Weekend Updates

This past weekend was supposed to be Chris' weekend off from house projects, but we were able to squeeze in a couple of updates.

First up: towel hooks.

Our master bath had no towel bars or hooks by the time we received the keys to the house.  My guess is that the sellers had installed their own when they owned the house, and took them with them when they packed up.  I thought that all fixtures are supposed to stay with the house when you're selling, but we weren't big fans of what they had anyways so it was ok that they took them. You can see the hooks in this picture from our house hunt.

We picked up some brushed nickle hooks from Home Depot on Friday night and Chris got to work installing them as well as some hand towel rings by each of our sinks.  I also hung some art/decor to fill up some of the empty wall space in the bathroom.

In another oddity there was no towel bar in the guest bath upstairs either (only the one that comes in the actual shower), so we installed a oil rubbed bronze one to go with the color scheme in there.

In not so fun news we noticed that our garbage disposal has not been working and started to fill the sink back up with crud when we run the water.  I thought we would need to call a plumber, but Chris knew how to take apart our old one and replace it with a new one.  So glad he's got these house skills!

Our other weekend updates came courtesy of our handyman (the same one that was in charge of the changes at my parents house).  He was able to mount the family room tv above our fireplace and run the cords upstairs to a nook in the gameroom.  This way we're left with a clean look in our family room and with a point anywhere RF remote (which should be arriving any day now), we'll be able to use the remote downstairs to send a signal to the box upstairs.  For now we have to go upstairs if we want to change the channel or we just watch tv in the gameroom.

And last but not least, we finally got rid of the outside light that has been on constantly since the first day we came to see the house back in June.

Someone really smart got paint over the sensor so the light was always on.  Chris tried to look at it before, but when pulling it down he noticed that there was different hard wiring for the each of the lights so we left it up until our handyman could look at.  It turns out the left light is wired to the sensor while the right light is connected to the another 4 lights that we have going around our backyard which are all controlled by a switch in our master bedroom (something we only learned this weekend when trying every switch we could to figure out what the other light was wired to).

Have you made any updates to your house lately?

Guess I Should Leave More Often Part II

When the cat's away, the mice will play... or in our case - when the wife's away, the husband gets a bunch of house projects done!

This past extra long weekend (Thursday - Tuesday), my family enjoyed a trip back home to Philly/New Jersey for my cousin's wedding.  Since Chris recently started his new job, he wasn't able to make the trip with us so he had 6 days to himself at home.

Philly airport, the house I grew up in, Pat's Cheesesteaks, Atlantic City

My cousin and his new wife!

While I was enjoying reliving memories of my youth, Chris was busy knocking out project after project in our home.  First up was mounting the TV in our bedroom.

We've had the TV on the floor for some time, waiting for our handyman to come mount it and hide the cords behind the wall.  Well our handyman has been very busy with his main job, so Chris opted to just mount it himself and build a shelf to hold the cable box.  Now I can actually watch tv in bed instead of on the floor!  We'll get around to hiding the cords later.

Chris has been the king of shelving lately.  Last time it was creating the linen closet, this time it was building shelves in his gameroom for our DVDs and his video games.

Similar to the linen closet, Chris used a track system so we could alter the heights of the shelves if we need to.  He cut and painted wood and attached little blocks to the ends to hold the DVDs in.

Me being the type A personality, I went ahead and alphabetized the DVDs then loaded up the shelves.  While going through them, I noticed that there are a lot that that we should probably get rid of because we never watch them (as in still in the plastic from when they were purchased).

On the other side of the room Chris created a wrap around system to utilize the corner bump out.

Corner before

Looking at this picture one might think we were starting up a GameStop!

I have no doubt these shelves will fill up once we unpack the rest of his graphic novels and other decor items.  Mario says Yippee!!

And the last project was a complete shock to me!  We were texting Sunday night and Chris asked if I wanted to see his hair cut.  I thought this was a little odd because Chris tends to get the same haircut, only once during the summer he surprised me by coming back with a shaved head.  So I'm thinking he's done something cray cray to his hair.

Nope, same haircut, but one huge surprise behind him - he painted our master bath!!

I love how the white cabinets pop more against the green walls then they did with the beige.  We still need to hang items (like towel hooks and some art) and get a couple more mats, but I am just so happy that the painting is done!

After 5 hours of painting the nooks and crannies of the master bath, Chris is truly looking forward to a relaxing weekend this upcoming weekend.  With all of the projects he has completed lately, I have no issues with a veg out weekend!