Home Improvement

A classic activity for visits from the Ks is big household projects. While the projects this time out were not earthshaking, they were all satisfying:

First off, Jim and I finished off the gates to the new fences. Most excellent. We now have the extended side yard fully secure for Bambina to run free in, not to mention the dogs. The last step will be disassembling the remains of the old gate on the.

Gate hanging was hampered a bit by the, ah, lack of plumbness (along multiple axes) between gate posts. We managed to work around that one, and these things should be solid as a rock.

I do need to figure out the best way to thread the latch pulls through the fence, and I have a couple of pickets on the west side that need to go up next to the old fence, and so forth, but, basically, the project is done. Updated pictures to follow RSN.

The second thing we did was install a new porch light we’d had still in the box from buying it at Restoration Hardware four or five years ago. As part of that, the old porch light was moved to flank its mate on the other side of the garage door. Piece of cake, and it looks great.

Lastly, we put in a doorbell.

When we redid the kitchen four years back or so, part of it involved ripping out the intercom/radio system that was installed in the house when built. Only after that was done did we discover that the doorbell was wired up through it.

Since then, we’ve been using a wireless doorbell of dubious quality and reliability. It got so that Margie put up a “Please Knock” sign at Halloween, and we’d left it up since.

Now we have …

… a really nice doorbell button on the porch (albeit at a different spot that the old one).

… a “hidden” doorbell chime on the ground floor that should be nicely audible throughout the house.

… a doorbell chime in the stairwell down to the basement, which mean (huzzah!) we can hear when the pizza delivery guy arrives during games.

The only problem is that the two chimes are not quite in tune, especially on their second notes. Not much we can do about that, I’m afraid.

All in all, a much more productive weekend of that sort than I’d expected (but certainly one reason why the bloggage was a wee bit light).