House Projects

With our lease coming to an end soon, my roommates and I sat down and discussed what we saw happening. We all felt like we have a great house in a great location, we all get along nicely, and we don't mind staying where we're at (e.g moving is a hassle). For me, this is my first time since college staying in a house/apartment for longer than a year (except for that time that I lived with Emily for 21 months :D). And with the knowledge that we're going to stay, I decided to tackle some house projects that we'd been putting off.

It started last week with the laundry room, or rather the catch-all room. A few months ago, Mariss picked up a washer and dryer, generously given to us by Ian Roberts. This was all fine and dandy, but the problem was that our laundry room was so full of junk/crap that we couldn't even use the machines because we couldn't get to them. Finally fed up with the laundromat, Mariss and I purchased a shelf to mount above the machines for all of our should-be-in-storage junk. A month later and the shelf was still propped against the wall in the kitchen waiting to be put up. Last weekend, after confirming that we're all agreeing to stay, Katie lit a fire under our butts by dropping the bomb, "My mom is coming to visit in 2 weeks." Eep! The house was NOT parent ready.

So Katie and I, on an exciting Friday night, completely emptied the laundry room (save for the machines), got out the ladder and FINALLY mounted the shelf. We both went through everything deciding what would stay and what would go and how to tetris-like put it away.

Before you look at the photo of the laundry room below, I want to emphasize that there was not a single square foot of open floor space before. And both bikes were on the ground effectively rendering the whole room useless.

(Ta da?)


My second idea/project was to get a bike rack so that we could keep both bikes indoors, but still have use of the narrow walkway. This was much easier said than done. I overestimated the height (width?) of the picture rail and the bike rack that I purchased was either moot or would have to be screwed into the wallboard. Considering our house was built in 1915 and how many issues we had hanging art in the living room, it became pretty clear that I was going to have to nix the bike rack idea.

Until I had an ah-ha moment. If only the picture rail were taller (wider?)! I dug through our garbage wood pile at work and came across a small piece that I could probably use, then I went to Target and got some no-slip spacers (normally used for under furniture, I think). I painted the wood white, attached the spacers and wood-glued the contraption to the wall. Followed that all with the screws and I don't think it's going anywhere.

And since we now had additional storage in the laundry room, I was able to clean out a bunch of stuff from my closet. This of course meant that, "Hey, I'm already cleaning it out, I may as well go through and donate clothes I'm not wearing any more." When I started on the closet, I didn't have any extra hangers and everything was shoved onto shelves. (The other half of the closet is just hanging clothes and a litter box [and air purifier] on the floor, nothing exciting.)
And, you know, since I was cleaning things out I decided to go through the refrigerator, too. I decided to get rid of expired foods and left overs. I'll give you one guess as to which shelf is mine.

To be fair, I made a pizza with the about-to-go-bad veggies, so now I have wrapped up pizza for lunch tomorrow on the shelf.

And finally my pile of stuff to donate:

I also realized that I don't think I ever did a follow-up post to my bathroom ideas. What I was thinking in the beginning, never really panned out. I painted the bathroom a pale blue and it really made it look so much cleaner.



So where was I? Laundry room, bike rack... Oh, yes. I changed all of the light bulbs in the house to be energy efficient, then I also changed both shower heads to use less than half the amount of water we were using before. (But the heads are also "water accelerators" so we don't lose any of the pressure.)

And since I was in the tub, I was like, "Hey our grout/caulking is orange and black, I wonder if I can change that?" It turns out that Fantastic and Windex aren't really great for showers, but you know what is? CLR. There was white grout under there! Obviously, this only made the black caulking around the top of the tub stand out, so of course I had to remove all of the mold. I scraped and cut and dug and bleached and finally got all of the black off. Then I re-caulked ALL BY MYSELF. I'm practically a professional now.

Here's an only slightly exaggerated before and after:


So I had a productive weekend.