attic of mystery

We just finished our latest home improvement adventure: attic insulation. Oooh and aaah. Okay, we paid someone to do it, but there is still an adventure in it. Just wait for it through a couple paragraphs (if you dare). The sea of foamy pink in our attic now looks quite luxurious and swimmable (is that one "m" or two?).

LCD and I could talk to you about home improvement adventures for probably three days straight. That's how awesome we are. And that's how awesome it is to buy a foreclosed home. How about a brief list of the highlights since December 2008? (December is the month in which we get married, buy houses, and have babies.)

1 Recarpeting in total
2 Repainting except for the basement
3 Tiling the kitchen
4 Refinishing the kitchen cabinets
5 Landscaping the yard
6 Repairing and cleaning the fence
7 Trimming trees
8 Buying a brand new HVAC (Yowzers -- thank you tax credit.)
9 Regrading the sidewalk
10 Repairing drywall in ceiling and part of walls (after an exciting pipe leak!)
11 Replacing some pipes (Hello pipes from 1973! I'm sure we'll meet again!)
12 Recaulking bathrooms
13 Replacing toilet tank
14 Replacing kitchen faucet
15 Replacing light fixtures
16 Replacing shower hardware
17 Rebuilding/Replacing Window Screens
18 Installing ceiling fan
19 Adding attic insulation

Some of these things we did ourselves, others we paid people to do, and some were a combo. And there is more in the minutae of it all, but if you're not asleep yet I'll be moving on.

The attic insulation project ended up being bigger for us than we had planned. Mostly because there was a lot of junk up there. Especially a lot of old, musty, strangely-colored carpet. And part of a stove. And two chairs that I would not trust anyone bigger than an infant to sit on (and since infants tend to fall off things the chairs are pretty much 100% useless). And an old desk. The old desk was definitely the most exciting part of the adventure. One drawer was filled with a collection of those tiny tourist spoons you can buy when you go to Niagara Falls or Baker--home of the world's largest thermometer--California. We also found an illustrated dictionary of . . . SCIENCE! And there were school pictures of two African American kids about age 10 and age 12, wearing 1987ish clothing. Random scraps of construction paper, colored pencils, and highlighters rounded out the treasure trove.

The attic of mystery is no more. It has been replaced by a well-organized storage area surrounded by puffy pink fairyland. Math tells us it will pay for itself in about four years so I guess that means we're sticking around for a while. Or whatever.