Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. Today is just a short post about where I am with “More Home Improvement”.

More Home Improvement?

Yea, I’ve written about it before, but recently I’ve taken to get my lanai (deck) renovated. It’s taken a little longer than expected, and also has required additional work. However, both of these things were in my realm of expectations. Estimates are only estimates.

However, I am confident that the lanai will be all done by the end of September, and hopefully the repainting will all be done as well. At that point the house will look pretty different I think. We ended up ripping out that planter completely and my contractor rebuilt a nice looking wall on our front deck. So now our grill, which my father-in-law uses a lot, has a nice place to sit. That way we don’t have to pull it out from the side every single time. Additionally, we’re going to build a similar little wall on other side of the front deck which will hold the garbage cans. The hope is that it will make it easier to move the garbage cans onto the curb. Also, the new mailbox will go up there as well.

The Garage Door

I had not planned to replace my garage door until after both of these things were done — however, my garage door motor decided to die a little early it seems. However, it was always planned to be replaced, so we ended up just doing it now. We replaced the entire garage door with a new motor, new tracks, etc.

What’s next?

After fixing the lanai, repainting the house, and putting on the new garage door, the house will look nice. As my wife would say “Our house will look super nice — at least from the outside.“

That said, there’s a few more things on the list I’d like to get done before the end of the year, and one thing beginning of 2020.

After the lanai is done, I want to get the downstairs bathroom all set up so Kylie can start using that bathroom. This should hopefully help a little with the traffic jam that happens every morning with the kids using our bathroom. This is a relatively small job. The old vanity is already gone and we already have the sink we want (from when we replaced the other sinks). It’s really just a matter of finding a vanity we like and getting it installed with the sink.

After that I’m going to look into replacing all the screen doors on the house. Since our house has a wrap-around lanai with sliding glass doors all the way around, we could get more use out of leaving the doors open as long as the screens were in good shape. This would help get fresh air in and allow for a little cross breeze.

Previously this wasn’t a huge concern because Lucas was too young so we never opened the glass doors anyways, for safety reasons. I also didn’t want him ripping down the screen doors. Additionally, the deck itself needed work as well. However, he’s a little older now and with the deck being renovated, I think it’s time to replace the screen doors and put the sliding glass doors to use. Also, I’d like to completely replace downstairs screen door as well.

What about next year?

Well, I mentioned it before, but one of my big AC units on the first floor is on its last legs. I knew that we would eventually need to replace both those ACs, so I think it’s probably a good idea to replace them early next year before next summer comes. If both of the ACs went out during summer, it would be pretty brutal in our house over the course of the day.

At the same time, we’ll probably try to fix the AC in my daughter’s room as well. She doesn’t really need it since it stays relatively cool in her room, but it’s nice to know it’s available in case she starts using her room more for longer periods of time.

As such, I’m going to get a quote for that, and plan to budget some money toward that early next year. The likelihood is that my pay-for-performance bonus from 2019 will cover at least part of it.

Other things on the wish list?

So many things. However, when I bought this house I knew it was going to take a few years to build up some funds to fix some things. And well, it’s been a few years and now we can start fixing things a little bit at a time.

The major difference is “need versus want”.

Prior to this year, I acquired things we needed. The roof. The solar panels. This year I am fixing the things that I felt needed to be fixed. This includes the lanai renovation, painting, and garage door replacement mostly.

Then there is finishing the bathroom downstairs and replacing the screen doors. This was a “need” in order to get the most out of the house.

Then in 2020 we need to replace the air conditioners… that won’t be a need persay at that time since we don’t use the AC much in January of February — however, left untouched, it could become a significant problem later (in summer).

Moving into “wants” will be mid 2020, and that list is long. For example, I want to eventually have exhaust fans in all the bathrooms and the laundry room. I also want to eventually replace all the windows. At some point I’d like to rip out the carpet on the first floor and put down hardwood or that nice laminate they make nowadays. Then we will need to start saving toward renovating the kitchen. Finally, at some point we will renovate the master bathroom. Those are my next projects in somewhat of an order of importance.

Anything else?

Oh yea. Don’t forget to change the batteries on your smoke/CO alarm.

My alarm batteries apparently were running out and started chirping every 20 seconds at around 3 am. This isn’t normally a huge problem, except that the smoke alarm in my house is on a wall about 25 feet up because of our exposed beam ceiling. So I had to get up, get my handy dandy Little Giant Mega Max ladder and change it. Luckily we still had a spare 9v battery, otherwise it wouldn’t have mattered.

In case you were wondering why I don’t just buy the Amazon Basics 9V, there have been comments that the Amazon Basics are a little bigger than the Duracell and other 9V batteries. As such, these may not fit in your smoke/CO alarm.

I got mine at Costco, but Amazon sells them too. I really think they’re great ladders. They’re made very well, easy to adjust, and store easily.

TL;DR

Home Improvement continues.

It’s not perfect but it’s home.

Give me another 5 years and the house will be what we want it to be.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

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