home improvement

We have one corner in our basement that has never been touched since the day we moved in.

Now that we have three kids and the need for more playing area in our basement, my wife and I decided to consolidate all her sewing stuff into one part of the basement (apparently fabric is to sewers as scrap wood is to woodworkers).

Last weekend, I finally finished off one of a zillion projects my wife and I are tracking in our home improvements Trello board, and, as with most of my projects nowadays, I recorded a timelapse using my pi-timelapse rig:

I love the look and feel of hardwood flooring. After we positively destroyed the oldest carpet remaining in one of the rooms of our house by using it as a temporary kitchen (two spilled smoothies and a spilled kids art paint set sealed the deal), my wife and I decided the time was ripe for replacing the flooring in not one, but all three of the front rooms of our house—our 'front room' (used currently as a large play area, mostly), the foyer (which was, until now, a kind of dead area with beat-up parquet flooring), and the school room (where all the kids school supplies, art projects, games, and toys are stored).

The Geerling household is preparing for the largest home project to date; and while my wife and I have decided to spend a bit extra to have a contractor do the work for the actual kitchen reno, we are still doing what we can to maintain a functional household during the extensive refurbishment of our original kitchen, dining, and laundry area to make it a lot more amenable to our family lifestyle (our current layout is difficult with three kids and two kitchen peninsulas!).

'Phase 1', as I'm calling it, was the electrical work to support moving our electric dryer, clothes washer, and maybe even dishwasher to the basement during the course of the project. I installed a 75A sub-panel in the basement last year (it was my last major home improvement project before the surgery), and it's time to start putting the extra slots in it to good use!

As with most of my projects nowadays, I recorded the entire event as a time-lapse with a Raspberry Pi Zero, using my Raspberry Pi Time-Lapse App. And here it is, for you to enjoy!

Every year, my wife and I try to tackle one or two large projects to improve our house and make it a more functional space for our growing family. This year, we decided to remove a giant brick chimney/fireplace that took up 30 square ft. of floor space both in the basement and on the main floor. With the regained space, we installed a TV/media center on the wall that had the fireplace, and arranged the room to have more seating so we could do more family activities in the room.

Here's a picture of what the room looked like with an old brick fireplace (it was wood-burning, but had been converted to gas logs prior to our purchase of the home):

Between projects at work, I decided to take a week's vacation and attempt a rather ambitious DIY project at the house. After working through some plans for the main rooms in our house, my wife and I decided we wanted to convert what was originally the formal dining room at our home, complete with a low-hanging chandelier and wall of floor-to-ceiling tinted mirrors, into a functional schoolroom with tons of storage and a teacher desk area.

So we started with this:

And ended up with this:

Sorry for the radio silence over the past couple months—I've been quite busy! In addition to finishing up my responsibilities at my old job (I'm going to start my new job at Acquia in just a week!), I've had a bunch of crazy, fun, and interesting things happen lately: