Archives May 2021

As mentioned in a prior post, the big project I was planning for spring was demolishing the old deck and building a new, larger, composite deck, along with a three season room, an outdoor kitchen space, and an improved hot tub patio with a new hot tub and outdoor TVs. The first actual step in the construction process was to demolish the old deck, which went fairly quickly.

Next, concrete and diamond pier footings for the new deck posts went into the ground, along with the posts themselves.

In a huge, multi-person effort with the help of a skid steer, the main central beam was installed. It’s a massive piece of wood that weighs over a thousand pounds, so it was no small thing to get it into place.

After the big beam, joists went in next.

Finally, the brown aluminum railing went in.

This spring, I’ve been hard at work on the usual landscaping tasks that need to be done every spring: putting in mulch, getting the lawn into gear, planting flowers, pruning trees, et al. I’m not 100% done for the spring, but everything is rounding into shape nicely.

After getting the lawn and other plants done, I brought in the team from Boley’s Tree Services to remove some dead pines, prune the healthy ones, and plant new ones as part of my ongoing effort to make sure that we have healthy tree cover from Range Trail for years to come.

Last March (right before the start of the pandemic), my designer had a photographer professionally shoot the rooms that had been redesigned up to that point. A month or two ago, the photographer came back to shoot the progress that had occurred since then. As before, the results were pretty spectacular!

As the weather has warmed up and the pandemic is starting to be firmly in the rear view mirror, it was time to open the lake house for the spring.

While this year won’t involve any major construction projects at the lake house (there was more than enough of those last summer, including painting the entire interior of the house and replacing all of the flooring), I’m planning on doing a lot of landscaping, and I also replaced some of the aging furniture in the basement with furniture that had been displaced by all of the remodeling and design work at the Verona house.

I also did some minor electrical work, including adding a switch box for the water heater so that it can be turned off with a switched as opposed to using the switch in the fuse box.

The last thing that needed to be done to truly be open for spring was to get the boat in the water and setup the awning on the boat lift. I picked up the freshly detailed boat from Skipper Bud’s, and with the help of my friend Bret got the awning installed.

This weekend, my wife and I took the boat out for the first time on a beautiful 80+ degree day. It’s time for summer!

After putting in new flooring and painting three of the bathrooms in the house, the last steps were to install new counters (plus fixtures and sinks), and update the mirrors with mirror frames. Here were the original counters:

I orders the same countertop material that I used in the master bathroom remodel, along with the same sinks and fixtures.

After the counters were installed and the plumbing was reconnected, I painted the vanity cabinet in the basement bathroom to match the master and guest bathrooms.

After redoing the flooring in the theater, I wanted to redo the rest of the room as well. I removed the old shelving and ceiling mounted the projector, and also moved the electronics to the back of the room. I installed built in shelving in the alcove that used to house the old free-standing shelving, which is much more space efficient and better looking.

I then installed the theater electronics, and also added decor to the shelves.

In addition to the shelving, I added window treatments with a complementary pattern to those in the library, but with different colors that better match the theater.

Next, I added a vintage popcorn machine to play up the “theater” theme.

Last, and probably most important, I replaced the old couch with two rows of actual theater style seating. The seats recline, have adjustable headrests, along with cup holders and lighting. They make it feel like an actual theater, as opposed to just a media room.

The final step is adding an area rug and risers for the second row of seating, both of which are in progress.

The rug should be ready in early June, at which point I’ll install it and the risers to complete the remodel.

Over a month ago, most of the guest house remodel was finished, including new floors, new paint, and improved decor. The last thing to do was replacing the couches with new sleeper sofas, which completed the transformation from man cave to true guest house (even though it’s still a man cave). I was able to find comfortable and attractive couches that still function well as queen size sleeper sofas.

The completed remodel is a pretty remarkable transformation!