Normandy Park Restoration

Since this house has a flat roof, with a LOT of big trees towering over it, proper drainage and maintenance of the roof is essential.  If anything that's the one flaw with the house.  Someone had put cheap plastic drains on the house, some not even affixed to it.  One actually fell off a little while ago, and I've been doing my research as to what to replace it with.  The solution was 3" galvanized gutters.  I just got one installed on the back of the house (which is a big mess right now, my gardener when MIA and I need to find out what's going on there) For now I just have a plastic extension on the bottom so that the water is moved far enough away from the foundation.  Once I get around to re-doing the back yard, I'll address putting proper french drains on it. Now that it's cold out, those back windows tend to fog up a bit, which may encourage me to put in the double pane windows sooner, as it's pretty ugly. Next will be the main front drain. ...

The short term need for an office in the basement was no longer there, and I'd been wanting to get the large bookshelf out of the master bedroom, so I reconfigured the basement office as a library.  I'll need to get a floor lamp for it later. Right now it's setup with some Ikea Expedit shelves that I've had for a long time, primarily due to their versatility.  I'll replace them later with something nicer, but no rush there. Also got the DIY sound traps up in the Den.

Been looking to downgrade the stereo a little, as it was more than I needed.  Found a pair of cheap Paradigm floor standing speakers to use and set them up in the den. ...and my really crappy drywall job there.  That will have to be redone. Happy with the setup.  I've found I'm using the den a lot these days, now that we have so little daylight.

Finally getting cool up here so I had the first fire in the fireplace since removing the ugly wood burning fireplace. The cat had no idea what it was.

Doesn't look like too much, but all of the subfloor is done (pending some plumbing work). For the near future, that is how my kitchen will look.  The cabinets are actually in the correct loction for my plan, including the sink. I'm dead set on DIY'ing the kitchen cabinets, and the only ones I can find with the DIY configurability I want are Ikea, however I found out last week that Ikea is changing their whole kitchen like in February, and the new system won't be compatible with the old.  Part of the reason to use Ikea, is that in 10 years, if/when styles change, I can just pop down to Ikea for new doors and hardware as needed.  Also, Semihandmade does very nice faces for Ikea.  So, I'm stuck with this until February when the new Sektion stuff comes out. Here is a shot from the reverse side.  The drywall piece there is the last one that goes in the half bath, awaiting some plumbing work before I can hook it up. Speaking of which I also finished the subf...