One of the things I have planned on changing in our house since the beginning is our front door.  There is nothing technically wrong with the one we have, it's a solid wood door with an oak veneer and a small 1970s octagon window.  Even though my kids really like it, it just doesn't match the rest of the house! So, I'd been looking for a replacement for a long time, and this year, I finally tracked one down!

The additional challenge of replacing this door is that the size is not standard.  Our main floor has 9' ceilings, and the doorways are 7' tall instead of the standard 6'8".  I can find 6'8" pretty easily, or I can find 8'.  That additional 4" from the standard height has been a bit of a mystery.  So, I had resigned to either building my own or modifying the door we have.  I even had a larger window ready to go.

​As part of our re-roof project and the financial contribution from our insurance company, we were given funds to re-roof our garage.  

I hate our garage. 

So, this isn't a project I'm hugely excited for, but I've been gearing up to work on it all summer. And now that temps are bearable I'm jumping on in! We haven't used our garage as very useful space in the past, but I really want to change that and make it something that can really help us.

It is done!  To see the bathroom from the beginning, head here! Catch up here, more progress here, and with the laundry plan here.

We have finished our most expensive single room to date in our bungalow, and I am beyond excited to have this as far as we have come.  The only remaining thing in this area is adding laundry machines next year.   A second bathroom in our neighborhood not only gives our house a tremendous boost in equity, but it gives us a huge boost in functionality of our home.  There have been more than a few days where the line for the bathroom here has been more than one person deep, and the walk upstairs from the family room or the basement bedrooms has gotten a little annoying - both for the bathroom and just for a drink of water.  The only downside is another toilet to clean.  

The other half of the bathroom project is establishing a laundry hallway outside the bathroom.  I've made a ton of progress there too, and I am even adding a little surprise for the kids (stay tuned for that one!).  I decided to clad the walls in the hallway in bead board, and I am getting prepped to add flooring and doors for the under-stair storage area.  

Like the stairs and the rest of the basement hallways, I painted the walls and ceiling Sherwin Williams Dover White.  It's my favorite of the creamy whites, and has the feel of old white paints.  

While the bulk of the project will be done by the end of September with the bathroom, it's going to take a little longer with the laundry machines for a couple reasons: we had some project budgeting difficulties on other projects (we replaced our roof, and that had some expensive scope-creep.  More on that later too.), the dryer I want is on back order, and the new IRA incentives mean I can get some money back on delaying my originally-planned purchase to 2023. 

​The biggest-ticket item this year, despite our bathroom being the most expensive room to date, was by far purchasing our new roof.  In May, like many families here, we got a massive hail storm... the day our roof permit went on the house.  I knew a roof was in our near future, but it turns out the hail damage - and resulting insurance claim - made the project more financially possible than the original scope. 

Because I wanted a roof that would last and would be recyclable at the end of its roof-life, we decided to go with a metal roof.  It definitely wasn't the least expensive option, but it was a decision we could make once and never need to address again.  A good-quality asphalt shingle roof would've cost us (not including sheathing) around $15-18K.  The metal roofing was $29K, and with the old roof installed on the original purlins with no sheathing, we needed an additional $6K to add decking underneath.  Because the condition of the old roof was so rough, the cost of sheathing was just a little less than we acquired from insurance.  Since we plan to be here a long time, we knew this would be the best long-term investment for us.  Instead of purchasing another roof every 15-20 years -and spending another $15K+, this one should lost longer than me.  

Affording a $35K roof wasn't an easy task, but we were definitely helped by refinancing in the spring.  That allowed us to use the equity the house had to pay for itself, while lowering our interest rate.   With this finished, we shouldn't have to address roof issues on the house again.  One and done!