To our home’s successors,

With our major project on deck for the year, we tried our best to stay motivated and accomplish a few projects on our own as well.

We started on some low hanging projects that were mostly aesthetic. We had shifted primary rooms in 2021 which gave us ‘his and hers’ closets rather than sharing one. However, both closets were in a bit of rough shape, so we gave the spaces a little facelift- fresh coats of paint, and some working handles that didn’t strip the wood drawers. We also tackled the laundry room in the same capacity- stripped the peeling paper off the shelves, sanded down and gave them a fresh coat of paint. 

So…initially we had planned to reglaze and paint a few windows a year, which proved to be a larger challenge for us than we originally realized. Part of the issue was work space. We did not have a space devoted to projects and the weather was not always reliable enough to do them outside. We temporarily set ourselves up in one of the bedrooms, and started on that bedroom’s 2 windows in August. The windows had clearly, at some point, been done because they appeared to have been painted. We had a truly hard time matching what had been there, and we opted for something close to the frame’s stain. In hindsight, I wish I had tried another retailer to stain match our trim. 

We did the upstairs bathroom window in September. It is truly amazing what a difference reglazing and weather stripping these windows made. 

One thing about all the windows we did thus far, we color matched to our existing shutters (a green paint)- we have since changed the colors, and will eventually need to repaint these windows to match. 

One of the saddest days we had with our house was the day we had to cut back our beloved rhododendrons. In September 2022, we needed to significantly cut back the plants that surrounded the porch. We hoped they’d come back, albeit smaller of course. Alas, the amount we had to cut things back for access to the porch was significant and of course the rhododendrons would not survive this. Of course, it’s what’s ultimately best for the life of the porch/ house; plants this close to a building can (and very much did) create rot because the wood is never able to fully dry out. With the hardest part over, our contractor was finally able to get started. The heavy lifting was about to begin.