Off the Rail, What the--!?!, and Other Home Improvement Stories

Perhaps you remember this deck. It has been featured on the blog before (usually for sections of the railing falling down under pressure from snow) and has easily been one area we don't want people around as it is a death trap.

Those stable-looking pieces of lattice? They're plastic and the wood around them is pine. Pine+water+extreme temps=major warping. Which equals pieces of plastic lattice hanging out and warping all over the place. That leads to gaps, which we feared could lead to extreme injury. Wanna come over for a BBQ?

In April, we were DONE! We decided to do a proper railing.
Look how gorgeous it is! Yay, Tyler! Preventing injury and head trauma!

Hooray for projects done well!

Patchwork:

So, there were some sketchy patch jobs on walls in our house. Actuallly, there are probably still some I haven't found yet.

This was the one in the office. It was originally covered in a little joint compound and paint, but if you rested against it, the edges would pop up and the middle would push in. Not a pretty sight!

And here's what I found:
Oh, right, the old "metal sheet as a really big patch"" thing. Weird. Underneath?Yeah, it was joint compound on another piece of metal. Because, I'm sure that was so much easier than getting a 1.5 x 3 foot piece of sheetrock. And it looked nicer, too, I'm sure. I undid all their work and put in that "sheetrock" patch and even textured over it. I'd show you the "finished" picture, but it just looks like...a piece of wall.

Next! This patch got a little screwed up when I pushed against it and it crumbled.
So, I wanted to put a new patch on. First, I evened up the hole so I could just put in some sheetrock (a little more stable than the patch below: a bunch of newspapers crumpled up and painted over)At least the previous homeowners can't get blamed for that one. They only lived here from 2004-2007. This job took place in 1993! Looks like our poor house has a history of poor patch jobs. Don't worry, house, we're finding all the junk jobs and cleaning house! In other home improvement news, we were gifted this sweet dollhouse. I have since stripped all the contact-paper wallpaper (it was peeling a little) and rather dusty carpet. Tyler helped a lot.

Now I just have a waist-high 4 room dollhouse. Any suggestions? I'm thinking I'll paint it out black or white and decoupage some damask-style paper in the back. Thoughts? Suggestions? Sheridan would probably like it painted bright pink with pink carpet and pink everything, but I'm executing it, so...