Here we are at another September. The time of year most of the renovations around my home seem to occur. And this September is no different, although once again, I shall not be performing the majority of these renovations. I’ve learned over the years that, while I *can* do the renovations, the end result is rarely anywhere near as good as it would be if I simply hired someone to do them, and the amount of time it saves me more than makes up for the amount of money I would have saved.
So what’s on the agenda this year?
- A garden shed/screened porch combination. First off, our garage is big, but it has a tendency to get cluttered, especially with a lawn tractor, lawn mower, bikes, snow blower, and all those garden tools that accumulate. So the initial plan was to build a small shed to house all that separately. But at the same time, I’ve really wanted a place where we could enjoy the outside without needing to get attacked by mosquitoes constantly. At first the thought had been to screen in the farmer’s porch, but it’s a small area, and not quite big enough for what we wanted. What if we were to combine the shed with the screened patio idea? Not like we see many (or any) of these elsewhere, but it made sense to me, so . . . It’s going to be a 24 foot by 16 foot shed/patio combination, built in the spot where the house used to have a barn in Ye Olden Days of Yore. We’ll declutter our garage and have a place to eat outside in the spring, summer, and fall. I’m excited.
- Tearing down the front porch. I’ve never been in love with our front porch. It runs the length of our house and is too thin in most places to serve much use, and too exposed to really be a place you want to spend much time anyway. We’re tearing the whole thing down. We’ll put in some stone or brick front steps, and the rest we’ll landscape to cover up anything too exposed. Not sure what that’ll be like just yet, honestly. We’ll have to see what we have when we get in there. But I’ll be very happy to no longer have to shovel off that porch every winter.
- Building a second bathroom. This will happen in November. The last piece of the home renovation project in the upstairs of the garage will finally(!) fall into place. I for one am very excited, as it will mean I no longer need to trek through the entire house to go to the bathroom at night. There will be much rejoicing.
- Taking out the old staircase in the garage. It now leads quite literally to nowhere and is just taking up space. We’ll also insulate the floor where it used to lead to, so that our new movie room can be a bit better insulated. Because insulation. In conjunction with this, we might work on framing out a mudroom in our garage. We’ll have the additional space we need, and it would help us set things up so that we can renovate the kitchen next year or the year after. We want to have our current mudroom become part of the kitchen, and it would be much easier (and cleaner) to still have a place for people to take off shoes, store skis, etc.
- Build a garden fence. Not sure if we’ll get to this. It depends how fast the other projects go. But Denisa wants a groundhog-proof fence so she can once more garden in peace. We’ll see how it goes.
I think that should keep us busy enough for this time around, don’t you? I’m excited to get these projects finished. A lot of them have been on my “Want Done” list for years and years.
Hooray for progress!