home improvement a la: if you give a mouse a cookie style

When we bought our house, two years ago, our realtor told us that it needed "some upgrades."  What that means, in layman's terms, is that our house needed a lot of work.

A Lot. 

Of course our home is livable, because Mr. S lived here for nearly 45 years and we've lived here for two years.  But our kitchen has the original appliances and the bathrooms are all vintage 1966.  At the moment, the children's toilet is taped closed because it runs constantly and we can't find a part to fix it.  Remember this? Even that part didn't work.

We often tell ourselves, SO WHAT? Our stove is better than our camping stove and we love camping. Heck, we could cook in the fireplace!!

(Or, at least boil a pot of water for coffee...)



And we don't really need three bathrooms, we really only need one. So what if we're looking at a cinderblock wall whenever we're on the commode?



It works! At least sometimes. Or at least until the children eat a big lunch and then all bets are off and you better hope there's a plunger nearby. What is it with little kids and their monstrous poops?

Anyone?

Whenever we feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of work to do in this house, we'll just look out the window at our magnificent yard. And we remember why we bought this place: it's a slice of heaven.



However, our little slice of heaven is decaying rapidly. For example, whenever it would rain, the water would overflow the gutters and pour down the windows, triggering massive water rot on all the frames. So we decided that we needed to replace our gutters that have been known to bear maple seedlings.

And frogs. 



Once we replaced our gutters, we determined that we needed to sand and touch up the paint on the rotting wood.



Alas, the wood was so rotted out that we needed to break out the wood and replace the entire section. And then we couldn't sand wood in other areas because it had lead-based paint...



So if we wanted to do the job right, we needed to break out all the wood.

Around the entire house. 



Then we decided that since they're painting, we may as well paint our shutters from burgundy to black.



And because the shutters looked so fantastic, we decided to replace our old front door.



And hey .... you know what would look really amazing with a NEW front door?





A new front stoop ... in flagstone! 



But how can you have that lovely flagstone stoop with that old cracked driveway that has caused multiple children multiple falls on their bicycles and scooters? So we replaced the driveway ... all 350+ feet of it.





But before we replaced and expanded the footprint of the driveway ... 







We had to tear down and rebuild the brick wall alongside our garage that was beyond repair.



(I had this guy stand guard over our new brick wall to ensure that the bobcat didn't hit it as they broke out the 6-inch concrete base of the OLD driveway. That would have been a major bummer.) 





And while we were on that side of the house....





We figured we'd just go ahead and replace the sliding glass door that wouldn't open and you could feel a cool breeze blow THROUGH it in the winter.



Because the new doors are so amazing, let's just bite the bullet and do the full frame replacement for almost all of our windows because they are drafty in the winter and the wood is totally rotted - thanks to the old gutters - and really, who needs to eat more than once a day?

Hey, speaking of gutters, that's what started this whole thing. 

The toilet?



It's still broken.