We had the chimney sweep, Seth, over this week to re-sleeve the main chimney. The was some deterioriation and crumbling tiles that needed to be removed. He also put in a new cleaning door. $2900 later, the chimney is a good as New. No photos, sorry!

So we had recently developed a problem with our water well. According to the Plummer, the check valve at the end of the well head had failed and the pressure in the pressure bladder was leaking. This was causing the water pump to short cycle on about every 20 minutes. We believed that the pump, which was actually housed inside the basement, may have been original to the home. Our home was built in 1975.  I guess we were surprised it lasted as long as it did. We have lived in this house for 12.5 years… so it was time for it’s replacement. $3300 later, a new pump was installed on Wednesday.

So we removed a whole bunch of trees on the  side/front yard about a year and a half ago, and only just levled and planted grass. The grass came in more as weeds and less as honest nice grass. This is by far better than the 4 foot tall weeds we had last summer.

We finally got around to replacing the Ill-fitting French door in the family room. It was not working well and the glass was starting to become fogged. The lock was hardly working and there was some water leaking in at the threshold area. We replaced it with a Jeld Wen slider that is black on the outside and natural finish inside. We will stain the wood to match the room’s wood finish.

So, we have not posted in a while. Hey! Life is busy, really busy. We have not engaged in any new house projects in a little while , but have kept up with Maint and General house work. We had the outside power washed and scraped both deck floors. We will be painting them in the spring.
We did just remove 23 pesky pine trees from the side/ front facing yard. The tallest of which was about 75 feet tall. This stole our winter vacation funds, but it was long overdue. Enjoy the photos,

What we planned and what we actually accomplished in this phase of the remodel:

We are in a bit of a construction lull, having exceeded our original budgets for time and $. We still need to have the final 8 (not 7 as previously mentioned) windows installed. This will entail taking apart my office, and desk… which I am not looking forward to doing… READ procrastination.

I thought I would show some of the unique features that this house has… on the outside. It has two separate decks and a covered porch. We also have a brick patio, but that will be a topic for another post… as it needs a little work and love.

The deck we call the FRONT DECK

The BACK DECK

and the PORCH off of the kitchen

I wanted to show what the front of the house looks like now with the new windows fully installed.

Next year we are looking at removing the siding and using modern materials to update the look and feel of the house.

P.s. The flag was re-positioned and is now upright as it should be.

The Internal work was competed on Friday. Karen and I have been moving back in, unpacking boxes, moving furniture, and hanging art.

I had not mentioned that we extended the use of crown molding to the hallway, living room, and dining room.

We needed to do this to keep this part of the house consistent. We also changed the wall color from the original blue to the same Revere pewter that we used in the MBR. It looks much cleaner and we are still impressed with the paint’s ability to change color, depending on the incoming light.

19 of the 26 windows have been installed and trimmed out. We have delayed the last 7 windows for the back part of the house, as we need to remove some furniture and make the windows more accessible.

I will have to disassemble my office and office desk as part of this work. We will restart this process mid June.