard. We want to do a slate/bluestone tile with no grout line but are currently trying to find a good affordable option. We need to wait until the temperature is about 60 degrees and not too moist to do the actual work though. Once the concrete is covered I want to get some large trough planters and put some nice hearty evergreens in them to add some color and life to that currently drab area.
- Sunroom – the sunroom is just a disaster. Tons of leakage from the unfinished ceiling and from the new side wall have come in and completely rotted out a lot of the sheetrock. We need to get back up on top of the structure and try to seal up some of the gaps. We've used tape and caulk in the past to no avail and will now try this Instant Roof Repair and Leak Sealer Aerosol I read about to see if that works. Again we need it a little warmer and drier to proceed. Then if we can prove there are no more leaks we need to pull down all that sheetrock and will probably cover the walls with concrete board tile backer and then use the same slate ledgewalls we have outside to finish the walls. Then any small leaks or random water getting in shouldn't make too much of a difference.
Now I know you must be saying to yourself "Only Two projects! That's great news!" And yes it is. The only projects we've got going on are much more manageable like decorating the large blank wall above the stairs, re-painting and installing a kick plate on the blue front door, repainting the outdoor railings and fixing up the tenant hallways. If we can get all these things done by the end of the summer I will be very, very happy. That will be just in time for some new project to creep up, cause we've just accepted this house will never be completely done. Ever.
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