this year’s house plan

The first little tastes of spring are in the air and we’re planning our next steps of working on the house.

The second week of March last year was when we kicked off with some good weekend-scale projects inside and out. We have a few similar scaled objectives to accomplish before school lets out.

One of our goals for the year is to reclaim the cement pad out back (that was filled with trash way back when) as part of the yard. To do this, we have to get some dirt and level out part of the yard next to that, put up something of a retaining wall, and move the fence. This job breaks into nice pieces and will have an amazing impact on our back yard.

Another goal, which might start first (next weekend?), is to get the picket fence put up out front. There may be some kind of neighborhood celebration in the later spring, so we want to make the front look better before that :)

We also want to get a shed for the yard, for the tools and lawnmower and stuff. This all really needs to be out of the kitchen. We’ve been pricing our options on this one.

One smaller project that we’re looking forward to is popping in some kind of access to the attic. In 3+ years, we’ve never been into that space. It is probably filled with bones and guano.

Bigger projects planned for this go-round that will either take more time or money include finishing the outside painting, fixing the front porch, installing trim downstairs, and putting in a bathroom downstairs.

This will still leave us with a 109-year-old roof, ancient electrical work upstairs, one exterior wall covered in shingles, the basically untouched upstairs bathroom, no insulation upstairs or under the house, and water-damaged plaster upstairs. We used to say that we were on the “the 5-year plan” as a joke, but we’ll be lucky to hit that as a deadline.