Home Improvement Projects

The Small Ranch

My first house. An 875 square foot ranch style house with a basement. This is where I started as a Do-It-Yourselfer. These projects are not perfect, some are even embarrassing, but here they are in all their imperfect glory.

Installing a pre-hung exterior door

One of the first home improvement projects I tackled was replacing the storm door on the garage with a new pre-hung steel door. I ...
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Budget bathroom update

When money is tight, and demolition is out of the question, a bathroom can still be updated with some paint and a couple of new ...
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Widening a Closet Door

In a house that is only 875 square feet, every extra inch counts. Even though the closet in the master bedroom was about 6 feet ...
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The Basement Renovation

When I moved into my first humble abode, it boasted a finished basement. Well, “boasted” and “finished” are stretching the truth. Wood paneling, commercial floor ...
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Wood Privacy Fence

I was minding my own business one day when my next door neighbour approached me about a privacy fence he was thinking about building across ...
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The Cape Cod

Okay, it’s not really a traditional Cape Cod, but that’s what it was called in the real estate listing. We call it a money pit.

The Snowball Effect in the Home Office

One of the features that attracted us to the house was the comfortably-sized computer room in the addition. All that was needed, we thought, was ...
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The Kitchen Remodel

A complete kitchen remodel can be a stressful undertaking in the best of times. Ours was done in 2009, during the depths of the so-called ...
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Installing a new deck railing

The large back deck was one of the things that attracted us to the house. Our home inspector warned us that the railing was too ...
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Structural Repairs: How to “un-butcher” a house

Moving or removing walls, enlarging window openings, altering doorways– these are major renovations that, while not especially difficult, require a clear understanding of the structure ...
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