Likes and dislikes, twelve days in

I’ve had a while to get accustomed to this Cape Cod and am starting to warm to it, now that I don’t trip over boxes everywhere I turn. I’m going to try to list balanced “like/dislike” lists, with the goal of starting to figure out what works for me in the house and what should be addressed with future projects.

For this week, we have:

Likes

  1. Really solid original wood doors and fixtures (including door frame moldings!) throughout
  2. The main floor seems to hold temperature really well. We’ve consistently kept well below the outside peak temperatures.
  3. Dining room built-in. Nice corner cabinet (that unfortunately sits over the only place we’ve seen in the house where settling has occurred, with the result that there’s a crack in the plaster on the wall behind the cabinet).
  4. Practical basement layout: garage to utility room to storage room/workshop.
  5. The master bedroom. I love the Cape Cod slanting rooflines, which don’t pose too much of a problem with headroom thanks to a shed dormer in the rear that spans almost the entire width of the house), and the whole bedroom is spacious and feels bigger than it is thanks to the nook formed by the shed dormer where the bed resides.

Dislikes

  1. Most of the outside doors, and all the ones in the basement, stick. Some are really tricky to open; the front door cannot be unlocked and opened one handed, which is a problem when you walk dogs a lot.
  2. The second (bedroom) floor gets very hot and muggy on hot days. I think the uninsulated attic opening (not really a trap door, just a panel) and lack of attic fan are to blame. A couple of projects right there…
  3. No fan in the upstairs bathroom, which means an opportunity for me to get very dusty installing one.
  4. No easy access to the back where the garbage cans live. To get there, I have to go downstairs, through the media room and the utility room and out through the garage door. Which is heavy, and sticks. (Pattern?)
  5. In general, there are far too few electrical outlets in the house. There are none in the full bathroom upstairs, for instance, and only one in the dining room.