Redistribution of Wealth

We have been very busy this past weekend redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners. When we took down all the "added" walls to the house, this left us with a huge pile of wood. By huge, I mean the pile was wider than me and almost as tall.  The longest boards measured over 80" and consisted mostly of 2 x 4s and 2 x 2s. So, we redistributed this wealth of wood into a new pantry...with a lot more space!

This blank wall now features a wonderful set of shelves and a beautiful curtain! (Thanks mom for the apple tree fabric....it is perfect for the pantry!).

Much better! The best part of the whole project was that it cost us four boxes of wood screws. That's it!

Previously, we had a couple of old shelves to use, but these were starting to bow pretty badly and I was concerned about all the weight on them. In addition to the shelves, we had re-purposed a bakers rack to try and store everything. This worked for a while, but now we have room to expand.

We have designated this area for the home canned vegetables. Previously, some of these had to be split onto different shelves and on different sides of the pantry just to contain it all. Each shelf can hold 56 jars of goodies. A huge improvement....so I can definitely plan on canning even more this coming summer!

This nine-cubicle storage unit has also been replaced with more custom shelves, thanks to my wonderful husband! And while the gray shelving worked for a while, they simply did not provide us with enough space and resulted in a lot of "dead" space above. All of this is now fixed!

All of the canning shelves measure approximately 8" high, which is perfect for all sizes of canning jars. We decided to divide the canned fruit section into two so that I could store all of the jams, butters and preserves together and all the syrups and processed fruits together. All of the shelves consist of four boards, with some spacing in between each to ensure good air flow.

The bulk of the original shelves were on this wall, but the spacing did not work really well for us. We did the best we could with what we had, but I like my new shelves so much better. I now have plenty of room to stock up on what I consider to be staples for any pantry.

All the way around the pantry, we started the first set of shelves approximately 20" from the ground. This allows us to store rolling carts, like you see above, as well as some wine and whiskey half-barrels for long term root storage. I am hoping to order a few of those over the summer. It also gives us plenty of room to store water and so much more.

The final wall was originally empty and so we had used some more gray shelving to hold the additional canned jars that I processed this summer. As you can see, just about every square inch of available space was full and I did not know where I was going to expand to when I went shopping this month. Believe it or not, we were starting to scrape the bottom of the wood pile once we got to this wall. Anxious to finish it up and surprise me, my wonderful husband worked late into the early morning hours....

I now have everything categorized and every food item not only has its own place, but I have room to add to some essentials. I am hoping to buy some more "pretty" boxes or baskets for the top shelves and a few other things, but for now, this space is finished and I love it!

Our redistribution did not stop there. Oh, no it did not. My wonderful 18 month old daughter has learned to climb stairs. A feat that she is quite proud of herself for accomplishing. I have spent most of the last couple days running to the sound of an older sibling that "Harley is on the stairs!". As if that were not enough, our 5 month old black lab has decided that he likes it upstairs....regardless that it is forbidden territory for him! All of this has been solved by re-purposing the door that we removed when we took down the extra wall in the basement.

This is only temporary but it works. Someday we will have an original styled door, with beautifully stained trim and charming original hardware.  Someday. But today, I can rest easy and relax. For a moment. While I may not agree with the redistribution of wealth that our wonderful politicians like to speak about, I definitely like redistributing the "wealth" of previous owners!

One Step Forward....And Two Steps Back

Ah, Mondays! Initially, I was really looking forward to this evening. Instead of taking something apart, we were actually going to start work on reconstructing the basement stairs. The plan is to build some doors for under stair storage and a closet. Plus, we were going to add balusters, 32 of them, that we were going to make ourselves out of some of the wood that we removed when we took down the paneling.

Our basement stairs get a lot of traffic and are not made of any really nice wood. Our plan is to paint the treads a nice dark, warm mahogany brown with white risers and balusters, topped with a painted banister the same warm brown.

This picture most closely represents what we are envisioning. Something with nice clean lines, but that can handle a lot of wear and tear. I was so excited because I felt as though we were going to move from destructive to constructive....but then I came downstairs to this....

 

At our house, Monday is laundry day....and so is Tuesday and Wednesday for that matter. With a family as large as ours, combined with children that change outfits at the drop of a hat, I seem to have a never-ending supply of laundry. Unfortunately, laundry is currently on hold.  A quick look prior to running out the door for work this morning led my husband to believe that the rubber coupling (?) that joins the original clay sewer pipe to the modern PVC pipe is failing. But he's not sure and won't know until he looks at it closer. After work. Tonight. And he has to work later than usual.

So now I cringe every time a toilet flushes, or we use the sinks, or, actually, anything that requires us to use water. Apparently, the clay pipe is the main sewer line for the house. Which means two toilets, one tub, three sinks and the washer are now on a limited use basis.

Great.

Just great.

Thanksgiving....A Time to be Thankful

So, I wasn't able to get the floor done in the master bedroom as I had hoped prior to the Thanksgiving company, but that is okay. My scraping of the adhesive has been put temporarily on hold for a few other projects. To start, here are a few things that I am thankful for at the moment:

• I am thankful for a house that affords us the opportunity to work with my wonderful husband and children on a never-ending list of projects.
• I am thankful for family and friends that enjoy watching and reading about our insanity, and still love us and support us as we continue.
• I am thankful for the internet that provides so many other sites for teaching and instruction - without them, I am not sure I would be willing to do everything that we are doing.
• I am thankful that no one has been seriously hurt (yet) by falling debris, surprise bat attacks, or staples, nails, and screws (at least, no too bad)

The Thanksgiving weekend affords us such a wonderfully nice block of time in which to work on projects. These are a few that we have tackled this weekend.

While I did not get the master bedroom floor finished, we did manage to remove an "added" wall. By the way, our bedroom measures 18 feet by 14 feet, so I guess I should not be too surprised that I was able to only get about half of the floor scraped. Anyway, this is what our bedroom looked like when we purchased the house.

There are a few problems with this particular wall, such as it is not original to the house and the window opening actually extends past the wall (nice view for the neighbors, right). Also, please note the wonderful boring beige carpeting. This carpeting actually hides beautiful 2.5" maple hardwood floors. But more on that later.

After a few hours worth of work and some more electrical surprises along the way, the master bedroom now has its original footprint again.

You might be wondering how we knew that the wall was not original, other than the obvious closet in the back of the, well, closet. Once the wall was down, we were able to see the original baseboard. Yes, dear readers, a previous owner built the wall right on top of the baseboards. I guess that is one way to keep the closets looking "original", right?

We also worked on the basement this weekend, converting it into a large open workroom while we are busy with all of our projects around the house. Here is what it looked like when we first bought it.

Don't you just love the blue-gray indoor/outdoor carpet? Don't forget, we also found two more windows, cemented over, hiding behind that wonderful paneling. By taking out the walls and paneling, we were able to open the space up quite a bit. After much sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping, the workspace now looks like this.

My wonderful husband also made me some brand new, custom sawhorses just for those wood finishing projects that we can see in the future.

Aren't they beautiful? I can hardly wait to start using them.....like, right now!