Home Improvements

Recently Betsy and I have been doing a lot of work around the house. Since we don't have any kids at the moment, we have some extra cash to invest in the house. My thinking is we should spend the money while we have it, right?

So we got termite protection from Terminex, installed the Gutter Shutter system, and are getting our trees trimmed by Arbor Design in the next week or so. I don't think I need to tell you that's some serious "investing." But its a one time cost that will hopefully keep us from disastrous costs down the line. I mean how much money would we have to spend if the house was infested with termites, or the shoddy gutters caused a leak in the basement, or even (god forbid) a tree fell on the house. After I weighed those possible outcomes the costs seemed reasonable.

In addition to those big additions, we made a few fun asthetic things. We created a nice little garden in our backyard. There was spot that was just asking for it. We ran some electric out to it in order to run a fountain, too. 90 feet of cable for one fountain seems a bit of overkill, but the fountain brings it all together, so what can you do?

We also finally got a porch swing. It was amazingly difficult to find a wicker/resin porch swing in the greater cincinnati area. I finally got a hot tip that Eastgate Pool and Spa had some. It seemed unusual, but it turned out they did. Of course once we had the swing, we had to hang it. That didn't turn out to be so easy either. Our front porch has a beautiful wood-paneled ceiling, and crown molding around the edges. All of this made it very difficult to track down the studs to hang the swing. I certainly didn't want to destroy any part of our amazing porch ceiling to hand this swing. Eventually Gary had the bright idea to take a section of the molding off to get a look at what's going on. Thank goodness the paneling didn't go all the way to the edge, so we were able to get a bead on those studs. After that it was quick work to get the swing hung.

I just added a great pic of Carla, Theresa, and I all staring up while sitting on the swing. Basically we all look like we're saying "will this hold us?" No worries though, its very secure.

Take a look through my recent Flickr pics to see some of the improvements.