Hello again! It’s been a little while since we’ve blogged, but we’re back with some mini updates!

We hope everyone enjoyed the warm summer months as much as we did. Rather than working on house projects, we spent most of our weekends visiting Cape Cod, Maine, and spending time with our families. We took Sadie on lots of hikes, I trained for a half marathon, and we went out for ice cream as much as we could!

Basement flooring

Our Instagram followers know that our latest house project was redoing the flooring in our basement. Is it done? Yes and no.

We finished installing beautiful luxury vinyl plank (LVP) flooring throughout our basement hallway. This was our first time installing floors, and they turned out pretty darn good! We still have to lay the floors in the bathroom/laundry room and in the basement living area, which is why we say we’re not 100% finished yet. As for the final reveal of the hallway flooring, stay tuned!

Chimney repairs

The BIG project that happened over the summer was repairing our leaky chimney. As you know, our house was built in 1970, making it over 50 years old. And one thing that wasn’t withstanding the test of time was our chimney.

Investing in chimney repairs was the last thing we expected to budget for when we bought our house. It all started with a little bit of water pooling in our fireplace whenever it rained. It wasn’t much at first, so we didn’t think much of it. As time went on, the amount of water grew and we knew something wasn’t right. It was time to call in a chimney professional. *In hindsight, we should have called right away!

The verdict was that our chimney was leaking from the outside due to a combination of cracking/settling, failed water sealing, and lack of flashing. The good news was that the water damage was contained to the chimney and fireplace only, and didn’t affect any other parts of the house (phew!). The bad news was that the repairs were going to be expensive.

Our options were to repair the existing chimney, or to demolish and build an entirely new chimney. Building a new chimney was the more expensive option, and sadly the new bricks wouldn’t match the brick façade on the front of our house (we learned that the bricks they use nowadays are more orange than red). Knowing all this, we chose to have our current chimney repaired.

After about five days of hard work, August West Fireplace had our chimney completely repaired and watertight! They grinded away the old mortar between the bricks, piped in new mortar, installed flashing where the bricks meet the siding, and sealed the chimney with water sealant. We can’t say enough great things about how easy it was to work with them. Their attention to detail really shows!

We’re happy to say that our chimney has been put through the test of several heavy rains, and not one drop of water has come inside. Water literally beads off of it thanks to the sealant. Oh, and we almost forget to mention the other change in the fireplace: our old wood burning stove is gone! As for what’s next, there might be a fireplace insert somewhere in our future..

Ring doorbell

One thing we DIYed this summer was the installation of a Ring doorbell! Yup, we finally jumped on the doorbell cam bandwagon. Our neighborhood had a couple small instances of vandalism early in the summer, so we felt it was time to get one. So far, it’s really been worth the hype!

Ring has a great how-to video on their website that we followed step-by-step to hardwire our new doorbell ourselves. We bought the original Video Doorbell Wired. The set-up was straightforward, and we love the extra security it gives us!

Now that the weather is cooling down and we’re spending more time at home, we’ll have more house projects coming your way soon! Thanks for following along 😊