Since we bought our house in 2001, we’d wanted to replace the many old, single-pane windows in it. These were wooden double-hung windows that had, over the years and after many coats of paints, become difficult or impossible to open and close. In addition, they were miserably energy-inefficient, and we had some really large openings [...]

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Anytime it snows for more than, say, three hours in Eugene, it’s considered “real” snow. But today, it snowed continuously for at least 8 hours! And that has to be some kind of record, right? Ok, perhaps not. But given that we typically only get snow in the Southern Willamette Valley just once, maybe twice [...]

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As is tradition, here are a few more photos of this year’s Christmas lights:
  

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As previously alluded to, here are the fruits of our labor over three (very hot!) weekends. It’s Evan’s first sandbox!
Evan’s first sandbox
Jen gave me a choice: she could go buy another GPOPC*, or I could build Evan a sandbox. As we have enough of the former for my taste, I chose the hard labor route. [...]

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Readers of this blog know that while we may not update our blog on a regular basis, we are almost always updating something around our house. The list of major projects since we bought the house is a long one to be sure. And we’ve just added two more items. After we complete a couple [...]

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On Halloween morning, we awoke to several frozen spider webs around our house. These were truly beautiful, and I had to take a few pictures before heading to work.
  
I’m not sure if the spiders abandoned their webs before completing them or if the process of freezing simply destroyed the weaker strands in the web. But [...]

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This is the third installment in the ongoing (and well overdue!) description of our 2006 home improvement blog entries.
When last I wrote about our patio and walkway renovation, the project had not yet finished. And technically speaking, it’s still not completed! But it’s close enough for the next entry in our series.

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The few rose bushes that live in our yard spent most of the summer in black plastic nursery containers while the patio and sideyard were being renovated. We did not tend to the poor plants as we should have. However, once the landscaping work was done, we replanted them in the new raised bed in [...]

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This is the second installment in the ongoing description of our 2006 home improvement blog entries.
The Patio - Before
Our back patioOne of the real eyesores that came with our house was the patio in the backyard. We’ve wanted to replace it from the moment we saw it. But other projects — like re-fencing and relandscaping [...]

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As promised, here’s the first installment in our 2006 home improvement blog entries. I’m going to use this first entry to get some of the smaller items out of the way.
Trees and the Roof
Where three once stood, now two remainTree Pruning/Removal. Every couple years, we have Blue Sky Trees come out and do some work [...]

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