The past week or two I’ve been doing all the home maintenance items I’ve been putting off for years in order to get the house ready for sale. So far I have:
- Cut down all tree branches that were damaged by the ice storms.
- Replaced a sink
- Clean paint and grout off baseboards
- Cut and bundled probably 100 unwanted baby trees
- Removed some mold that was growing in one of the sinks
Cutting down the broken tree limbs was pretty fun. My grandpa passed away last December and I ‘inherited’ a pole saw along with some of his other tools. That made the job SO much easier. Jeanette wasn’t thrilled about me using a “chainsaw on a stick” given my track record, but I still have all my limbs and managed to not get hit on the head with a branch.
Fixing the leaking sink was the part I dreaded the most. I swore off ever doing plumbing work again a few years ago. I never can seem to get everything hooked back up without it leaking. After my dad pointed out I could just replace the sink cheaply instead of trying to repair it, I decided to give it one last shot. Turned out to be a piece of cake. Only took about an hour and $30 for a new sink and hoses, and it works great.
When we first moved in, our master bathroom had carpet. After the first time the toilet overflowed, we decided carpet was a REALLY bad idea and installed tile instead. We also repainted the walls a few months later. Being the first time for both, it didn’t dawn on us to tape off the baseboards before starting, so we ended up with quite a mess. We figured we’d have to replace the baseboards to fix it, but we found a paint thinner and grout remover at Wal-Mart that did a pretty good job. It took a LOT of scrubbing and didn’t get rid of everything, but it looks MUCH better than it did. The camera flash makes it look worse than it really was/is.
Chopping down and bundling the baby trees has been the biggest project so far. I spent about 15-20 hours working on it. Much longer than I thought it would take. It’s finally done now and the yard looks much better. I put out 6 bundles of wood for the garbage men last week, fortunately they took them. I have another 5 bundles sitting out there today.
There are still quite a few more projects to do..