{"id":101,"date":"2011-07-31T12:18:15","date_gmt":"2011-07-31T16:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nycnyne.net\/blog\/?p=101"},"modified":"2012-11-14T21:58:48","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T02:58:48","slug":"home-improvements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/home-improvements\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Improvements"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just thought you might like to see what I have been doing with my last ever “free” vacation week.
\nThe next time I have more than a holiday off, it will mean that Jenny is giving birth.
\nI put the time to some pretty good use.<\/p>\n

We went camping in Westhampton, MA last Saturday, returning home Monday.
\nWe visited with Jenny’s sister’s family and had lunch on Sunday with a couple of my friends that are now living in Northampton.
\nAfter we got home in the afternoon, I tried to get as many little items out of the way as possible.
\nYou know, the oil the creaking hinges and clean the bird poop off the side of the house type stuff. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Tuesday was kind of a bugger up here due to the rain and hail warnings.
\nIt didn’t really do anything but look grey all day, so I started busting up concrete at part of our walk to the drive.
\nThe previous owner had simply skim coated over some much older concrete and with all the salt we threw down last winter, the skim coat layer pretty much turned to dust! After removing all of the concrete and dropping in three bags of paver base dirt, I started laying in bricks.
\n\"\"
\nI think another bag of paver base and 42 more bricks should do it!<\/p>\n

The real reason I took this week off was to finally get the back of the house painted. I ran out of time last year and it really needed to be done. This is what it looked like Wednesday morning:
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When I moved in, the entire house looked like this! Jenny and her brother, Jesse, started painting it some years ago, but, umm, yeah. This is what it looked like on Wednesday evening:
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And then finally finished on Thursday afternoon\/evening:
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Some neighbors down the street were out on their porch watching me finish up. They congratulated and thanked me! If you look at the very top of the house, behind that tree, you will see a salmon-colored gable. I have this one, one of the other side and one on the front to go, but I am going to need help with the 40′ ladder, so I think these will just be “accents” for a while. \ud83d\ude09 Next year, I will tackle all of the white.<\/p>\n

So far so good, right? But wait! There’s more! And this is the one I am most proud of.<\/p>\n

The gate for our front walk was put together in a hurry…in a rain storm. It has, let’s say, not held up so well over the years. I think it makes the mailman grumpy, too.
\nIt was 51″ wide, to start with. That is too wide for a gate. It was so wide that I actually had to stitch two photos together to make this a single image!
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

But, after some research and some thinking and staring, I figured it all out and it is 1000x better now.
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\n\"\"
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\nIt needs a couple of tweaks, but overall it is great! It opens all the way, which the last one did not do. It had sagged so much that it hit the concrete walk and would open just enough to allow a person to pass through without really lifting and forcing it open.<\/p>\n

Add to those about a million other small things, like putting new rope on a cat scratching post and painting a floor drain cover. I probably spent too much money at Home Depot, but it was a way more productive and cheaper vacation than renting a beach cottage! I’d probably be finishing up the bricks today, but I just heard that I will be driving to Gales Ferry in a couple hours…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just thought you might like to see what I have been doing with my last ever “free” vacation week. The next time I have more than a holiday off, it will mean that Jenny is giving birth. I put the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[116,148,99,146,100,98,147],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-attleboro","tag-bricks","tag-diy","tag-gate","tag-home-improvement","tag-jenny","tag-paint"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NxlE-1D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":30,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/30\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":0},"title":"Dinner with Jenny, playing with\u2026","author":"matthannan","date":"12 February 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Dinner with Jenny, playing with cats. Home now. One cat on lap, another on shoulder.","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/39\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":1},"title":"Oh, Jenny...The 2010 Zip Line\u2026","author":"matthannan","date":"17 February 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Oh, Jenny...The 2010 Zip Line Canopy Tour Season Starts April 1:-D","rel":"","context":"In "Travel"","block_context":{"text":"Travel","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/travel\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":58,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/androblogger\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":2},"title":"AndroBlogger","author":"matthannan","date":"10 March 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Jenny Lee and I are now packing our long awaited Android phones. We went with Motorola Droids on Verizon. I'm very happy so far, but there is a bit of a learning curve to it.This post made via the AndroBlogger app on my Droid.","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":359,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/gear-shifter-light\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":3},"title":"Gear Shifter Light!!!","author":"matthannan","date":"27 December 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday, I replaced the gear shifter light. This involved removing two concealed bolts and popping some plastic tabs. I used these instructions and the job was done in maybe 20 minutes. I involved the Nexus 7 tablet that I received for Christmas in the process, propping it up between the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":93,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/doings\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":4},"title":"Doings!","author":"matthannan","date":"3 March 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Jenny has painted and started decorating the basement room. I installed the cat door last weekend and three of them immediately took to it. One is using it as a toy, even! The other three? Not so much! They are afraid of it, actually! :o The two older males have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Life"","block_context":{"text":"Life","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/life\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":950,"url":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/hello-from-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":101,"position":5},"title":"Hello from…","author":"matthannan","date":"21 December 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Mobile the Laptop, connected via my iPhone's hotspot to the OpenVPN server running on the OpenWRT router! I can see devices on the network, but only the wireless one. I am wondering if this is a firewall issue or something. In any event, it should be easy to fix. And,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Geek"","block_context":{"text":"Geek","link":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/category\/geek\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":269,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matthannan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}