And Now We Are Five

Hard to believe that we have been in the house for a year. We have done a lot of things— painted most of the rooms in the house, redone the entire front yard (and made plans for the side yard), reseeded the back lawn, planted just enough shrubs in the back to keep the slope from becoming a muddy dog slide, ripped out most of the berry bushes, added a garden box (and missed most of the summer crop of vegetables because we were in France), replaced the windows and back stairs on the deck, got the roof and gutters cleaned (and set up a recurring maintenance schedule for the same) and had a lot of fun. Happy House-aversary, house!

Plans for this year (a lot of maintenance while we save up for some big work):

Inside

• Install an intelligent thermostat like a Nest
• Fix the hooks in the entryway and build some permanent shelves for shoes
• Replace the boob light in the upstairs hallway

Outside

• Get the chimney inspected and maybe reinforced: it is leaning a little bit
• Redo and enlarge the back patio with concrete pavers so that it is easier to keep clean and has a large flat surface for outdoor dining
• Get a new locking mailbox and put up my new house numbers
• Install our new outdoor light and add in an additional outdoor outlet so that we can plug in holiday lights next year
• Build in a wood shed or shelter for the firewood
• Add in a bunch of new plants in the backyard and build new garden boxes

We still have a ton of big projects that we are planning for like adding a shower upstairs, replacing the upstairs and downstairs carpet, redoing the basement, changing the kitchen, installing a new roof and so on, but those are still a ways off.