Year In Review 2014

Happy 2015!!! We had a very quiet New Year’s Eve and New Year's Day. Before we get too far into 2015, I want to do a brief review of 2014.

For the first 4 months of 2014 (pre-blogging) I was working long hours with little time for anything else. By late spring things at work had slowed down and I had time to get my flower and herb gardens weeded and mulched and possibly looking better than they had in several years. I also planted our tiny backyard vegetable garden but for the second year in a row, it was pretty much a failure.

Spring also found me working on the House Diet by rounding up items to donate to a fundraiser yard sale.

The front porch got new coat of concrete paint on the floor. The old wicker furniture got a fresh coat of white paint. And, I sewed new cushions and pillows for the porch furniture.

My job of 17 ½ years ended at the end of July and being unemployed gave me the opportunity to start this blog.

For over 2 years the restoration and exterior painting of our house has consumed all of our home improvement focus and money. More about that here, here, and here. The painters finished up in the spring as soon as the weather permitted, leaving me with the window sashes and back doors to paint.

I spent August and September painting window sashes (in between looking for a new job and helping my mom through a knee replacement). For its size our house has a lot of windows. There are 11 double-hung windows, 2 stationary windows, 3 louvered vents, and 3 doors (the front door is natural wood so only 2 doors needed to be painted). Before painting I repaired window glazing and caulked wherever needed. The basement door needed some extra attention and I attempted to repair one of the panels by putting in a new piece of plywood. Each window and vent, as well as the 2 back doors, received a coat of primer followed by a coat of high gloss paint. The kitchen door needed a second coat of paint. I also gave most of the window frames an additional coat of paint because I wasn't completely happy with the way they looked with the primer and one coat of paint that the painters were contracted to do.

All of the storm windows were freshened up with white spray paint. I added some weather stripping to the bottoms of the windows before putting the storm windows back up.

In October we took a short vacation followed by a long weekend. In between our refrigerator stopped working and had to be replaced.

Also, in October, I had my first IKEA shopping experience.

The year ended up with holiday decorating. Usually, I am lucky to have to time to put up a Christmas tree. This year the decorations were still simple but I was able to put out some old favorites that I usually don’t have time for. 

Those are the high points of the year. On the home improvement front, 2014 will be remembered as the year that the exterior of the house was finally painted.