Little Updates

Am I the only one that gets giddy for the little maintenance projects around the house? Like when our termite guy comes for the annual inspection? Or a light switch stops working so we have to replace it?  I really like the decorating part of home ownership but I also really like the other tasks that you run into and have to deal with simply because you own a house. Those, to me, are gratifying and exciting and I don't mind doing them at all.

I recently ran into Lowes to get a few of those naggy items like an outlet that has to get changed and an attic light that's been missing it's pull string since we moved in. Those are all for another day but I did get around to two quick fixes today.

I replaced our door handle on our front door a while ago. I can't remember if I posted or not but we were having major issues with it. As in we couldn't get in and out of our front door without a major struggle. Like a fire hazard struggle. We called in someone to adjust the strike plate and he made it better but recommended we replace the whole handle because of the stress we'd been putting on it trying to get it opened. It had kind of knocked the whole thing out of whack. I was OK with it because our old one was looking pretty bad.

Kwikset has a lifetime warranty on all of their products. The fine print says you have to be the one who has lived there since installation so whomp whomp That's not us. I stuck with a kwikset handle though so our original keys could still work.

It was tricky to figure out but piece by piece I got us back to a working door knob. It's amazing how much you take opening your front door easily for granted. What a luxury!

Here is the new one installed. I love the new shape. The deadbolt was crooked and was a major  pain to go back and straighten but I knew I'd hate forever if it was crooked.

You can see the problem though, right?

The door sat like this for....4 months? 5 months? I don't know...forever. Part of the delay was trying to get an exact color match from Certa who painted our house. The other part was just laziness. Well I knocked that out recently and I'm so glad I did! Super easy fix that made a huge difference.

The other project happened today and I had a lot more pictures of the whole process before I accidentally deleted them all. Our back porch light busted earlier this week. The light would flicker and not come on consistently. We let Crosby out after dark every night so not having any light back there was a problem that we had to fix asap.

Once I dug into it I found out that the light bulb was corroded into the fixture. I was able to get it out with pliers (power was off!) but it was still giving me issues so I went ahead and replaced the whole fixture.

This was our old fixture. I pulled the image from the Lowes website. It was $12.  No wonder it broke. I applaud it for lasting the 9 years it has lasted already.  It also looked pretty dinky up there so I was OK with getting an upgrade.

The upgrade really wasn't that expensive either. Fifty bucks and about an hour of learning how to install a light fixture and we were in business!

I LOVE electrical work. It's my favorite really. This was the first time I've ever switched out a light fixture but now I want to do every light in the house. It was so EASY! And it looks so good! And it works! It gives off light!  Lots of successes today!