Home Improvements-long overdue.

When we bought our house we knew we'd need to fix the front window and fix our garage. And we want to add a fence, and possibly get central air.

So far we've completed two, surprisingly. We thought it'd take us much longer.

Here's the window.

Our front window sill was completely rotted. We either need to replace the entire window ($$$) or hire a carpenter to fix it (aka have my daddy do it). 

My awesomely-skilled dad fixed it for us. It looks awesome!

Thanks Pop!

Here are the before pictures...

It was moldy and squishy wood, gross.

My dad completely ripped out the entire window sill and some other parts, between the windows.

And instead of replacing it with wood, he replaced it with vinyl, so it won't rot again.

He did all of the hard work right before they left town. After they left I caulked it, primed and painted it.

But my dad definitely gets all the credit!! Thanks again Dad!!!!!

It looks so much better! And it doesn't leak anymore.

The second big one, we thought for sure we'd never get around to fixing the garage. We expected to pay a good amount of money to hire someone to fix our garage. But when my dad came out he bought us some awesome tools and with the reciprocating saw he used to fix the window, we were able to fix our garage!

Here is the before picture. 

The garage had a really low clearance. Matt was taller than it, as you can see.

 But once you get inside the ceiling is much taller.

So, he took his saw to it and literally just cut the frame of the door and made it something like 6 inches taller.

We went as tall as we could. We also changed some settings on the door so it would fit. It's hard to explain, but the actual door was big enough, we just had to set it so that it would close more, without leaving a gap.

You can see the 2x4's that Matt cut, the vertical ones.

Our neighbors were having a garage sale right next door, and it probably looked really weird seeing this guy take an electric saw to his garage door, with me standing on as stool on the opposite side, holding the siding out, with my 8 month pregnant belly....it seems like everyone here hires people to do things, not a lot of people fix things on their own. 

TADA!!!

The finished project. 

(Well, technically we still need to add a little bit of siding, but for now we just painted it white...we'll fix that later)

No more ducking and now both of our cars fit inside!

The van has a rack on top, so it's a tight squeeze to get it in, but it barely fits and that's all that matters!

(See the little gaps on the sides, near the corner? That's the part we still need to fix)

Great job honey!
(He is very proud...and so am I)