In the midst of all of my larger projects, I always maintain a list on Basecamp of smaller projects that need doing at both the main house and the lake house. Sometimes I find myself with a weekend that, due to other plans or weather, doesn’t allow me to work on a big project. When that’s the case, I always enjoy crossing some items off of the small project list. Here’s a running tally of some recent items from the list:
A few highlights from this spring have included…
New Chandelier
When I originally purchased the main house in Verona, it was largely stripped of light fixtures since the previous owners had been foreclosed on. The few light fixtures still in the house were contractor grade, and many have since been replaced. One of the few that was left was actually the dining room chandelier, which was simple in style but not heinous enough to have been replaced. I replaced it with a better looking fixture this spring, in addition to changing the decor of the room slightly and reframing some of the artwork to match the finish of the furniture. I think it turned out very well.
New Rug
The carpet in the house is on its last legs, and is going to be replaced in the next year, most likely. Given that, we wanted to get a rug in the main living room to cover the highly trafficked area around the coffee table and the couch. My wife is obsessed with Rifle Paper Company, and they make some high quality rugs at really solid prices. Here is what we settled on:
Key Rack
As my car collection has grown, I wanted a rack to display all of the key fobs instead of simply dropping them in an overly full key bowl. I installed a rack in the hallway near the garage door, that makes for a solid functional piece of wall art.
Kitchen Bathroom Shower
When I originally remodeled the bathroom near the kitchen in the Verona house, I made a mistake and didn’t properly secure the shower fixtures to the framing of the wall they sit inside of. This made for an awkward feel when you turned the shower on, and I was able to pretty easily rectify this by removing some of the hardware and mounting the main fixture to a piece of wood connected to the framing, along with some Great Stuff spray foam to completely hold everything in place.
Bronze Rail Hardware
All of the hardware on the railings on the two staircases in the house were brass, which fit the original decor but clashed with the oil-rubbed bronze that I’ve gone with in many of the remodel projects. Instead of replacing the hardware, which would have been impossible to find a one-to-one replacement due to the age of the hardware, I removed the hardware, spray painted it bronze, and replaced it. The result looks excellent, and really transforms the look of both stairways.
New Kitchen Desk Chair
We have a small desk area in the kitchen, and the chair that sat under the desk had worn out. I replaced it with a unibody wood chair, that adds some color to the kitchen while nicely complementing all of the other furniture.
Next up, I’ve got a lot of minor landscaping projects, plus installing an exterior hose faucet at the lake house and changing the oil on some of my smaller vehicles like the riding mowers and the ATV.