Go home, Fence. You're drunk.

The Nesting Continues...

I had some time off recently.  Naturally, I decided to spend it crawling around the attic.

I threw a whole bunch of insulation up against the roof of our old Cape (at least the parts I could get to).

You can see where the insulation is working.

And where it's not.

New Porch Light

Before:

After:

I've been killing it around the house with projects lately.

Also, the new light is roughly 4 times brighter than the sun.

Up next: insulating the attic.

Portal Sync

On Saturday we had our new front door installed at the Canole Homestead. It's pretty awesome.

If I had known how much quieter and warmer the new door would make the living room, I would have pushed to get this project done a lot sooner. Between the more modern materials, better insulation and losing the mail slot, the drafts are waaaay down. Apparently, there was NO insulation around our old door.

(photo by J. Canole)

And it only takes one hand to close it! You used to have to lean on the old door with all your weight and flip the deadbolt to get it to close.

Somebody already took the old door away. I propped it up against the tree in the front yard and it was gone later that afternoon. I hope whoever grabbed it had some help, because that thing was heavy. I don't really have the time or the means to refurb it, but I hope it finds a good home.

Up next on the home improvement project list: the gross area around the rear door.

The Adventures of Pat Canole, Amateur Electrician

Much to my surprise, I've suddenly found myself quite handy around the house.

Under the close supervision and guidance of my father-in-law, we've greatly improved the electrical situation on the second floor this week.

We've run a new circuit upstairs. We've added two new outlets. We've fixed two switches that weren't working right. And we've replaced or upgraded a few more outlets.

I was a little hesitant at first. I had no prior experience with electrical work. But after taking things apart and realizing how bad the existing situation was, I felt like we could hardly make things worse. The whole upstairs was running off of one circuit. None of the outlets were grounded. The plugs were about 12 feet apart. The light switch also turned off the TV. Other wiring was just plain backwards.

It's definitely stuff that needed to be done. It'll be nice to clean up my chains of surge protectors.

And my computer outlet is actually grounded now. Hurray!

Lowe's employees: if you can find one, they're somewhat helpful.