I Love my Handyman

So, my aunts are coming to my place for the Christmas holidays, which I'm super stoked about! And bonus - it's giving me a kick in the pants to do a little more on the house before they get here. I called up the handyman company I hired a few months ago to come in and knock out a few more little projects. If you're in the Portland area and need some stuff done, I highly recommend In Your Home!

• Baseboards

I've been staring at this in the kitchen for the past 2+ years:

Ick.

Previously, there was that rubber cove base stuff that you see, for instance, in commercial restrooms. I promptly peeled that stuff up, and once the new floor was down and the walls were painted, I was ready to install some real base moulding! It only took me forever to do it :P But look how pretty it turned out!

Yay!

It gives the kitchen that nice polished feel :) And while we're still in the kitchen...

• Pantry Area

Remember this?

I always forget to take good before pictures - oops!

I had planned originally on knocking out that little wall to the right of the shelving unit, but never got around to it. I had resigned myself to leaving it there and somehow finishing off the edge, but when the handyman arrived, we talked it over and he was able to remove the whole deal (including the little soffit above the closet that used to be there)!

All gone!

Finished up and primed

He was able to cobble together the remainder of the floor tiles I had in the garage to finish off that corner too. Now I need to somehow match the paint and it will be like that closet was never there! I had originally planned to get a larger shelving unit to put there, so now I need to decide if I'll do that, or do something different entirely with the space? Decisions, decisions!

• Bathroom Window

I'm not really surprised at this, but the guy who used to own the house used the absolute wrong material on the bathroom windowsill. As you can see below, he used a pressboard product which expanded when it got wet - who knew that a bathroom window that is on the wall next to a shower would get wet?!?!?

Extreme closeup!

Sorry that's so gross...but I'm short and it was above my sightline! :P Well, not only did the handyman fix the damaged stuff, he even made the window trim prettier! :)

Much better!

Nice and clean and new

Even though I can't really see it, I'm glad it's all fixed up :) Oh! And one more thing - remember that strip of base moulding I installed in the bathroom? Which I royally screwed up with nails? 

This thing? (Wow, I forgot how yellow that paint was...)

Well luckily there was some extra base moulding from the kitchen so he replaced that too, yay!

While there's still some other things I'd like to get done before my aunts come to visit, I think I need to concentrate on painting. Lots and lots of painting. I think I will make a promise to myself to not do any other improvements until I've painted all the doors and base trim throughout the house. Oof, what am I getting myself into!

-Megan