5 Little Projects – Part 2

Building on my last post, here are 5 more little projects I’ve completed in the past couple of months:

[6] On March 18th, a week after I began working from home, I couldn’t take the dirty windows in my home office [aka girl cave] anymore:

They are the old fashioned kind, with storm windows.  They were a beeyatch to clean, because for each window I had to clean the inside of the main window, the inside of the upper storm window, the inside of the lower storm window, the outside of the main window, the outside of the upper storm window and the outside of the lower storm window.  Which meant for every trip up the ladder I had to climb down, go back inside, back up to the girl cave, adjust the window, back outside, back up the ladder, etc.  Which is probably why they haven’t been cleaned in like 6 years.

Before cleaning them I had to move everything out of the girl cave into the hallway so I could access the windows:

       

Darwin, of course, was THRILLED with all the re-arranging.  He perched quite precariously on his cat cave where I’d tossed it on the upstairs hallway cat platform:

       

Then I pulled my workbench away from the wall:

And lugged my Little Giant ladder outside and got to work:

I used the Window Cleaning Kit [#affiliate] I bought on Amazon a few years ago.  I LOVE it.  You just need the kit, a bucket of warm soapy water, & a rag.  No Windex:

       

The right window I had to clean using the ladder, but I was able to clean the left window from the deck, which made my life MUCH EASIER:

       

On May 24th I cleaned the lower 2 windows with a stepladder so hubby could see better from his dining room home office:

The 2 River facing girl cave windows & 2 River facing dining room windows are all double hung replacement windows which are a dream to clean.  I also cleaned the rest of the downstairs windows, including the living room ones overlooking the River:

I still need to clean the bedroom replacement windows and the laundry room window.

[7] A couple of weeks ago when I painted the screen door leading from the bedroom to the deck I also painted the inside of the living-room-to-yard door black.  It used to be white.  It looks much better black:

       

[8] One of hubby’s Christmas presents was over-the-door cat hooks [#affiliate] for his pajamas.  Unfortunately our doors are too thick and the cats didn’t fit.  They’ve been sitting in the basement for 6 months waiting for me to cut the hooks off with a hacksaw.  I finally did:

       

       

Then screwed them to the inside of the bedroom door:

[9] I spray-painted the ugly, ancient, nasty first responder lock box outside our door.  The fire Marshall tried to open it and almost broke his key off, so we’re stuck with it.  Before:

       

After:

       

Much better!  Now I need to turn it into a shelf and find something cute to put on top of it.  The new first responder box I installed in April is outside the front door to our house.  If I have to stare at the old, ugly one forever, at least now it blends.

[10] I stained our stoop, which needed it after 3 years:

After one coat:

       

After 2 coats:

       

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This series of blog posts stems from a large “honey do” list I made myself back in May:

Most of the projects are too small to even acknowledge on the blog.  I have since completed ALL the items on this list and half the items on a 2nd list.  Here’s what the list says:

1 – Remove the trash from the dell between our back yard and the old fish ladder.  Over time bottles and wrappers and cigarette butts get tossed in there by people on the fish ladder walkway.  Every few years I climb down with a trash bag and collect it all.  Animals like turtles and otters use the dell and I don’t want them having to climb over trash.

2 – Replace the screws in our house’s historic 1716 sign.  They were rusty and rust stains were forming.  Yuk.  I touched up the paint where the rust had stained it and used stainless steel screws.  Here’s an old pic of the sign when it was first hung in 2014:

3 – Glue shoe inserts.  I have orthotics which slip into my walking sneakers [because plantar fasciitis], but only cover the heel half of the shoe.  I usually cut the inserts that come with sneakers in half and stuff the toe half back into the shoe.  But they tend to drift.  I glued them into 3 pairs of sneakers.

4 – Dust bathroom fan.  The one that I replaced the motor for a few years ago.  Dust collects and it needs a good cleaning about every 2 years:

5 – Dust ceiling fans.  Self explanatory.

6 – Add bird house to Projects List.  I’d like to build a couple of bird houses over the winter.

7 – Fix outside faucet.  This didn’t end up being a problem.  It turns out our old crappy hose was the cause of the constant leak.  New hose, no leak.

8 – New hose for outside – pressure washer compatible.  Turns out we don’t need a pressure washer compatible hose for our side of the house because there’s one on the far side of the house.  Hooray!  I did buy the house a new 75 foot expandable hose [#affiliate] for the gardens.  It’s awesome.

9 – Tighten kitchen faucet handle.  Taken care of in my first post.

10 – Tighten fridge handle.  Taken care of in my first post.

11 – Dust bunnies on ceiling.  I used a ladder and a broom to take care of those.

12 – Dust long-tailed cats.  I used a ladder to take them all off the living room shelves and washed each one in the sink:

       

Then put them back up [there’s 4 shelves of them total!]:

       

13 – License plate screws.  I bought new screws [#affiliate] to attach my vanity plates, since the old ones were rusty crap:

14 – Hang hook for Darwin’s leash.  Taken care of in my first post.

15 – Feed thermostat wire through bedroom wall.  This relates to the bedroom smart thermostat I installed over the winter.  Jim changed the wire with a shorter one after I’d installed it, so I needed to feed the new wire through the wall.

16 – Find indoor/outdoor thermometers.  I searched EVERYWHERE for days and never found them.  Then I remembered they’re at our offices… d’oh!  So we can’t access them right now.  I like to know the temperature inside & out so I bought a new [black] one [#affiliate].  Here’s an older pic of one of the ones I was looking for:

17 – Re-label trash & recycle bins with our address.  I used a white paint pen to re-label them.  Over the past few years the white paint has faded so you couldn’t read it.  I like having our address on them in case they blow across the street, which they’ve done in the past.