Honey-do list

It's September which means, if you go all the way back to this post from March, that we need to revisit the notion of getting our heating system fixed. We still have no idea of the ideal solution to make the warmed water in our baseboards get to all the rooms in the house. We still don't know who to hire. But, fortunately, we do have some wonderful friends who know more than we do. Next weekend a car full of family and family friends are headed our way to give a more knowledgeable look at the heat system and hopefully propose a few solutions that we can take back to the heating specialists.

Not one to waste a car ride, my family also asked me to put together a list of all the little things we need to do around the house that are just one notch up from "total amateur" so that they can take a look while they're here. Makes perfect sense! And makes for a decent blog post too. So without further adieu, our list of things that need doing, not all of which will happen next weekend:

(Advance apologies to anyone reading this via an RSS feed--I might update this post if I think of more things...)

• The post lantern at the bottom of our walkway is out and it's not the lightbulb or the circuit breaker.  That's the extent of our electrical knowledge for a fixture that travels 30 feet away from our house underground.

• The handles in our main bathroom sink are backwards (the "on"position turns the water off, the "off" position turns them on) and it drives us--and our guests--crazy.

• Our basement light switch crackles when we turn it on and the lights flicker a little (we're pretty sure we just need to rewire a new switch, but want confirmation before we play around with electricity).

• This is pretty embarrassing but 3 months after we bought this house, a branch came through a window pane. And yeah, we still haven't fixed it. Probably should do it before it gets cold but hey, the tape has already made it through 3 winters and we plan to replace all the windows...eventually. Plus it's usually behind blinds and curtains, so it's only an eyesore on the outside of the house.

• We love our new bathroom but we don't love the drain. There's nowhere to put in an easy-to-empty hair trap and I shed. So poor D has to unscrew all the hardware and use a plumber's snake every week or two to clean it out. There has to be a better solution!

• The hoses connected to our washing machine say they need to be replaced every 5 years and we've already lived here for nearly 3 years, so it's probably time to change them.

• We bought an insulation wrap for our water heater 2 winters ago but my fear of fiberglass* (and us being lazy and forgetful) has meant our water heater remains scandalously naked. 

• Thought we bought it over a year ago, when my parents helped us de-lint the dryer, the new vent for our dryer remained uninstalled.

(You can see the roll of fiberglass insulation for the water heater and, next to it, the new dryer vent, just hanging out here serving absolutely no purpose.)

*Last time we bought fiberglass wrapping for our pipes, I somehow got little fiberglass particles all over me in the store despite trying to be very careful. It itched and burned and I'm a little scared to work with it again.

OK, this post was supposed to be short but became depressingly long as I wandered around looking at things we need to do around here. And it's not like we don't regularly work on home improvement projects. I guess the job of a homeowner is never done....I'm sure we won't get all of this done next weekend, but at least we have plenty to keep us busy. And a list to keep us on track throughout the fall.