The List

This isn’t related to anything to do with book reviews, but it does explain why I haven’t been posting lately.  I haven’t been reading, either.  What I have been doing is building up a List, and trying to clear it off.  I expect that it’ll take several years to clear off the List, but I hope that it’ll settle out a bit soon.

We bought a new house, and moved.  I miss the old house.  I’d poured a lot of myself into it, over the 8 years that we’d lived there.  And my list had been cleared – there were a few maintenance projects that would come up every now and then, but by-and-large it was good.  At least it was functional.  The water worked.  The drains worked.  There was a thermostat for the heating system.  Stuff like that.  Eventually, the new house will be much better – it’s bigger, has a wonderful yard with lots of room for the boys to run around, but is a bit bigger project than I’d counted on.   My wife and I, and many of our friends and family too, have been been busy.  And occasionally, we do something that’s on the list.  Most of the stuff is just too obvious to bother writing out.  By the time I get the list cleared, this place will be fully mine.

Anyway, in the interest of immortalizing the List, here it is, in all its glory (after the jump):

In the attic:

• Install three two bathroom fans (that move air, and don’t howl – it turns out the previous occupants had taped over the exhaust ports of the bathroom fans, making them into essentially noisemakers.  Sigh.  Removing the tape helped with both the noise and the air-flow, but installing a better fan helped more.)

 Upstairs:

• Install baseboards in the closets
• Find a place to hang the vacuum cleaner hose
• Make the vacuum cleaner suck (more)
• Fix or replace the vacuum cleaner sweep plate
• Fill the nail holes in all the baseboards
• New door sweeps at front door and back door
• Install garburator
• Paint doors
• Touch up ceiling paint
• Paint ceiling at skylight
• Fix/replace under-cabinet lighting
• Install curtains and/or blinds in the bedrooms
• Fix the shelves in the walk-in closet
• Fix the rod in the main entrance closet
• Clean main bathroom light fixture
• Organize pantry
• Shelves for the spice cupboard
• Shelf liners for pantry, pot drawer
• Touch up blue paint
• Touch up white paint drips
• Replace leaky dishwasher (what is it about the water in this place?)

 Outside:

• Weed/mow/trim/prune (pretty much constantly over the summer)
• Patch stucco
• Get rid of rust stain on side of house
• Replace stairs on deck
• Hand rails at deck stairs, main entrance, garage man-doors (2)
• Level sidewalk tiles at shed, walkout
• Fix play center (and build a play house in one side of it, and install a wheel up top)
• Plant trees to block off the neighbour’s shed
• Fix lawnmower steering
• Replace deck, as the current one is deck boards installed on top of plywood
• Paint garage doors
• Fix mitre saw table
• More shelves in the garage
• Shelves under the work bench
• Install cat doors in both sheds
• Fix saggy cables in the garage
• Fix saggy ceiling in garage
• Organize tools
• Get rid of chicken coop
• Get rid of chicken poo
• Remove old internet antenna
• Patch holes in wall from internet wire
• Fix old hot tub electrical box
• Put siding on sheds (they’re currently painted OSB)
• Fix soffits on the house and shed
• Move garage door opener buttons
• Build a shed for garbage
• Figure out snow removal (bought the quad, now need a blade)
• Clean garbage out of composts (two down, one to go)

 In the Basement:

• Run internet cable to projector
• Install at least one cold air return
• Finish drywall repairs in bathroom
• Paint bathroom
• Paint hallway
• Build shelves in the furnace room
• Deal with the hacked-in wet bar/kitchen in the basement (rip it out and start again?)
• Install projector and screen
• Build a hearth of some sort around the fireplace
• Replace stopper in bathroom
• Install bathroom lights
• Trim glass block feature
• Clean pencil crayon off glass block grout
• Touch up ceiling paint
• Hook up kitchenette water
• Drywall under stairs
• Clean up carpet/throw out (under stairs)  

And then, there are the jobs that I can’t do and we need to get someone in for:

Electrician (or HVAC): 

• Install outlets for garage heater, water heater (currently on extension cords)
• Power for garburator,
• Power in kitchen island
• Thermostat for in-floor heat
• Hook up and/or fix central exhaust fan 

Plumber:

• Figure out whether in-floor heat, & on-demand water heater are installed correctly (I have my doubts) 

Carpet layer:

• Install tack strip at kitchen, hearth
• Stretch carpet
• Fix visible seam 

Now, here's the good side of The List.  Eventually, the top will migrate to the bottom:

Crossed off (as of Sept. 30, 2012):

• Organize freezers
• Replace bulb in microwave
• Move stones from scattered randomly over the yard to a pile
• Attach the bathroom fan exhaust hoses to the roof vents
• Replace bathroom baseboards (removed for tiling)
• Touch up paint at colour changes
• Clean fans in boys’ bedrooms
• Shampoo kitchen chairs, couch cushions
• Replace screens in boys’ bedrooms
• Replace weather strip at garage doors
• Replace weather strip at garage man doors
• Replace weather strip at main entrance door
• Clean kitchen lights
• Move fireplace
• Fill fishpond (with dirt)
• Level sandbox (dig into the hill) and then fill sandbox (with sand)
• Plant lilac
• Plant oak
• Finish drywall repairs in basement hallway
• Touch up red paint 

Gravel truck:

• Add gravel to driveway 

Some of the other jobs that we’ve completed are:

• Clean the old place.
• Clean the new place.
• Paint (and patch, and re-paint) the new place
• Pack and move everything from one to the other.
• Install a new kitchen faucet – the cheapest available, so that the sink doesn’t leak into the cabinet
• Replace almost every bulb in the place with bulbs that were either not dead, or put out light
• Put tiles around the ensuite shower and main bathtub
• Install another new kitchen faucet – this time, one we like.
• Find the yard, somewhere under all the weeds
• Find the garden – spray it, scythe it, and rototill it.  Then repeat a couple of times.
• Unclog the drain in the main bathtub
• Unclog the drain in the half bath sink
• Unclog the drain in the ensuite sink
• Figure out where the water pressure all went
• Fix the hot water flow
• Get internet installed
• Get lawnmower working
• Fix tire on lawnmower
• Haul truck loads of junk to the dump
• Fix leaky kitchen sink (yes, again.  Different problem.  This time the drain failed.)