Wednesday, May 20, 2015

House stuff

OK, please forgive me for being boring and domestic, but in keeping with my whole blogging for documentation deal, all the stuff we've been doing with the house recently has taken up a surprising amount of head space, so here we are.

First, we finally replaced the shed in our backyard. We had this TuffShed playhouse thing that was in the yard when we bought the house six years ago, and while it was cute enough, it wasn't practical--too small and low for real storage, plus not weather-proof because it had open windows and doors. Because it was TuffShed brand, we could probably have sold it for a few hundred dollars, except that there was no easy way to get it out of our yard because it wouldn't fit through the gate. Finally I listed it on Craigslist for free with the caveat that whoever took it would be in charge of cutting it apart and removing it from the property on their own. I had SO MUCH INTEREST that I had to take the ad down after just an hour, at which point I had already received texts, emails, and calls from at least 30 people. I gave it to the first person who asked, which turned out to be two ladies who run a farm in rural Colorado, and it took them FOURTEEN HOURS to take it apart in a way that would allow them to reassemble it again later, but they DID get it done, and they took every last nail away with them, and lo, it was glorious.

With that shed gone, we took the opportunity to replace it with a proper shed that we could actually store stuff in. We found one the right size and structure for what we needed on special offer at Costco, and then the heavens opened and our beloved handyman/contractor, who had moved out of state with no plans to return, actually DID move back and assembled the new shed for us. It's bigger, it's taller, it has room for our lawnmower and our snow tires and our excess patio furniture and our bikes and and and. And it also looks good! See?



Then, because we were finally able to get stuff we've been storing on our side patio off the patio, we were able to get our patio arranged in a really functional, lovely way. I already had a nice patio chaise lounge, and we finally got a matching setup (though he got the chair and ottoman instead of the chaise lounge) for Torsten. We moved things around on the patio so there's a dining area, play areas (with sandbox and water table), and a lounge area. As a final touch, we got a patio heater at Costco, so our patio is usable on cool spring evenings. It has been surprisingly major life change... so much more use out of our backyard! It helps that both kids LOVE the yard (Annika yells "ow-side! ow-side!" the second anyone goes anywhere near the back door) - we basically spend our whole weekends outside, straight through til bedtime, and everyone is happy and tired by the end of the day. It's not magazine-ready, but it is SO FUNCTIONAL:


Lastly, thanks to Torsten's parents' incredible generosity, we are replacing the windows in our house. All of them! Our current windows are the originals from when the house was built 50 years ago. They are plain glass, they have no UV filtering (as a result, the back of our couch, which faces a picture window, is completely sun-faded), they are not at ALL energy-efficient, the wind comes right through them, many of them are missing screens, AND the vast majority of them won't open. But in a month! They will be gone! And we'll have new, modern windows! Our furniture won't fade! We won't be freezing at night because our bed is in next to a window! Also, since we live near the highway, we will not hear traffic noise (we don't hear MUCH now, but we hear things like sirens and 3 a.m. drag-racing, and supposedly with the new windows all we'll hear is blessed silence).

This leads to the question of blinds... which turn out to be staggeringly expensive, at least the fancy ones our window company recommended. This is our major topic for next month (because we can't order until the window are installed so that we can get accurate measurements): BLINDS RESEARCH. Brands! Types! What features are worth paying for and what's a waste of money? How can we get good blinds that do not cost nearly as much as the windows themselves? These are the basic questions of homeownership, yes?

12 comments:

  1. FOURTEEN HOURS TO DISASSEMBLE A SHED, THAT IS APPALLING!! The new one sure is cute!

    We're gradually replacing our 1960 windows and it is So. Extremely. Great.

    So far we haven't put up blinds because I can't figure it out.

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    1. I KNOW! And there were TWO of them, so that's 28 person-hours! AND they lived an hour away and didn't get it done in a day so there were an additional four hours of driving! AND they had to rebuild the whole thing once they got it back to their farm! PANT PANT.

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  2. I love your shed! I'm on the hunt for one as well and I'm a bit appalled that in Canada, that shed is double what it is on costco.com. Sigh. When we did our new windows (BLISS! You will LOVE new windows!) we bought blinds from blinds.ca. They do have a US site (blinds.com). Home depot stocks the same blinds but at a huge markup, so if you're not sure what you're looking for, check them out there and then order them online. You have to measure the inside frames (if you're going to inside mount them) so we waited til our windows were in before measuring because we upsized some of our windows. They are super excellent with customer service though. We've had a few blinds that didn't fit (too short seems to be the issue) and they send a replacement one for free. Ordering them that way saved us thousands of dollars. Blinds are insanely expensive. Enjoy your new windows! And thanks for the shed idea :)

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  3. I LOVE our new windows. We had ones that were original to our 1939 house and they were AWFUL. Our new ones are triple-paned, energy efficient, etc. and they all open and WORK.

    Blinds are stupid expensive. For some rooms that we didn't care as much about, we went to Home Depot and just got white fake wood blinds and called it a day. For our room we got nice custom blinds that also have a shade on them so even if we open the blinds up we still have privacy. Definitely worth it.

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  4. We went the home depot fake-wood blinds in several rooms too. They can trim them to size in the store (for free!) which is nice, especially if you have a slightly-non-standard size. And they're CHEAP which is also nice :)

    I am BOWLED OVER at the commitment level of those folks who took your shed.

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    1. I know! Torsten was super concerned that they were going to get partway into it, realize that it was way more work than they anticipated, and either get sloppy and ruin it or just leave in the middle so that we'd be stuck with a half-destroyed shed that nobody else wanted. But no! They saw it through. Blue ribbons for them!

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  5. I love (perhaps covet) the fans on your back porch! So pretty! I am dying to get both a fire pit thingy, and a table and chairs for our backyard, so I can have all-outdoors weekends like you describe.

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  6. We are replacing our windows this summer too. I'm dreaming of the blinds that come down from the top! My parents have them and love them. Great for privacy and natural light.

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  7. I think Eddie Z's is only in the midwest (and not that I recommend them) but I have to suggest that with the higher price tag of having someone from the expensive place come and measure for you means that you are not on the line for mistakes. Still a pain to have to deal with the mistakes (obv) and call/send stuff back/etc but that way if something is wrong it is not your fault. From my experience with custom sizes or inset mounting, this is worth it.

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    1. Yes! This is a great point and something we've discussed. I think FOR SURE we want a professional installer who will do all the measuring. We do NOT want to be on the hook for mismeasuring, especially since we have never measured for blinds before and are frankly likely to make a mistake. But maybe there's a brand less expensive than the one our window company sells (Hunter Douglas) where we could still shell out for the professional installer...

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  8. I love that you're blogging again!!! The yard looks amazing, and I'm excited for you about your windows!! We're gradually replacing blinds in our house too and oy. I'm going with cordless, cellular blackouts by Bali in the boys' rooms - Nell's window is tricky so I'm thinking about just biting the bullet and ordering black out roman shades from Pottery Barn...and we'll take the rest of the house from there. Best price I've found on blinds is through JCPenney, but I think I'll order through Blindsaver because I like that it's a Colorado owned company.

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