Our Underdog is livable {yippee!} but by no means is it finished. There are a few pressing issues that need to be addressed to make our house safer and more functional.
Here are the top 9 projects on our to-do list in no particular order:
1. Finish unpacking and clear out the garage. Self explanatory. I think the picture says it all.
2. Install register covers. Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Our house is built on a concrete slab with a down flow furnace which means ductwork to all registers runs within the slab. All but three of our floor registers open up right at perimeter walls. During renovation, we opened up the walls to add insulation, tore out the old termite-ridden baseboards, laid engineered hardwoods and installed new, thicker baseboards. That left us with less room for a standard register cover.
Since we can’t move the registers themselves {because the ducts are within the concrete slab}, Handy Hubby thought about trimming down a standard cover to fit. It turns out all of the covers we like would have to be trimmed so much that it would destroy what was left {i.e. the open parts of the cover would be cut into}. The normally simple task of installing register covers has become quite a predicament. HH is now talking about cutting into the bottom of the baseboards where a register pops up to squeeze in a cover then caulk around the baseboard-register cover seam. Good times. I will say that our boys have been surprisingly good about avoiding the open registers. No one has stepped into a register or lost a toy down one yet. {I’m probably jinxing myself.} I think it has more to do with the registers’ placement along rooms’ perimeters and less to do with Layne and Everett following orders.
3. Hang interior doors. Have I mentioned we have no interior doors at the moment? Say what?! All bedrooms, hall closets and our one finished bathroom are doorless. Good thing no one in our family is too modest. As a temporary fix, I have blackout panels hanging from tension rods in each bedroom’s doorway. {The one on Mabrey’s room is actually two shades I had made for our interim apartment safety-pinned together.} The closets and bathroom are bare. The panels are okay for now but I’m constantly telling the boys to be quiet when Mabrey is sleeping. I’m anxiously awaiting the day when I’ll be able to close a door between my sleeping baby girl and my two rowdy boys. Ahem, HH.
4. Organize closets. The original closets {save for one hall closet} had one hanging rod with a shallow shelf above it. We removed the hanging rods in the master closet and boys’ closet during renovation because we wanted to optimize storage in those two larger closets. Now that I’m unpacking our belongings, it’s difficult to find a spot for anything.
Currently, my hanging clothes are in Mabrey’s closet and HH’s are in one of the hall closets. The boys’ clothes are folded in a linen closet and their toys are piled up on the floor in their bedroom closet. Obviously, this temporary setup is NOT working.
5. Organize PAX wardrobes. This goes along with the dysfunctional closets. Right now there’s just a bunch of stuff lying in the bottom of each wardrobe. IKEA sells complementary storage accessories for the wardrobes and we’ll be implementing those.
6. Find a rug for the boys’ bedroom. Boys will be boys and mine like to wrestle around with each other on a daily basis. That’s hard to do on wood floors. They need a soft place to play. I’m considering Flor tiles {expensive!} or having carpet bound into a custom rug {less expensive but not cheap!}.
7. Design a workstation along one wall in the boys’ bedroom. I’d love for Layne and Everett to each have their own workspace. It’s not so much a priority now {Layne’s finishing up 1st grade and Everett’s in preschool} but will be in the years to come. I’d love to have it done way in advance so they can take advantage of it sooner rather than later. Not to mention, we could use the extra storage.
8. Do something with the flippin’ front door. Do you detect any hostility? The door, I like. How it functions, I do not like.
To unlock it from the inside, you must use a key. Do you know how many times I’ve resorted to sliding open the front window to talk to a visitor because I can’t find my key right at that moment? More than I care to admit.
The door also has ~2″ gap at the bottom so we must keep the old aluminum storm door on the outside to keep critters from getting in. The storm door is bent and doesn’t close properly. And it’s LOUD. And it’s UGLY. It’s UGLY LOUD. {That’s a new term I’m going to start using.} It’s not the first impression I want to make.
9. Get the TV working. Mind you, if I was single, this wouldn’t be on the list. {However, if I was single, then this list wouldn’t even exist because I’d still be trying to knock down walls.} The TV is all HH. We aren’t big TV watchers but HH has this thing about installing electronics right away in new places. I think it’s the engineer in him. Or the upcoming summer Olympics. As is, the TV is hung but not functional.
Those are our pressing projects. Notice none of them include painting the french doors, hanging new light fixtures, installing tongue and groove around the TV, hiding the washer/dryer, etc. Rooms have to work for me before I can even think about making them look pretty. Otherwise, it’s like putting deodorant on dirty armpits. Okay, I have no idea where that analogy came from.
That’s not to say if we have a lapse in between projects that I won’t be tempted to, say, paint a crib or something.
Check here to see who won this week’s giveaway!
images: Dana Miller for House*Tweaking
DIY, organization, renovation