Category Archives: Home Improvement

Front Storm Door Installed!

November 22, 20242024, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvement, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

The view we have all been waiting for! Our finished street view! We painted our house yellow earlier in the summer/fall and on Thursday the security door was installed. It’s a quite sturdy steel door, painted blue on the exterior and white on the interior. We also installed a new storm door with full view glass (so you can see the pretty deep blue color of the door more), and a built-in retractable screen. On those rare perfect spring/fall days where it’s warm out, but not hot enough to have the AC running, we would like to be able to open the house up to a nice cross breeze and some fresh air.

I think…. this means that we are finally ready for winter?! Pretty close to it! Donald is still feeling a bit under the weather, so once he has recovered from his cold, I’ll ask him to bring in the Christmas decorations from the garage and we will start decorating the house for the holidays!

How early do you start decorating? What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Love, Jenn & Donald

New Front Door!

November 21, 20242024, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvement, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

We had our first snow of the season today! It wasn’t too much, and it didn’t last very long, but I’m quite surprised that it waited until the third week in November! We’ve had a very mild autumn so far. This is what it looked like – just a dusting on top of the car.

Today, we had our front security door installed! It was a little bit chilly outside to have a gaping hole in the house, but we stayed in our offices and worked while Phil installed the door, and the rooms stayed fairly warm.

At this point, the door was held in place with these temporary pieces of wood, but it was starting to give us an idea of what the finished door would look like – so exciting!

And… HERE IT IS! There’s still some finishing touches left to be done (trimming off the foam that you can see on the bottom after it has set a bit), but it looks great! We’re very happy with the lever and lockset that we have selected as well! I didn’t think that the door would make that much of a difference to the feel of the living room, but I think that it looks like a whole new space! Donald is already thinking about other things we can do to update and decorate the room! (New ceiling fan? Crown moulding?)

It was a bit too dark outside once everything was finished (Grrr, Daylight Savings Time changes!), so I’ll take photos once it’s light outside again. Let us know what you think of the new door!

Love, Jenn & Donald!

New Flowers!

May 28, 20242024, Home Improvement, Home Life, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

We have had this plan for the front yard planting bed for quite a few months. However, with Michigan weather, you have to wait until sometime in May before the risk of overnight freezing goes away. Our plan was to do this as soon as we returned from our vacation out west, but we unfortunately fell sick and that derailed us just a bit as we rested and recovered.

Thankfully, Mom was bored in the house and in the house bored on Sunday, so she called us looking for something to do while Dad watched his races at home. We invited her over and the three of us headed to Telly’s Greenhouse – a local plant shop that we like.

We had a hard time sticking to just plants for the planting bed, as there were so many pretty and interesting plants, but I think we did a good job with our selections! We wanted to have plants of varying heights, and ended up with some grasses and dahlias for the back, cosmos for the middle layer, and some feathery plants and the little colorful ones (I’d have to look at the tags to see what they were) for the short layer up front.

Donald and my mom go to work weeding out the planting bed and getting the dirt ready. There were some existing plants: a couple hostas and my azalea bush. There were a few baby mums, but we transferred these to some pots and will re-home them to the back yard. They had me come out periodically to help determine plant placement. When they didn’t need me, I was inside playing Animal Crossing. My island had been neglected.

We love our plants! I’m so glad that Donald loves keeping our yard looking great! It was a lot of fun to pick these out together. Disclaimer: Yes, I know the house needs painting. We are going to try and get that done this summer.

These are a few photos of the final result! The flowers will continue to grow and get established, and I’ll try to remember to post some updates later on. Of course, as it happens, it decided to rain pretty hard just an hour or so after we finished planting. We checked on the plants in the morning, and – for the most part – they looked to have survived the deluge pretty well. Just the cosmos flowers were bent over.

Donald quickly stood them back up and packed some dirt around them before we headed over to Mom and Dad’s for a Memorial Day lunch. After getting back home, he used some of the posts we had from our foray into tomato growing to bolster the cosmos a bit until they could get a little stronger.

We think it looks a lot better and the pops of color and cute flowers make us smile whenever we see them!

Love, Jenn and Donald

New Kitchen Faucet

February 19, 2017Adulting, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvementfaucet, kitchen, LED, light bulbCadyLy

It’s pretty much always the case that when I go to Home Depot, I find something *else* that I want/need for my house. I almost never walk out of there with only the items I originally intended on purchasing.

Nothing new with that yesterday. Plus, there’s just something about a sunny, 68 degree February day in Michigan that makes you start thinking about spring cleaning and home improvements.

I had several light bulbs which were out in the house and went to get those, as well as some drain opener for the tub (it *always* needs to be cleaned out).

I replaced all the burnt out specialty bulbs today. They had LED options, so I went with those. One chandelier kind for the front door fixture, and 5 small globe bulbs for the living room and the back door fixtures. The LED bulbs are a lot brighter than the traditional incandescents (I bought the 60W version), and I love the extra light!

While going to the back of the store for the drain opener, I passed by the faucet aisle and stopped to take a look. For a long time, the kitchen faucet was so leaky that when the water is turned off at the tap, there is a stream of water about half of the stream when it is on at full force! That’s not a “leak,” really. More like a flood. I suppose I could have attempted to repair the faucet, but figured this was severe enough to just go ahead and replace the faucet entirely.

I picked one with a removable aerator, so that I could still install the quick-connect valve for the countertop dishwasher. The instructions said that I only needed an adjustable wrench and a screwdriver. I picked up a small sized wrench in the hand tools section, as well as some clear silicone caulk.

I had left the house about 11 am, browsed for a while in Home Depot, then picked up lunch at Estia, a Greek food restaurant that is owned by Vanessa’s uncle Paul and his cousin, Jorge. (They have the best chicken lemon rice soup! I love it so much!)

After lunch, I changed the light bulbs in the living room and then started to work on the faucet. I cleared out the items from beneath the kitchen sink, got my tools out, brought over an old washcloth and towel, and used a muffin tin to catch any leaks.

I was stalled almost right away. At first, I tried to take off the faucet and it wouldn’t budge. So I watched a YouTube how-to video and saw that there were screws under the sink that I needed to remove, as well as the water lines. After looking at it, it didn’t seem to be too complicated. HOWEVER! The plastic nuts that screwed the water line onto the faucet bolts were very tight! I couldn’t budge them.

I called my dad and we determined that I really just needed to get the right tools. My adjustable wrench didn’t have a wide enough opening for the plastic nuts. It was about 4 pm, and I was due to be over at Jack and April’s new house for a Housewarming at 6 pm. I changed clothes, since I had been grubbing on the floor and was filthy, and headed over, grabbing a venti iced latte on the way.

Dad had started putting some hand tools in a box for me when I got there. We added some more items that I might find useful to have around the house. He looked at the instruction manual for the sink and showed me how to connect the spray attachment. Mom gave me some of the beef vegetable soup that they had made for dinner. I was still full from lunch, but can have it for lunch at work the next day (today). We talked for a while, then I headed over to Jack and April’s.

They had 9 people over, and I knew everyone! They are a great group of people. We talked for a while, had some dinner and dessert (Michelle, it was fantastic! Some kind of creamy thing with whipped cream and strawberries, and a golden Oreo base), played with Vivien, played games, and watched the guys wrestle. It was a very enjoyable night!

As per my evil plan, I asked Jack if he would be willing to come over Sunday night, in the event that I was not strong enough, even with the channel-locks and larger adjustable wrench, to remove the water line nuts.

It was probably about 10:30 pm when I got home, and I had to be at work at 6:30 in the morning. However, I decided to try and see if I could get the sink installed. The sprayer’s hose sleeve was a little tricky, since it really needed to have someone hold it from above while I attempted to screw it tight to the sink. I managed to get it somewhat tight by deviating from the instructions and putting the sprayer and it’s hose down the hose sleeve. I then used the hose to pull the hose sleeve tight to the sink. It provided enough friction that I was able to screw the hose sleeve down. I’ll still want to have someone hold it while I tighten it up some, but since I don’t need to worry about its watertightness, it can wait a bit.

Finally, the moment of truth. I used the channel-locks and it took a minute to two to get the right angle. I was able to disconnect the water lines pretty quickly, and only a little water spilled on the right (cold water) side. Installing the faucet was pretty easy, also, although I had to deviate from the instructions again. They wanted me to put the faucet on the counter, then connect the hose for the sprayer. However, since the faucet was not tight to the sink yet, it started to tip over and fall when I started to push up on the quick connect valve to connect it to the center post on the faucet. So, I went out of order and tightened the faucet to the sink first, then installed the quick connect valve. (It took me two tries to get the sprayer hose right. The hose was very curly from being packaged, and the first time, I didn’t realize that it had wrapped around the drain pipe. I disconnected it and fixed it. I didn’t want to be pulling my drain pipe out trying to use the sprayer!)

After that, I just had to connect the water valves and tighten up the new plastic nuts with the channel-locks. The hot water line connected super easy. I had a weird angle on the cold water line, so it took me a couple tries and then laying down inside the other side of the cabinet in order to attach it securely.

Done!

I opened the valves for the water line and made sure there were no leaks. Then, I took off the aerator and ran both water lines for a little while to get out any debris. I reconnected the aerator and decided that it was a good time to do some dishes and let the water run for a while — just to be extra sure that it was not leaking anywhere. Everything looks good! So excited to have a pretty new, non-leaking faucet! I guess that means that I’m old now, that household things make me happy. I’m pretty proud that I was able to install it myself, too!