I know, I know… “Weren’t you finishing your basement?” The answer is- yes. But if you’ve been to any store that sells lumber in the past year, you would know that prices are outrageous. We finished insulating and framing most of the outside walls before we ran out of lumber and decided we should wait…
Category: Exterior
CLEANING OUR SIDING | MOLD ARMOR REVIEW
The siding on the backside of our house never gets sun and tends to get really grimy with dust, tree pollen, and who knows what else. Shade to spread and organic matter to eat is all mold and mildew need to be happy. This year we let the grime get kind of out of hand…
REPLACING OUR BASEMENT PATIO DOOR | DIY INSTALL
This DIY project has been a long time coming. We ordered this patio door for our basement (along with the lumber for our mini shed and new basement windows) back in April. It was one of our “bored and in quarantine” impulse buys. Some people buy clothes and gadgets- we buy doors! I should also…
REPLACING OUR BASEMENT WINDOWS | DIY INSTALL
This might be our riskiest DIY yet… If you remember when we built our mini toy shed, you’ll know we ordered new basement windows on a whim. We figured, “Hey, we’re paying the same delivery fee, might as well get our money’s worth!” Plus, it was early in our pandemic quarantine days and we were…
BASEMENT WINDOW PROGRESS (+ KITCHEN FLOODING AND GROUND COVER PLANTS)
It’s been an eventful week! We started off with a very wet kitchen floor. Tyler had been washing the dishes and noticed the pull down spray nozzle was kind of leaky. When I walked up to check it out, my toes hit water. And unless you’re at the beach, that’s never a good feeling (which,…
WATERPROOFING OUR BASEMENT | INSTALLING DRAINS AND A SUMP PUMP
When we took out two ginormous trees in our front yard, we knew there might be *some* moisture problems in the basement. To say we underestimated how much those trees were drinking would be an understatement. For three years we had water seeping into our basement every time it rained. It was pretty bad the…
DIY LANDSCAPE RETAINING WALL: OUR TOUGHEST PROJECT
Every DIY project has a point at which the DIY-er thinks to him/herself, “Why?” During this 2 year long landscape retaining wall project, we questioned our abilities and our sanity on a biannual basis. We would like to share with you our journey to completed, functional, and hopefully eternal, landscape retaining walls. Buckle up, guys….
DIY RETAINING WALL UPDATE
We have made a huge amount of progress on our DIY retaining wall project this week and wanted to share a fun before and after! Thanks to a rototiller borrowed from my dad, we were able to break up the weeds and rocks that were slowing us down. We also found an old bush stump,…
RETAINING WALLS (WE’RE ALMOST THERE!)
TWO YEARS. Two yearssss, we’ve been working on retaining walls. We’ve hit snags, changing seasons, pregnancies, and more. Recently, we ordered cap stones, a few more blocks, some dirt, and one inch clean gravel. We’ve had so much rain lately (with record flooding in some areas) and intense heat that we haven’t had a chance…
REMOVING OUR PORCH SHUTTERS (FT. WASPS)
There has always been a bit of a wasp problem on our porch, which is one of the reasons why we don’t spend much time out there. We’ve seen wasps casually fly in and out between the slats of our porch shutters, but other than occasionally spraying, we’ve never done much to manage the problem….