Hey! It's been a busy few months around here, although you wouldn't be able to tell from my blog posts.
In addition to having a fun summer with our little ones, we have been doing a bunch of very necessary, but un-fun work on the house systems. In all honesty, it has been disappointing because I want to get on with making the house pretty. But I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn't make sense to put efforts into fluffing the nest when the nest is in danger of falling out of the tree.
So I thought I'd wrap up some of our recent projects to make the house solid with one post. Because some fun stuff is finally within sight now.
This summer we had to install a new condensing unit for the upstairs HVAC system. Why does it always happen when the temperatures are the hottest? Of course it conked out in August, so after some really hot nights, my super handy Mr installed this baby and the upstairs HVAC is solid now.
You will notice it is built up on a platform. Well, we live next to a creek so it's a precaution just in case it overflows.
Speaking of HVAC systems, we discovered a large hole in the return duct for the geothermal system that serves the downstairs, which basically meant we have unknowingly been taking in air from the basement/garage all this time (not great). So that had to be repaired. And while the system was taken apart we cleaned the air handler coil and replaced the sheet metal bottom of the air handler because it was compromised by rust. (Notice how I said "we" even though my husband did it. "We" do laundry and make dinner too because "we" are a team! I thought I had pictures of this process but after going through them, I guess I don't.....so moving on.....
Ugghh. I hate this part so much. It became apparent recently that the septic system needed some attention. We smelled very bad smells every time it rained. I really do not like bad smells. Obviously the septic system was in trouble. Fixing it was not fun. Or cheap. We had to have the lines rootered out (tree roots and yucky stuff encroaching) and the tank pumped out after nearly 30 years apparently. I DO have pictures of this whole operation, but I will spare you seeing them because after seeing it in person myself, I could not eat dinner that night. You're welcome.
And we have dealt with drainage issues in the yard since day one. You can imagine how full of mud this area where we park our vehicles could be when it rained:
So we brought in trucks of fill and had the yard and driveway re-graded.
We pulled out those rotten railroad ties that separated the yard and parking. To counteract all of the mud that was constantly being tracked inside and so we no longer had to wear muck boots when it rained just to get to our vehicles, we had a large concrete parking pad poured.
After:
And we put together a play set for the kids that we custom built a few years ago at our first house. It had been sitting in a pile of pieces since we moved. So now the kids are super happy to play on it and I am super happy to not have that snake-attracting pile of wood out there anymore.
I'm gonna tell you, I am constantly amazed at what my Mr is capable of. I've never known him to say he can't do something.
We call him The Electricity Police around here. He will call you out for leaving a light on in a second. He's all about electricity conservation so he has been replacing light bulbs and fixtures throughout the house with LED bulbs and fixtures. This was the biggest change in the basement/garage, where there used to be only a couple of old humming flourescent fixtures and it pretty much looked like this:
Now it is a million times brighter in there and we can actually see the projects we are working on.
So this is some of what we have been up to recently. All of this boils down to the hopes that the house systems are solid now and no emergency fixes will be needed in the next few months. Because I am ready to get started on the fun stuff! Like a big ol' bathroom gutting! Yay!