Our tax refund has quickly gotten eaten up by home improvement projects. The big ticket items:
– Custom glass fitted to the two cabinet doors we had cut out to make glass doors. (Who knew that getting plate glass was so darn expensive?) Our cabinet-maker suggested that we go to the Stained Glass Studio in Metairie — he said that this was THE place to go. We understand why! No sloppy plate glass here. They were amazing. We went Thursday afternoon with Will (toddler in a glass shop?!) and loved the place. We ended up choosing a classic Victorian design and got a quick lesson on glass, leading, design, and so much more. They even offer classes (wonder if I can make the time for the drive this summer?)
– Duct cleaning from DuctBusters. We thought the cats were tracking funny dirt on to the guest room bed. Nope. Turns out it was mold falling out of the ducts above the bed when Paul worked in the attic. DuctBusters is coming to clean out the mold, dust, grime and whatever else is growing in our 100+ year old ducts. From what we understand, they do quite an impressive job and treat the ducts to prevent any future problems. Hooray for the coming of clean air! (This is happening Monday and Tuesday.)
– Plantation Shutters for the huge front walk-through windows. This is becoming more of an issue now that the spring days are starting to heat up… the afternoon sun through the front windows is impressive. Months of debate, research, measuring, measuring, and re-measuring led us to Blinds.com — we are confident that we can install them ourselves and decided to save thousands (literally) by ordering discount direct. The quotations I got from companies over the past few months (from Home Depot to private designers) ranged from $800-1500 per window… forget it! We got these for a fraction of those prices. (The trade-off: blinds.com aren’t the most informative folks so you really have to know what you want when you order and be prepared to install it yourself.) We ordered the Hunter Douglas cafe shutters (we need two sets — a top and bottom — to cover the 108″ of window height.) Only 9 months of paper blinds and we’ll finally be graduating to real shutters!!
A VERY exciting week!
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