fix up the house

that had little bits of paint in it yesterday. Picked some of the flecks out of my teeth. Yuck! Oh well, hope it was all latex.

our kitchen cabinets, a job that a contractor would have charged a cool 10 grand to do. It’s painstaking work and won’t be complete for at least another month.

home improvements:

replace crumbling sunken brick in back patio after leveling the area with sand and soil
mud jack the sunken steps leading to our front door
replace rotted framing around front door
rehang the storm door in front
replace the front and back doors
seek bids to replace our roof, which will require tearing out
at least three layers of covered asphalt tile and removing obsolete broken furnace in dogs’ room
tear out the encroaching honeysuckle vines

that if we make the expensive repairs and do everything right, we may not want to sell. We’ll see. Anyway, once the weather starts to turn in March, we’re committing to sinking a lot of money into repairs.

are officially paid off! Just waiting for SallieMae to finally send their note acknowledging this fact. With those out of the way and us only two years from being done with our car payment, we’d sort of love to sell our house this year and move into a townhouse and perhaps rent for a while. We are sick of having so much debt hanging over our heads!

Our house, sadly, is in need of much repair. A new roof would be very nice, for instance, new doors. Now we’re in the process of trying to figure out how many repairs to make before selling.

months away from paying off our student loans, which have been with us, lo, these past two decades. Despite Christmas, we’re going to try to pay the last big chunk in November. If we can manage our finances carefully for the next 3-4 months, we can return to fixing up the house. Next improvement will be new front and back doors, along with some new framing around them and some mud jacking for our sunken front steps.

I relearn the art of fixing toilets that continue to use water.

new roof after having old layers removed
front steps need to be mud-jacked up to proper level
some landscaping to include improving the slope around foundation

nice to haves:

new kitchen cabinets
new backyard terrace

We’re still trying to pay debt, so realistically, we’ll probably only be able to get the mud-jacking done this year. Maybe I can work on increasing the slope of the ground around the foundation myself. Roof will definitely have to wait another year.

Sony TV my wife’s folks gave us about four years ago is pretty much done. It overheats now after about 15 minutes, the picture snaps off, and then it emits a sort of burning wire smell. To rid us of this monster, I’ll need to rent a van or pickup and make an appointment to haul it to the city landfill, where for a price they recycle old tvs. So that will be a fun way to spend the better part of a Saturday morning.

deadbolt in our back door. Second try was the charm. First one didn’t fit properly. What a headache that was.