Winterizing

About a month ago, we made a list of what we needed to do to better winterize the house. A colder than usual winter is expected, and heating prices are rising. There's no more excuse for heating the outdoors, nor, for that matter, sitting in drafts indoors.

Today we finally finished the TV Room/Children's Playroom/Guest Bedroom. I didn't think to take a Before picture, but the room had two pairs of windows -- facing north and east to meet the full brunt of the winds that howl down from the Gorge all winter -- with bare blinds on them, no curtains. Three had storm windows (which I installed a couple of weeks ago) but the fourth hasn't (most of the original storms for the house are long gone).

A third wall has French Doors to the outside with a visible gap below the doors -- now I have installed rubber weatherstrips to the base of them. There is still a sort of gap between the doors at the base, where the wood has been dented away from years of kicks, but the stripping I put in there prevented the door from closing at all, so this still needs work.

Today we hung curtains, however. We have new curtain rods, but saved money in the short term by using extra curtains we have...I want to say hanging around, but they were more folded up and taking up room in the linen closet. So the curtains don't match (and need to, in this small room). I won't mention that we haven't yet bothered to find enough curtain hooks, either, so the curtains drape drunkenly.

We also cleaned (or rather, shoveled the remnants of contraband... Girl-Child, when friendlily confronted about the savages who must have been living in the room, volunteered that "most of the candy wrappers behind the couch are mine, but none of them behind the television") and deep-cleaned (I threw away at least 20 used coloring and activity books from years past, as well as bags of parts of toys and games that have no home -- and there's still more to do). We also rearranged the room to allow more Wii-playing space. And we added a new dark red Ikea rug.
It looks much much better than it did, and it is noticeably warmer already. However, the wall I haven't pictured (with the tv and two tall bookshelves full of activity supplies, games, and electronics for the television) looks like something the Clampitts would be embarrassed by.

The long term plan is to move the television/play area down to the basement (once that is cleared out and kitchen-less and made a little more homely) and turn this room into a library or a breakfast room (lovely morning sun). The walls need painting soon, but even that I hope we will put off until the kitchen is being painted, so there will be general painting all around and we can get conducive colors (you can see into this room and the kitchen from the same position in the dining room).