House projects update!

Life around the Gokie house has been a little crazy lately. I was thinking to myself that this coming weekend was going to be the first free weekend we've had since Kate was born...and then I remembered that it's my mom's birthday on Sunday. So much for that plan. But compared to some of the past few weekends, it's gonna be a breeze -- hopefully with nice-ish weather, cause David and I have some house projects to get going on.

Currently in the works include: a special secret woodworking project for a gift and finishing up the basement windows (more on that in a bit). We'd also like to get some more organization in the attic, buy a couch for our makeshift man cave in the basement, and start refinishing the dining room table.

After we finished the nursery, we took a break from home projects. Obviously a big influence in that department was Baby Kate, but I for one have missed spending a lot of time at Menards and getting stuff done around the house. Plus a project like redoing that entire room took us 4 months of solid work, so we were a little burnt out.

To be fair, since she's been born we reorganized the basement, added a for-real laundry area, and done some yard-work improvements. But nothing major. And the bug (the home improvement one) is biting again.

Now - the basement windows. Previously they looked like this:

I'm not sure what type of window that is besides "old". They were drafty, they don't open unless you've got biceps of steel, and they were slowly peeling away from the exterior cement walls. To be fair, we're pretty sure they're original in our 1930 home so that's a good 80-odd years on a single set of windows. But they were begging to be updated.

Also, please ignore the still-hanging plastic that we used to try and insulate the windows last winter. Didn't work, hence window-replacing-project.

The new windows look like this!

Problem was, we got to this stage about a month before Kate was born, and then decided to leave the rest for later. They were mostly installed - wood framing done, window in and functional, and a first layer of insulation/foam stuff installed. But definitely not finished. We really needed to completely seal them from the outside still, with more caulk and insulation, and then finish by painting the exposed wood and the cement blocks that got chipped during demolition.

Last night David decided to work on one and try and get it completed...and then we ran out of caulk. Oops. So a trip to Menards is in order for tonight so we can get going on finishing the rest of them. The windows stood up to the strong thunderstorms we had this summer, but comparatively, they haven't really been tested. We figured it was a good idea to get them done soon, because with the crazy Nebraska winters, we could be looking at a blizzard in about 2 weeks.

Not that it happens often, but it's possible.

Hopefully in the next week or two, we'll get them all cranked out and done. David is in charge of this sort of thing, although we're both really newbies at this home improvement stuff, it's our favorite joint past-time. And once the windows are done, there are plenty of other things to do! We have lofty dreams of knocking out a wall and expanding our kitchen, verifiably redoing the layout of our entire house...exciting stuff, isn't it??

Ahh, the joys of homeowning.

HG