Home Improvements

We appear to be entering the "nesting" stage of the pregnancy, or perhaps we are just making the most of the few weekends we have at home. Either way, we have set to work on some home improvements.

Susie took full responsibility for the upstairs hall closet, which was a total mess. We don't have a "before" picture, but basically the plaster was falling off the walls and it was just a hollow space in which we were stacking random items as high as they would go before falling over. Susie replastered the walls and painted them. Here she is in the closet! :)

She then made a trip to Home Depot, where she found that all of the pre-cut shelving units where either too big to fit, or too small to be useful, so she got supplies to create her own shelves. With a few well placed pilot holes and a little arranging, Susie rigged up some perfect shelves for what we needed.

With our new, more user-friendly closet all set up, we moved in all the linens and miscellaneous junk that was stacked in the baby's room. As you can see below, this has saved us a tremendous amount of space!

Then, with some closet-fixing confidence building out of the way, it was time to handle the big kahuna. This "catch all," as we have come to call it, has been a major thorn in our sides ever since we moved in.

Not only is it an ugly collector of crap, it is taking up the perfect space for our secretary desk, which we've had to put in the dining room. The only reason we didn't rip it out earlier is that it is embedded in the wall and sitting atop a stand that contains not only a vent but an electrical outlet, and its not like we know an electrician or plumbers who would ever come visit.

Then everything changed when Susie brought home the Super Bar and excitedly stated that it "scrapes, pries, lifts, and pulls"! That was all the encouragement we needed, and that sucker was coming out. Rachel desperately wanted to help with the destruction of the catch-all, but Susie was afraid of all the rusty nails and said she didn't want the baby exposed to tetanus, so here she is wielding the Super Bar all by herself (Rach was relegated to taking pictures).

After the catch-all was removed, it uncovered some wallpaper that was even more hideous than what was visible when we moved in. Behind the outlet/vent was just a big hole, but as a bonus, the whole thing was filled with dust!

After some sawing, prying, nailing, and pulling, Susie got the vent/outlet panel to lie flat in the floor and the area around it cleaned up. Next Susie fixed the walls with a nice patch of the wallpaper that we had left over from our earlier adventures in wallpapering (see our October archives). Honestly, is there nothing that woman can't do? And she didn't even have a "flat thing"!

It was an all afternoon affair, but the end result was more than worth it! As you can see, the secretary desk looks absolutely perfect there.

Now we can move the baker's rack from the kitchen to the dining room, which will free up space for a new stove! All we have to do is run a new gas line :) Oh well that's a project for another weekend (and preferably a professional)!