jennanddave.com

Because I know you all are tremendously interested in what's on our house to-do list, and because "Men in Trees" will not be airing again until next Thursday thereby nixing tonight's plan of watching Anne Heche and feeling fat, I'll go ahead and post it here.

1. Finish refinishing the hardwood floors. We started with the dining room, which we did over Spring break last year. We figured we'd do the rest of the first floor over the summer, but we never did. Also, we're going to look into hiring someone to do this for us, although this means I won't get to see Dave use a floor buffer again (or should I say, watch the floor buffer use Dave), which was absolutely hilarious.

2. Finish the living room. No to-do list of ours would be complete without this one. It's been on every list we've made since 2003. When we actually do finish it, I might put it on all future to-do lists just for old time's sake.

3. Fix range. One of the large burners on our stovetop stopped working about a week after we moved in. Never fixed it.

4. Fix upstairs sink. Our upstairs sink drains really slowly. I'm glad Dave is the one who's going to solve that mystery. Yuck.

5. Find leak. Water gets in through the dormer on our second floor whenever the wind blows the rain a certain direction. It drips down and dampens the ceiling in our office on the first floor. It happens once a year but it's still not a good thing. Honestly, I'm trying not to think about this one.

6. Paint back hallway. I painted it an off-white that has too much yellow in it. It looks drab.

7. Paint back room. It's dark purple now. We're going to go with something more neutral.

8. Paint hallway to upstairs. Nothing wrong with it, it's just the one place in the house that I haven't managed to get around to painting since we moved in.

9. New front door. Our front door is terrible. No windows, it's old, it's foul, it's dark. Blech.

10. Bathroom ceiling. We've repainted the ceiling in our bathroom a few times now. After about a month, the bit over the shower starts to peel from all the moisture. Last effort: Killz primer with ceiling paint. Next up: Killz with ultra-high glossy paint.

11. Repaint trim in living room. The living room is a light greenish-blue, with one wall painted Linen White. The trim is dark brown. I'm going to repaint it high-gloss linen white because although I like the brown, esp. with the blue, I think it's too dark. We're north-facing which means we don't get much light which means we need to lighten things up with color which means every little bit helps.

12. Recaulk around the fireplace.

13. Buy (and install!) a proper mailbox. The previous owners used a basket for a mailbox. Or they pried off the old mailbox and took it with them when they moved, leaving us a gross basket in it's place. We used the basket til it fell apart. Then we replaced it with a bright blue wicker Easter basket that I got at Walmart. That faded and fell apart in a matter of months. We solved the ensuing mailbox conundrum by moving to Salem for the Fall. Now we have a galvanized steel tub that Dave uses to chill beer in the summer while he's barbequeing sitting on our front porch. The mailman must think we're hilarious. Or he wishes we'd put some beer out for him.

That's it. No problem.