Our house... in the middle of our street.....

Have you ever felt like your house was falling apart? We are rapidly approaching 2 years living in this house... and every year we try to invest $$ by improving an aspect of the house (sometimes the "improvement" becomes required unexpectedly). In our first year, we replaced the roof, cleared some brush/trees, landscaped flower gardens. This past year, we replaced the main circuit breaker (unexpectedly required) and fix the flawed design of the fireplace and it's not existent flu. I had my first veggie garden that yielded so many tomatoes I didn't know what to do.

So what is next.... well...we have to fix a window that apparently cracked in the past year. It's a family room window which was sealed for the winter and the shades were always drawn... so when we raised the shades recently, we saw a crack window. I suspect that during this past winter as the city was blasting the rock ledge to build the new school, it literally "rocked" our foundation.

As the rising costs of energy climbs, we are looking for ways to improve our heating/cooling.... and conserve heat. With electrical heat, we look to do as much as we can. Luckily we have newer windows (except in the kitchen) but the heating design of the house leaves a lot of heat to escape... especially when we forget to turn the heat down at night or when we leave for work... so our next project... look into a digital thermostat ....i even went out and bought one (after extensive research)... we read the directions. The options were for 3 wires or 4 wires or 5 wires types of systems. And I bought the one that is accommodating many systems. However, when we started, we discovered there are "7" wires for our system... so this DIY project has moved on to... "hire a professional"...

And then on Wednesday morning Dan was feverishly getting ready to start his day. Since I leave so early in the morning, Dan is in charge of getting Evan ready for the day and take him to daycare. But as Dan was getting himself ready, he heard a "THUD!!!"... and his description was "it sounded like a bird crashing into a picture window".... so logically, Dan went into the living room and checked out the picture window... sure enough, he saw this.....

If you click on the image to enlarge, you'll SEE the outline of the bird in flight. I took the liberty of not only photographing it, enhancing the outline to make it more visible. As Dan loaded up the car, he did check to see the fate of the bird.... and the birdie was alive... not in the best of shape. So Dan decided to let nature take its course. At lunch, Dan came home and check the bird thinking it'll either be dead or dragged away by the predatory cats that wander through our yard. And to his surprise, the bird was still there and more lively. And Dan took a step forward, the bird rallied all his energy to scoot into the bushes... up against the brick faced house. And that is the last we saw of the bird.

So I now question.... didn't the bird SEE the dirty window? We hadn't cleaned it since we moved in.... and now, how do we remove the guts. I suspect I'll be climbing up the ladder to scrubbed off the feathers left behind. But I sure hope the pressure washer or hose will work on it.

So now it's been 2 years of living in house... and sometimes I do miss living in a condo ... and having someone else take care of the outside.... wait.. I have Dan ;)