Category: House Projects

Last week I awoke in the middle of the night to an annoying beep. I listened quietly and silence filled the air. I promptly forgot it and fell back to sleep.

The next night the annoying beep woke Jesse and I. Jesse replies, “We need to change the batteries in the smoke detector,” and we fell back to sleep.

The next day neither of us buys batteries…and the beeping becomes more frequent. We finally buy new batteries only to find that the beeping continues. It is now happening every two hours throughout the entire night. In the middle of the night, Jesse pulls the smoke detector off of the ceiling…and the beeping continues. It has now been many days without a good night’s sleep.

In replacing the batteries, we found that our smoke detectors were installed in 1991. We decided to replace them completely. In the process we determine that we need a carbon monoxide detector downstairs and wait to exchange and reinstall that smoke detector until the next evening…the beeping continues. It has now been almost a week of being awakened by the crazy beep in the middle of the night. We have all new batteries AND all new smoke detectors.

We are exasperated. Early in the process, I pulled out our carbon monoxide detector manual because I was concerned that we possibly had carbon monoxide in the house. The manual explains that a red light will blink with carbon monoxide and when the batteries need changed…only the green light was blinking. Without any other course of action, we finally changed the batteries in the carbon monoxide detector. The manual lied; the beeping stopped, and silence reigned in my home.

We bought our house in the summer of 2007. We LOVE owning a home. We have found, though, that families always have to choose how to spend their money. As you can tell from our blog, we love to travel. We also love furnishing and redecorating our home. It is hard to do both!

Right now, we are planning a spring break trip to visit some dear friends in North Carolina. We are also saving to get new bedroom furniture. This will allow us to move our bedroom furniture into our guest room, and then we will repaint and redecorate. In the meantime, our refrigerator is leaking water inside. On numerous occasions, we have found puddles of water inside the fridge sometimes ruining food. We have done our own research and attempted to fix it ourselves, but on Monday a handyman will pay us a visit to determine the damages. Sigh. Please do not call me and ask, “Is your refrigerator running?” I might not want to chase it!

We are beginning to take more responsibility for our house…and needing to make some “investments”.

This summer we realized the need to fix our driveway. We had a deep sinkhole between the driveway and the garage. After a few estimates, we decided to hire someone to install a 6-foot concrete apron.

This caused a few chain reactions. First, we noticed the state of the asphalt for the rest of our driveway and decided to have it sealcoated. Then, the concrete guys removed garden and sidewalk pavers in order to install the cement. Of course, the pavers would not fit back into place. After a few conversations with our favorite Home Depot employees we decided to cut the pavers ourselves. According to my father’s advice to Jesse “Every project requires a new tool”, we bought a specialized diamond blade for our circular saw. Jesse spent the better part of a day cutting and leveling our walkway.

Now we are considering planting new grass seed in our front yard. Gotta love the fall…