Maine Nesties
jd72878
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Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
2012 house projects. go!
Roof. How non exciting. We might do the side walk way. I wish we could add kitchen or bath remodel. What are on your lists?
Our Abby Jean
Re: 2012 house projects. go!
Jake blowing out the candle at Katie's coming home party
Katie Belle
Kristen, Chad, Jake, Katie & Sadie the Wonderdog, est. 6/17/06
DH and I were just talking tonight about how the outside of our house looks like crap and we're embarassed when people visit. .LOL I think we're going to focus on that this year.
Paint front and side porch. Put second coat on back deck.
Finish the fricken walkway that DH started almost TWO YEARS ago.
Put siding on the shed
Work on landcaping some more (slow process that we started last year. Plants are expensive so we've been doing it little by little).
Inside- Maybe decorate/paint our bedroom and the guest bedroom. I'd also like to decorate the living room/dining room, especially with new furniture. We'll see how much money/time/ambition we have though.
Paint the house (change it from dark brown to some kind of gray-blue) and then paint the garage to match (right now it doesn't match the house-- it's a beige/gray colour).
Also, the garage roof needs some love.
If we have time/money left over, I'd like to do some landscaping in the front and some raised garden beds in the back. Also, an underground/wireless fence for the dog.
We were supposed to put new siding on, but we have decided it can wait another year. Instead we will focus on the inside. We want to finally finish our front room, and put a hardwood floor down (currently it is only plywood), paint it. If we have some extra, I would also like to redo our bathroom. It is really small, and wouldn't take much, but it really needs a redo.
I can only dream about having our 1970 decor kitchen redone. (think yellow countertops, yellow laminate flooring, wood paneling, and ugly wall paper).
We need to finish 3/4 of the basement with a playroom/guest room and a pantry/storage area because right now our third bedroom is a playroom/guest room and the new baby is going to want a place to sleep.
The only hang up is that right now, our basement is a repository of all kinds of junk and whatnot (think boxes of stuff that I moved from my last house) that need to get sorted through and disposed of or stored properly and I've done nothing in the last month because I feel like crap most of the time.
Of course I can't do any work upstairs on fixing up the playroom, which will be Helen's new bedroom, until the basement is done.
If you've been on the nest for a long time, you'll remember my home remodeling saga with getting the master bed/bath finished before Helen was born. It's looking like we'll have another repeat of me frantically painting while 9 months pregnant. While I'm at it, maybe I'll touch up the spots in the master bath that I never got to before I went into labor with Helen (and have left unfinished for four years)!
2012 will be a finish up year.
1. Finish up the kitchen renovation. We got rid of everything but the sink. We should make this goal in about a month, depending on when the countertops are installed.
2. Finish up repair work to the bathroom. The true repairs have been made but we need to repaint the ceiling and put a new grate on the air duct.
3. Finish up the darn baseboards. When we moved in, we took the old ones out and refinished the floors ourselves. We have insulation in the cracks, but we can't motivate to do the quarter round to finish off the project.
Last year was a new roof (ugh!) and our garage (finally!). We save and pay cash for everything, so it took years to build our garage. We could have had a smaller garage with electricity or a bigger garage and wait on the electric. We chose option 2. We also refinanced to a lower rate 15 year mortgage...which I consider a house project.
This year we already put a water softener system in so we can go back to having dishwasher use. Haven't had dishwasher use for months due to water problems. We'd like to add electricity to the garage and a mudroom between the house and garage. But, we're debating on paying off our house (we hate paying interest) and waiting on these projects. That's the plan right now, but we may stop mid way to save for one of our other projects...but for now, we have our sites on being mortgage free.
We have some additional income this year so I've got some projects on the list!
1. Gut the living room, reinsulate and resheetrock everything in there. New heat vents.
2. New wood flooring and trim in the kitchen/dining room.
3. Fix furnace.
That right there will run me about $8,000.
Last year, was front steps, outdoor lights, and the deck. This year, 15 year mortgage as well. Close next week finally. Build DH's giant shed out back, start on pool before we do landscaping out back? Either way, GRASS and a yard!! Woohoo hehe. Start my veggie garden and I really, really need to decide on the tile for the backsplash for the kitchen. Pave the driveway! DH is getting a little annoyed with me
Also, need to buy living room furniture so we can move this stuff above the garage. Then, once that is done DH needs his giant TV. I don't think diningroom or MB furniture will happen until end of year or beginning of next. Yeah, we have a lot of projects this year 
EDIT: I forgot, DH wants to finish some of the basement to create a gym so I don't whine in the Summer when it gets hot upstairs. I'm not sure if this will happen. We have 3 rooms now we barely use so I'm not pushing it.
I don't know if it will get done in 2012, but our big upcoming goals are to build a garage, which will then allow us to finish the basement into a family/playroom, guest bedroom and 1/2 bath.
Other than that- finish our landscaping, specifically, a walkway out front, retaining wall and gardens for the backyard. Eventually he wants to do a patio out back, but I'm sure that won't be this year. You'd think after building our house for 5 years ago and being married to a landscaper more of this would be done, but not so much!
I was hoping we could put our place on the market in the spring but we won't be able to sell until hell freezes over (or the horrific lawsuits that are going on in our complex get resolved).
DH needs to finish tiling the entry level/ basement that he started oh, 2 years ago. We'd like to put wood floors in the living room/ dining room... most likely it will be fake wood. That's about it. I hate our place and we are not dumping more money into it.
ETA: oh and I guess I should add, we are being forced to replace our siding (yet again) and the roof... so maybe we won't be doing floors. Stupid townhouse/ stupid contractors/ stupid lawsuits. Have I mentioned I hate this place?!
Putting in some shelving in the master bedroom and playroom (we're thinking of heading to Ikea this weekend to get started on that). Building a shed in the backyard. DH is always working on landscaping, it's his hobby.
We also need to fix some of the siding and paint the outside of our house, but I'm not sure how/when we are going to do that. We met with one installer and he quoted us $13,000 to replace our siding with hardiplank (which would mean we'd never have to touch it again), or $5000 for a temporary fix. And we can afford neither of these options! And we need new gutters. Sigh.
Beyond the obvious "Get the baby room good to go"...
1) Build the guest room/playroom in the basement. My parents are likely doing part of our day care, so they'll need a place to sleep. And the third bedroom on the main floor is my office, so a room down stairs has to happen.
2) Redo the patio in our back yard. We worked with a couple companies last summer to get quotes and the company we loved never gave us a quote. So... we're starting all over on that. Right now it's just that rubber "mulch" and a PIA. With the kiddo coming, we need to do something different. It may wind up being those rubber mats they use under swing sets, but it's totally up to my hubby.
I hate house projects, especially the cost.
We must redo our garage roof this year; every time we get a storm with a lot of wind our yard is literally littered with shredded shingles. I really really really want to finally get our bathroom that we started 5 years ago finally done- and repainted since I hate the color I originally chose.
We could use a furnace maintenance, a kitchen mini redesign (redo floor, strip wallpaper, paint walls & cabinets, install shade), driveway plantings to replace the 20'+ trees that have died over the past few years, and replace the other half of the roof before it starts to leak too. We cannot afford all of these, so we'll see.
We also need a new mattress and 4 frigging tires for DH's car. I just replaced my stupid cracked windshield last week. Apparently the universe thinks we're made of money. I really need to let it know it is drastically wrong.
Well, let me open my five-page-long House-To-Do list...
I'm not kidding. It's not all someday-type stuff like build a garage...it's just extremely detailed. We lived in the house for almost five years before we did a. single. thing. to it, so over the last year we tore out the carpet, put down wood, tore up the lineoleum, put down tile, replaced the laminate counters in the kitchen and two bathrooms with granite and porcelain, and started in on stuff like painting. We still have a ton of stuff to do. Most of it is less epic than living without a kitchen for three weeks, though, so we can do a bit every weekend. Right now we're in the middle of repainting the upstairs bathroom. I think the largest of the long, long list of projects that's left is repainting the kitchen cabinets because I did such a crappy job the first time 'round.
1. Painting my horrible patterned walls in the kitchen and master bath!! It's going to be expensive but I really want to find a way to make it happen this year.
2. Fix a few loose boards on the deck and paint the deck. It has to be painted a nice baby poop brown color per community rules, lol.
3. Get the place looking like someone lives there, vs. someone just moved in.
Jacki, the first thing we did when moving into our mobile home was paint the horrible walls. It was one of my compromises. I still hate the cabinets in this place, but we're not putting much more money into it since we're hoping to build in the next year or so (provided the market improves). But the fresh coat of paint in all the rooms REALLY helped! The other thing we did was tear up the carpets in our bedroom, the living room and Nolan's room - one room every year or so. We replaced with laminate wood floors from Lumber Liquidator in Scarborough. Joe was able to put the floors in himself very easily. It only took him a couple of days each time. I could've done it myself, but I"m not allowed to touch tools.
The only other thing I really hate in this house is the color of my laminate floors in the kitchen. No one should have cream colored floors especially if you have a man that wears his work boots into the house and a dog. I can clean my kitchen floor with bleach and a toothbrush (this has been done) and they are still dirty looking. I would love a new kitchen floor but Joe put the kaibosh on that. Ah well, anyways, paint is always an awesome way to boost the look of any room. I don't feel like it was that expensive. We usually buy our paint at Lowe's. And I think for Nolan's room, Joe used the paint and primer all in one stuff to save some time.
My 2012 house improvement project would be to finally build our small cape house, but we'll have to see!!!
Since we're still renting, our 2012 goal is to just keep trying to save as much as we can toward that elusive down payment. Our 2-bedroom apartment is seeming mighty small right about now. I'm hoping by late 2013/early 2014, we can finally start looking to buy.
Totally unrelated but OMG Benjamin is getting SOOOO big! Holy cow!
@Annie - That's so great you did all those updates! I really want to do a lot of the same things, as $$ allows. The walls are priority one. Cabinets are priority two. Floors I'm okay with for now but I'd like to replace the carpet eventually with laminate wood floors as well! We will do most of the work.
Did you paint over the tack strips on the walls? I have heard of removing them and mudding/taping the seams, but am not sure if I want to go that far or just paint them and leave them.