It’d be a lie to say that we aren’t feverishly working on our house to keep our living options open.  Being completely honest, we always felt like this is our forever house, and every decision I have made for it is for us.  But… we’re also living, as usual my dear Millennials, in unprecedented times.  So, we’re fixing as much as we can, and we’re doing it the right: no hidden problems, just real solutions we’d be happy with no matter who lives here.  Progress has been fairly steady the past several weeks as I rage-build.

We have a laundry list of projects to do this year!  Mostly, I’m finishing things that are already started or making better projects that we did early on.  We’ve been in this house for nearly a decade, and I have learned a lot here.  One thing I learned is not to ignore signs of stress.  So with the broken joist -that has always been broken for us- in our office and the always crooked dining room buffet telling us it was time to get the sinking around our chimney buttoned up, I knew I had to get working.

Last year was such a mixed bag of personal challenges, slow shifts, and hard decisions that it’s difficult to encapsulate! House progress was slow, and largely consisted or triaging things that were broken or making smart swaps to improve our lives. Though I can finally say the library is in the home-stretch! …And I still need to tackle the attic.

Personally, it’s hard to quantify the struggles we had this year in our household, but I will say that a lot of my close relationships grew in ways I never could have imagined: it’s enough to thank the past year for that time. Our household after five long, hard years is back to being a two-dog family. We adopted Henry just before his first birthday! He’s black lab, doberman mix: all legs. Perfect for getting me back into running and mixing us all up a little.

In working on the one open wall -the couch wall- in our basement library, I decided to add my favorite piece of millwork to the wall: picture rail. Not to be confused with a picture ledge, this sits at the top of the wall or below the crown with a small gap to provide a spot for hooks that hold artwork without tampering with the wall itself. It's fantastic for flexibility, and saves the wall from hanging holes.

My functional brain loves this molding: the purpose in its use makes it a perfect fit for our house, even if I had to get some custom milled. The folks with the knives for what I ordered were on Etsy, and they are identical to the original picture rail in our living and dining room.

​Finally, I’m making some read headway on this basement library. Since working on the bookcase doors last summer, I had stagnated on working in here with other priorities coming up.  When we had the toilet leak, that definitely kick-started some real progress!  Mostly, I’ve been sorting what we’ve been storing down in the library since reconfiguring, and I really went hard on getting work done on the ceilings.  Most of which is now done!

There was a lot of prep work and future-proofing that we needed to do before getting this done, like running preliminary wiring to the future fireplaces.  This part of the basement is a huge step: most of the plumbing and electrical run through this ceiling, so closing it up really means finishing a huge amount of progress on this house.

I also pre-painted all of the bead board in Sherwin Williams Delft (9134).  It’s just a bit lighter than the walls (SW Riverway 6222), and helps visually lift the ceiling while still feeling like a unified color.

It wouldn’t be an old house if it didn’t test me from time to time. Back in October (and August) the little kids flushed something that got trapped in the toilet. Both times, I called someone to fix it, choosing the convenience of professional install over the time it'd take me to do it. The first tech in August did everything perfectly: new wax ring, and caulked the front and sides (in accordance with UPC- the plumbing code used in MN). Everything looked great in October, aside from recaulking, and the near-perfect re-installation showed no obvious signs of defects. But when re-installing, the horn on the outlet was chipped, most likely on the closet bolt coming out of the floor. An easy mistake, and a lesson for me that taking the tank off is advantageous every time.

So, we had a very slow drain leak into our basement. Fast forward to January when the same toddlers think flushing in rapid succession is fun! The leak may have been slow, but the amount of water pouring out now was everywhere. It had clearly been a problem for a while, and now everything was wet.