The Ten Year Plan: Year Ten

It's that time of the year again: time to review what we did and where we're going. Ten years ago I started calling this the Ten Year Plan with a nod to my cold-war childhood, which makes it more and more amusingly off the longer it goes on. This was year 10, and we got less done that we might have liked. Also, we had a super-bad year including deaths, putting down Goldie, hospitalizations, surgeries, and me having a stroke, so I'm kind of cutting us a break.

This is what we had planned, and notes on what we did. (If it's stricken without comment, we finished it in a previous year.)

  1. Paint exterior of house
  2. Finish living rooms
  3. Foundation replacement (Yes, we're still closing the permit, but the foundation is solid)
  4. Remove Fright Box under house, redo plumbing
  5. Redo upstairs bath and add half bath under stairs

    This was our big project this year. We didn't actually get much done because after two weeks out of the country I had a stroke and was not allowed to do any upper body work for eight weeks, and then I had to work on regaining upper body strength (still working on that) so I don't injure myself.

    We got off to a lumpy start because the wood we bought from Economy Lumber was rotten. Then we finally just bought new wood and started framing in our usual painstakingly slow way.

    The big hole in the house makes it hard to stay warm, so we blocked the opening with plastic. We later put the hallway ceiling drywall up. When it got cold again, we put up drywall on the hallway wall, as well. Then it was so cold that we put insulation in the walls, as well.

    We had to furr out the wall to make the beadboard lie right.

    Downstairs, we started planning how the drywall was going to go into place.

    Then we cut away the built-up flooring in the hallway alongside the existing wall, in preparation for framing. And demoed the rest of the understair space we need to get access to.

    Downstairs framing has taken a super long time. There's framing out the bathroom space, and framing the hallway ceiling, then making a closet, and moving the air return into the closet. In the process of that I got to relearn why Home Depot sucks

    For this year, we need to finish these bathrooms. This is our number one and only goal for this year.


  6. Remove chimney, replace furnace thing
  7. Install gas fireplace in living room
    I keep thinking this would be an easy project to do sometime, but obviously we're not going to get it done this year.
  8. Re-roof
    Not in the plans right now, thanks to the cost of medical care in this country.
  9. Insulate crawlspace and attic
    This will happen after all permits are closed, since you don't need a permit to insulate.
  10. Remove fake wooden panelling, stabilize plaster, and repaint all rooms
    This is now completely done, modulo your opinion on whether finishing repairing the hallway plaster is part of this project.
  11. Block air infiltration around various doors (as done as it can get)
  12. Replace window sashes (Moved off the 10-year plan because of logistics)
  13. Strip ugly pink paint from as much woodwork as possible
    This is one of those projects that we do more or less of in a year.

    He did less of it this year, but for Christmas his parents sent him a very nice new heat gun and he hopes to get to the paneling in the upstairs bathroom (due to move into the hallway) next.

  14. Remove linoleum from floors/refinish wooden floors
    We will probably do this after the bathroom permits are closed, which means next year or later.
  15. Remove the concrete driveway extension into the back yard
  16. Related landscaping/gardening
  17. Repair front porch/re-rebuild front steps
  18. Repair side porch, remove steps, and turn into a conservatory
    Repairing the side porch is on our list, but we'll see how things go. The side stairs are included in the current permit, so we may get to them.
  19. Draw detailed plans for the Day of Glory

posted by ayse on 01/01/14