The simple stuff first... my parents were nice enough to give me an extra digital dimmer they had lying around in their garage. That was really cool.
I also ordered a bunch of furniture from Motif in Austin, and it came in way ahead of schedule. So now the living room / family room are getting closer to being set up even though there's still a lot of work left to do. Also picked up a desk for the office so we can ditch the tiny sub-laptop sized thing Elle had and my green 1970s office chair.
I decided to go ahead and do some work with the trees in the front yard. I walk around the neighborhood a lot and there are all kinds of different houses, with different landscaping things going on and then there's this place... They say that winter is the right time to do this sort of work, and I've already started on the HOA paperwork and looked into different places that sell trees. Apparently these things are sold in much bigger sizes than I thought they were. At this point I have a budget and know what I'm looking for, so I'll just get the biggest and healthiest ones I can get.
And the hard stuff... summer cooling bills were nuts, so I decided to try and do something about it. The biggest problems were the fact that it seems really humid most of the time, the main bedroom is always warmer than the rest of the house thanks to some big windows that face due south, and the attic is an oven. Right now I'm working on the attic, and it looks like the best way to keep it from getting so hot is to install a radiant barrier. Since it's not hot out it's the best time of the year to get started with it. Guess I'll find out if it did anything once summer rolls around again.
I also started another project (ok fine, in late November). Not on purpose... it was raining outside and I got out the scrub brush to try and clean up the weathered, gray cedar wood the pergola is made of. The little spot I started cleaning up came out really nice, but you can't just have a clean spot and leave the rest alone... I borrowed my dad's power washer and it took care of blasting all the gray stuff and algae in a couple of afternoons. I'm about halfway through staining the wood at this point. I'm using Sikkens brand stain. It's not cheap, but this is enough of a hassle so that I don't want to have to do it again anytime soon.
Here's what it looked like before. The wood is gray and nasty.
After cleaning the wood, with a little stain. I'm surprised the wood came out this clear after being exposed to the elements for 3 or 4 years.
It's going to take forever to stain the whole thing...
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