Hardin Home: Home Improvement Projects at a Country Home in Verona, WI
Home Improvement Projects at a Country Home in Verona, WI
In addition to interior design improvements, painting, and flooring, my other summer project at the lake house has been constructing a fixed deck platform down by the dock. The motivation for the project was to have a place to sit down by the water, with easy access to the beach, that is less volatile and … Continue reading Lake House Dock Deck
After the new flooring was installed in the main level of the Verona house, I learned some lessons about how far you should allow uninterrupted runs of click flooring to go without transitions, as well as the importance of meticulous subfloor prep before the flooring goes in. A couple of small mistakes led to some … Continue reading Flooring Repair
A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded from my old Flying Spur to the new Flying Spur. It’s an incredible car, and has so many small improvements over the old car in terms of interior polish, driving dynamics, and technology. The garage is looking mighty nice these days! Continue reading New Bentley
Most of my projects this spring and summer have been at the Verona house, but I’m still working on several things at the lake house. First, I’m painting all of the interior walls before putting in new flooring and making some other smaller design improvements. The walls were originally painted with a flat white paint … Continue reading Lake House Interior Paint and Design
Several weeks ago, the staircase project was completed. First, the upper staircase had to be demoed, and was in a similar state to the lower staircase in that the stairs needed to be raised up with plywood before inserting the new treads and risers. After that, the new stairs started to take shape. Finally, the … Continue reading Staircase Construction Complete
This past week, construction began on the new oak staircases at the Verona house. I’m replacing the old carpet stairs with new oak stairs, stained to match the hardwood floors. It’s a long, tedious process to cut the stair treads and risers exactly right, but it slowly began to take shape. First, the previous stairs … Continue reading Staircase Construction
After a good ten year run, it was time to say goodbye to my grill. It was a housewarming present for my first house, and was an awesome grill but it was starting to rust out and fall apart. I replaced it with a very similar propane Weber grill, and have been very happy with … Continue reading New Grill
Over Memorial Day Weekend, my wife and I spent the long weekend at the lake house and I got everything ready to go for summer. First, I did some minor repair and repainting work on the stairs and railing going down to the water. Next, I repainted the shed and did other paint touchups around … Continue reading Lake House Open For Summer
The shelves in the garage that I had used to store paint, as well as the shelves in the guest house garage that I had used to store gardening tools, were all in general disrepair and sagging from the weight of everything stored on them. I invested in some much stronger steel shelves, as well … Continue reading New Garage and Shed Shelving
I finished all of the landscaping tasks I had planned for spring, which was a pretty exhaustive list, along with a number of other minor outdoor projects. Here was the full list of tasks I had planned: Climbing plants along wall Improve planters outside sitting room and library Replace cut down trees Plant something in … Continue reading Landscaping Complete
