We’ve been so busy with home improvement projects at the new house that I haven’t posted any pictures or updates of what we’ve been doing.

When we moved in a month ago, one of my first priorities was to get the garage organized so that working on other projects wouldn’t be so stressful.  With Andy staying with us for the summer, we worked together on the garage projects.   We repaired/”improved” the workbench Grandpa had made for us five years ago, by sawing off the legs and adding six castors to it so that we can wheel it around when necessary.

Next we worked on shelving for the garage, modeled on the shelves which Grandpa had helped me build in our first house.  We modified them a bit by making them wider and higher rearranging the shelving configuration, but otherwise we built them exactly has Grandpa had designed and constructed our original set.  We even used 2×4s ripped in half (to make 2×2s) for the “legs” just as Grandpa had taught, so that we could save a nickel per board.  Andy painted them white, just like we had done before, and we assembled and anchored them to the walls, just as we had done before.

And, just as we had before, they gave us a ton of storage, with one shelf capable of holding four fully loaded milk crates.

After that, Andy and I hung pegboard over the now-mobile workbench for even more storage:

With the garage (and house!) a little more organized, we’ve been able to get started on the yard.  We have mostly dead sod in the front yard, with very bumpy weed clumps in the back, so getting a nice lawn and some flower beds is going to be a long process.  But the decrepit state of the yard does allow for some projects we’d normally not consider due to the excavation required.

Among them is our first yard project - burying our gutter downspouts, both for aesthetic reasons and as a preventive measure to keep water and moisture away from the house foundation and basement.  When we started, our gutters just poured huge quantities of water into our yard, just feet from our foundation.

Our plan was to use four-inch PVC to route the downspouts underground to the edge of our property, where the water can escape using “pop-ups.”

For the front yard, we merged two gutters into one underground flow, and ran them down one edge of our property to a pop-up next to the sidewalk.

As we were finishing the downspouts, it started to rain, giving us the chance to watch them working (or not working), and they passed the test with flying colors.

With that done, the next yard project is a “do it yourself” automatic sprinker/irrigation system.  With Grandpa Bill in town for a long July 4th weekend, we threw ourselves into the project.  At this point, we’ve completed the indoor plumbing, but there’s lots more to do - enough to comprise a blog post of its own, certainly.

Written by Gordy |