At Home with Lisa: Introduction to Weekly DIYs

I’m Lisa, and I have some projects to do.

About a year and a half ago, I bought my first house. I love it. It’s old and has character. It has these nifty shelves built into the walls where I can display my grandmother’s china. Every room has a window so there’s lots of natural light. It was built in 1910 and I often think about the history it’s been through, and I wonder about the conversations the people inside had.

But, some of the things that I love about my house don’t make it very energy efficient. It’s old and has a window in every room, and those windows leak and let in cold air during the winter. I have stuffed paper towels into the mail slot and have space heaters to supplement the baseboard heaters.

The doors are old, too, and I can see daylight peeking through the bottom on sunny days. Warmth pours from my house.

In the summer months, keeping cool can be a challenge, especially in the afternoons, when the sun beats down on the roof and through the western-facing windows.

As an Avista customer, I’ve poked around their website to see if they have any tips; they do, lots of them.

It seems overwhelming, and I’m not very handy. At all. My idea of home improvement has always been to use the nails already in the wall to hang up pictures. But I did once fix the latch on my dishwasher by watching YouTube videos, so with that success, I think I’m game for one project at a time. Taking small steps to make my old house more energy efficient seems like something I can do. Follow along, I’ll be posting about the projects I’m working on in my old house. You’ll find me right here every Tuesday morning.