Home Improvement

We don't do a lot of home improvement at our house. I admit that I am hesitant to anything I've never done before and that pretty much includes any home improvement project. I just don't like not knowing what to do. I am that way with just about anything. If someone who knows what they are doing shows me how to do it, then I'm a more willing to give things a try. But I don't like to figure out how to do things on my own.

But we had a slight emergency this week which resulted in me being stuck outside the house in the pouring rain and Ellie and Annie inside the house with the door (with the blasted, old, lock) jammed. This lock has acted up before in the past but with Matt around. So Matt just lifts me up to the deck and I climb over the deck and get into through the deck door. This time, Matt was at work and Ellie unintentionally jammed the door when she slammed it shut while I was outside. Fortunately, Ellie is a very good listener and eventually she managed to open the baby gate, get to the basement, move the dowel in the door, unlock the sliding door and let me in. But it took her at least 15 minutes to figure out the baby gate, by which point I was near hysterics, me being my pregnant self and unable to get to my children.

So last night, I headed to the Home Depot to buy (among other things) a new doorknob and deadbolt set. This tiny project has morphed into a more complicated one, as we have discovered that the door is actually made of aluminum and filled Styrofoam. (I've always wondered why we have such a draft in the winter.) Anyway, it requires that we get some kind of thingy in order to screw in the deadbolt. I don't really understand it, Matt does, but suffice to say, this required another trip to the Home Depot which Matt is making right now.

While we were replacing the locks on the door, we decided to pull out the paint that the previous owner left us and give the door a fresh coat. And we are going to finally replace the Welcome door knocker with a new one since the current has the name of the previous owner as well. And Matt is even going to try to replace the long light bulbs in our overhead kitchen light fixture which have been dimming and erratic for the past several months.

Wow, if all of this actually gets finished we'll have a completely different looking front door and a brighter kitchen. And if it actually gets done with minimal headaches, I might be more willing to try other small home improvement projects. We'll see.