Things around your house you've recently fixed/improved?

[Wry_Martini]

Over the past few months:

- installed pull-out drawers under the kitchen and bathroom sinks
- in process of installing pull out drawers and shelves in the pantry
- finally painted the closet doors to match the baseboard and the rest of the trim
- replaced the wall mounted light fixture in the bathroom

To do soon:

- repair some grout in the shower
- install tile backsplash in kitchen

[nmnita]

Originally Posted by onceahogalwaysahog

sorry if this has already been asked but I thought it'd be interesting and helpful to see what people have done to their place

post what all you did and any costs involved (time and money)


1. I recently fixed a light switch that had a bad connection on one of the hot wire screws that was preventing the 2-way switch from turning the lights off/on correctly, no cost but time (about 15 minutes)

2. fixed the light on my garage door opener, the metal contacts needed bent slightly to touch the bottom of the bulb, no cost but time (10 minutes)



next up
hoping to fix my a/c, 2 bad outlets and a leaky ice maker

PS by recent I mean within the last 2 weeks

We haven't yet, but we are going to update the kitchen, raise the ceiling, glass in the screened in porch and redo some of the flooring.

[gentlearts]

Originally Posted by Jan Alaska

This house is a total fixer upper, the latest job was to demolish the kitchen wall into the living/dining room to open it up.
We also spent 2 hours on Saturday with a jackhammer demolishing the fireplace and hearth which were 6x8ft in size with ironstone bricks on the top and engineer bricks around the sides and on the back wall all filled in with 4inches of solid concrete. Turns out the previous owner worked for the local concrete company which in some ways is great but that fireplace .. ohh my it was ugly and it had to go !

Way to be bold. I can relate. We had intended to remove an 18" deep hearth under a gas fireplace to get the added floor space. After ruining 2 of the slate tiles that cover it, we discovered the hearth was solid concrete, instead of the wood we hoped would be under there. We wimped out on the jackhammering, and opted not to spend $1500+ for someone else to do it. Plan B is to paint the gargantuan mantle the same color as the walls so it will disappear, and just try to ignore the hearth.

[Coldjensens]

Past 2 weeks -

Me:
Scraped and repainted the siding outside the kitchen, dining room, library and front parlor. Scraped and repainted 6 porch/portico posts and 2 walls of the carriage house. Repaired the fence for the dog run. Replace a ceiling light in daughter's bedroom, stripped part of the door between the library and the back parlor, replace a broken window pane in the bedroom, paint part of the front porch deck, repair the dining room table, repair a broken door to the carriage house (temporary repair), remove damage plaster in the dining room from a bath tub overflow upstairs and patch the plaster, prime drywall in part of the library, power wash portions of the outside of the house, pump out water that had gotten under the pool liner, replace the door latch for the master bathroom door. Install lattice along the bottom of the side porch (3 panels done, 2 to go).

Hired out: Nothing in the last two weeks.

It would take a week to do the list for the past year. Likewise the upcoming DIY list would be ten pages long. There are lots of little things we are constantly doing. We will hire out some big ticket items once we get the house refinanced (next two weeks). Probably replace the swimming pool liner and then either: repair/rehang a handful of doors, instal concrete in part of the driveway, put drywall in the carriage house upstairs, or instal the air conditioning machinery. We may be out of money after the pool liner. At this point airconditioning can wait. Concrete woudl be nice but is not really important. The doors make a good option because we can have as many or as few of them done as we can afford. We also may get the house painted at some point, but we want to get more scraping and priming that we can do ourselves to reduce the cost.

[scuba steve]

Adding to the list... removing ungrounded / installing grounded wiring, and combining 2 old circuits into one for the living room. Old junction boxes out, new ones in. These old metal things are TINY. :/