A look back…January

January started with getting insulation in the exterior walls. Our contractor cut all the holes in the walls and we hired a company to blow in the insulation in the cavities. We spent three full days patching all the holes – beveling edges, drilling countersinks, installing wood strips, matching plugs to holes, installing plugs, and putting on multiple coats of drywall compound.



There were two dozen pine trees lining the driveway and 5 that were very close to the house on the right side. We had all of these removed – it made a huge difference in the way our house looked – from dark and claustrophobic to bright and open.


We thought we could live with the kitchen for a little while but it turned out that it was just too horrible. The cabinets were all stained and smelly (no amount of cleaning would remove the odor), the only appliance that worked was the refrigerator, the tile was extremely slippery, the dishwasher and disposal weren’t hooked up (but someone put food in the disposal like it did) and the countertops were worn through. We gutted the kitchen to make way for a new one.


There was a very small covered porch off the back of the kitchen. It served no purpose and was extremely ugly. We had to remove it in order to get our new roof and gutters installed. We ripped it off pretty quickly (and made a lot of noise in the process!). When we were removing the roof, we realized that there were up to 6 layers of shingles on this little mudroom.