Home Improvement projects 34 and 35 of 90,000

One of the reasons I started a blog was to document the new home ownership experience. It's fun to have something of your own. When I lived in an apartment, I looked forward to buying new dish towels to experience the sense of satisfaction one receives for making something in his/her life better. Since we've moved in we've done mostly wall and floor stuff like painting and finishing floors. The real improvements, I think, are in the details. Like, it's really great to have curtains on the back sliding doors so I don't imagine someone is out there every night after 6:30 now when it gets dark. One of my first projects was to change out the door hardware. Let me tell you, oh joy! I've compared teaching the first months of school to walking through a sandstorm with your eyes open. I'm thinking I'll need to come up with a metaphor for fixing the silly mistakes previous homeowners made carelessly while fixing their 100+ year old house. My latest two projects were really fun. The first one was the best. I went to Home Depot and picked out lights to project light onto dirty dishes in the sink. I say it was a great project because, after a fruitless trip to pick out furniture, I insisted that we install the new lights. Mr. Pete started them and I went upstairs to "do-some-work." I came down only to criticize his work and screw in a few screws. Essentially, nothing. The great thing is the after show here. I mean it really made a big difference. The other project I really worked on. I mean it. There were several trips to several homegoods stores until I finally picked a roman shade (said with thick accent) from Target (pronounced by my mom and sister as tar-jay). It was tough stuff. I installed the shades on a metal door. There were power tools involved, and no, not the kind with batteries. We're talking power tools here people. Notice the killer brackets and final product.



















Oh yeah, and that door hardware, that's my work too.