Building the deck
It makes no sense to have patio doors that open into nothing, so we decided to build a deck. Our plan is for a basic rectangle, a service deck between the two doors. We’ll put the grill up there so it’s easier to B-B-Q, maybe the table and a few chairs too. Eventually we’ll put a patio at the far end, further into the back yard. Here’s the spot, just after the patio door was put in:
Working on the holes and posts:
“Hey you in the hat – back to work!”
Inspection time…
Finally, some wood!
Building steps:
to be continued….
Kitchen remodel: patio door
We went from a tiny window…
To a big hole…
With a little help along the way…
To the final (but not quite finished) install:
Kitchen remodel project: begin
Our kitchen is old and left over from before we put an addition onto our house. And it’s a “sunken kitchen”, lucky us. We took a few years off to recover from the horrors of the gigantic remodeling project, and now we’re starting once again. We’re expanding into what used to be my office, what we affectionately call “the Weird Room”, for stage 1 of the project.
Here’s what we want to do in here (existing stuff is marked w/green, planned stuff is marked yellow):
To be extra confusing, on this photo the existing thing is marked w/red arrow, planned stuff is green and orange:
Demolition begins, here you can see the view from the existing kitchen (note the wonderful “sunken-ness” of it).
Keeping a deer out of the corn is hard work
We have a few deer in the neighborhood. This one was in the yard behind ours and really wanted to jump the fence to munch on some sweet corn. I kept guard and didn’t even get scared as she stomped her foot at me.
A Solatube in the entry
The entry from our garage into the hall/kitchen are has always been DARK. Depressingly DARK. We’ve solved that by installing a Solatube. Here’s the area before:
Assorted parts:
Working in the attic:
Up on the roof:
Wow – what a difference!
It was a wonderful success. All in all it took much longer than the advertised “2 hours” to install, but we had no experience at this either. The next one will be much easier and quicker to put in.
