2 Years later!

I am pretty far behind on this but I wanted to do a quick run-down of year 2 in our house.  These are the more major projects we completed in year 2. First up is our deck.  Here is our deck before;

Small and rotted, it was in need of serious repair. 

So we tore it down and started from scratch.
The picture on the right is from when we finished
right before winter.  We made the deck about 4
feet larger on each side and added a second set of stairs.  The deck boards are Trex composite decking; no staining, no splinters, and the bugs don't like it!  It's also a breeze to put down.  Now that it's warmed up, it's been great enjoying our deck

We recently did quite a bit of landscaping.  When we moved in, the front of the house consisted of bags of dirt, not even opened.  Obviously we waited quite a while before remedying that because it required a lot of dirt to regrade the front.  So we added dirt, plants and mulch.  The front is much nicer looking now.

 Another major change we did in the past year is all new siding and roofing.  Both the siding and roof were in rough shape

We replaced the original aluminum siding with vinyl siding.  I painted all trim white and we got new blue shutters. 

 The last time you saw the dining room, it looked like this.

This is it today; not much different except for artwork on the walls and trim around the sliding glass doors (just barely visible).

 On the left is what you last saw the bathroom looking like.  On the right is it now.  Not a whole lot has changed; just added more stuff since I've been using it regularly.  It still hasn't become a fully functioning bathroom as the toilet doesn't work and the shower is still down to the studs.  We plan to eventually finish it but since we have several other working bathrooms, our motivation has been lacking.

This is by far my favorite transformation.  This picture is actually from the very first night we looked at the house.  We hadn't changed anything in the kitchen until recently (about 2-3 months ago).







This is the kitchen now.  I painted all the kitchen cabinets white (this took several weeks!), installed hardware on the cabinets (non-existent before), got new granite counter tops, got a new cooktop, sink and faucet.  We hope to replace the floors soon and put some hardwood down.  Overall, I love the kitchen and am so happy I decided to paint the cabinets!  Also in the plans is to knock out an opening into the sunroom to open up the kitchen a bit more.

On the left is our basement shortly after we moved in.  Nothing special about it.  When my brother and his wife were about to move in last year, we decided to finish it off so it was a bit
more liveable







This picture isn't entirely up to date but it doesn't look much different right now.  We put down laminate bamboo flooring, baseboards, and painted.  It was a pretty quick renovation.  Since my brother and his wife have moved out, the basement is pretty much empty now.





There have been plenty other small projects and the finishing up of projects but these are the major changes.  A lot of the rooms in our house are at about 70% done so we've been working to finish them off. 

Upcoming projects include:  a vegetable garden, a paver walkway to the deck, a patio off the deck, the pass-through in the kitchen, a reading nook in the sun room, and finish the master bath (finally).  No real time frame for these projects but they're in the back of my mind.