2 Year Anniversary

I can't believe it's been two years!

My original intention was to finish the interior projects before starting the exterior ones. But after a year of being in the house working, I wanted to see the outdoors again. My new plan is to work on exterior projects in the summer and interior projects in the winter. We had a really bad summer last summer, cold and rainy, so I didn't get as much done as I wanted but I enjoy the exterior projects much more than interior.

Here is what I accomplished in the second year:

• In the basement, the beam that holds up the load bearing wall has been slowly lifted, along with a few other locations. The floors are almost level now, still, have a little bit to do. Unfortunately, even though I did it slowly, I still got some cracking plaster on the main load bearing wall.  I would like to eventually remove this wall anyway so I'm not too concerned about it. 
• Also in the basement, the remainder of the galvanized pipes were replaced with copper. The supply lines to the plumbing in the kitchen and bathroom had already been replaced before I bought the house, but there were still some galvanized pipes in the basement. Now that it's all copper, the water pressure has increased and I'm not afraid to drink water out of the faucet anymore.
• In the living room, I installed a new 46" LCD tv mounted above the fireplace along with a 5.1 surround system with speakers mounted on the walls. I ran in-wall Monster brand speaker wire for the surround system.
• In the dining room, most of the paint has been stripped from the built-in cabinets. 
• On the exterior, I stripped the aluminum siding off 2.5 sides of the house (still working on it). 
• The cedar shake siding on the front of the porch roof was replaced and sealed. 
• The paint was stripped off 2 of 3 porch railings and both columns, which were then primed. 
• New porch lattice was installed on both sides of the porch (still have to do the front lattice).
• About half of the paint has been stripped off the porch ceiling, revealing the original beautiful stained tongue and groove beadboard porch ceiling (didn't get to finish by the time winter struck). 
• There was some dry rotted beadboard on the underside of the overhang on the back of the house, I removed it and replaced it. In the process of removing the original, I had approximately 10 dead pigeon carcasses fall on me along with an unbelievable amount of pigeon crap.