So the dryer hasn’t really been working well and I knew exactly why. Our vent needed to be cleaned out. I’m not talking about the brush-out-the-vent-hose kind of clean. We needed the pull-everything-from-the-wall-vent kind of clean. We were fairly certain it hadn’t been done in years and years and years. I called a local dryer […]
Projects
Correcting a Sad Situation (or Two or Three or…)
The Hayleys spent some time (and hard-saved home improvement money) to do some much needed repairs around the house. Our handyman/pastor friend, Travis, spent a few days at the house checking on valves (finding one that needed repair in the garage), flushing our hot water tank, re-caulking our tubs/showers/sinks and replacing all of our toilet […]
How-To: Clean Your Blinds
My new yearly commitment to cleaning meant that I had to tackle something that I hadn’t touched since we moved in nearly five years ago – our blinds: You can enlarge that photo to see just how dirty our blinds are. But do yourself a favor (or perhaps I should say do me a favor!) […]
How-To: Wash Your Kitchen Rugs
We’ve been in the Hayley House for a number of years now and I’ve decided it’s long-past time for me to unpack all of the boxes. There are a lot of boxes. I’m not going to take a photo to share with you – it’s embarrassing and makes me look like a somewhat of a […]
Fact
Cleaning the oven is a project that will make you beg the Lord to stop punishing you from the sin of not cleaning the stove more often. You will barter with the oven – promising to clean it more frequently if it will only get less gunky. It will make you reconsider your life decisions, […]
Quick Tip Saturday
I’m slowly working my way through deep-cleaning the Hayley house. (Let’s just say it was long overdue.) Up this week before work: Clean the toaster. We have a stainless steel toaster and it had gradually built up a layer of ick. I’m not posting a photo of that because, well, it was icky. To clean […]
You Should Always Ask This Question
This is the month that I’m going through boxes. Boxes that my mom has given me that have sat in her house for years. Boxes that I had already that have sat in my home for years. Lots and lots and lots of boxes. Later this year I’ll go through our clothes, our various computer […]
Changing My Colors
Operation Paint the Front Door is complete. Here’s where we started: And here’s where we finished: It wasn’t a hard project, just a little time intensive and more coats of paint than I’d expected. Step One: Clean the door. Step Two: Knock down build up with sandpaper. Step Three: Wipe door with liquid deglosser […]
Progress By the Yard
The Hayley House feels always feels like it needs a lot work. I suppose that’s true of any home. But during October we made some serious progress on the exterior. Behold: I can’t believe I’m sharing this disaster. We raised the canopy, cut out dead wood, removed limbs threatening our roof and cleared away sucker […]
Home Improvements Can Be Fun
Even when the home improvements are expensive hidden ones – like insulation (and solar-powered attic fans and an attic tent) – when you pay cash for them, they don’t seem like such a big deal. The solar-powered attic fans were a huge improvement over our old whirly-birds. We even added a fan in a section of […]