Busy Week

It's been a very busy week here. We're continuing to unpack and find a place for everything. Sheesh how to does one family collect so much stuff?! It's amazing how much junk you collect through the years.

We've started a lot of projects this week, although I can't say we've completed any of them yet. It seems that we always seem to get side tracked.

We've gotten all the holiday decorations out to the storage shed. Yeah, I know. Its only a short time until they are needed again but, hey, its NICE to not have them cluttering up our closet like we've always had to do before.

We did a lot of raking and burning outside. We got rid of two large stumps that were almost in the back door. I don't know why but they were nearly three feet tall. But at least they are gone now. There are still at least two more out there that need to be burned out but its a good start.
The enclosed front porch area that we had thought we were going to be able to turn into a dining room turned out to be more trouble than anything else. The previous owner had moved the front door, put carpet down over the porch boards and tin all the way around with the spray can insulation so it was a nasty eye-sore.

Enclosed Porch - Before

We really needed the dining room space so I "attempted" to work with it.  We didn't have the money to buy plywood or anything but the previous owners had left a ton of tar paper and shingles out behind the shed so I thought I would be able to make it work, at least temporarily, anyway.

So I pulled up the carpet and swept it as clean as I could.

Carpet removed.

Then  I laid down tar paper. Of course I ran out halfway through so I finished with just shingles and then replaced the carpet. I knew it wouldn't be as good as if we'd been able to do it right but I thought it would at least be more air tight than it was.

Finally I set the room up as my dining room, even though we weren't able to do the walls or ceiling or anything it didn't look as bad as I thought it would and at least now we had a place to eat.

Hubby insisted on hanging the pictures. LOL

Well it stayed that way for about 3 days. Until we had a cold snap and I found out that it still was NOT going to work. The temperature in there was at least 10 degrees colder than in the rest of the house.

We decided that since it would cost us more in heating than it was worth we'd turn it back into a porch for the winter. So the next day I had to take apart my table and chairs and put them in the storage shed, pull up the carpet again and remove all the shingles I had laid down. At least this time I had help.

Devin just loves to have his picture taken!

Kevin moved the door back into the original position and now we're using it as a covered porch. We still need to take the tin off the outside but that will have to wait since we don't have the correct bit for the screws.

And that's just one of the unfinished projects we started this week. We also started on The Icky Pool but we'll save that post for another day.