Musical Storage

"Honey...!? Where's the salt?"

"It's in the laundry room, top cabinet on the left, between the fabric softener and dog food, behind the tape measure, but in front of that extra hall light that we have to find a place to hang."

It's been a little nuts trying to find anything around here for the past couple of months. We've moved the everyday staples from cabinet to cabinet and from room to room as the guys shifted their focus from project to project. Our poor little nomadic small appliances are longing for a permanent location. But it was amusing watching Madison walk around the house with a piece of bread playing the "where is the toaster today?" game.

And you have to love the dining room table / cardboard box pantry we utilized for about a month. I've since filled all the solid wood slide-out shelves of my gorgeous new pantry and installed a security camera so that I may properly discipline those who dare to commit any sort of neatness or stacking infraction. Now *that* would have made an interesting before/after comparison, but posting a photo of the pantry before demolition would have just been an open invitation for a visit from the health inspector or the Dateline crew. "Quick Harry, put your HazMat suit on and get a camera crew in here! How do they live like this?"

Soon. We can put everything away properly soon. Or so I've been told.



Can I offer you a snack from under this lovely drop cloth?


I'm starting to feel like the husband in that scary Julia Roberts movie who kept all his labels neatly turned to the front.


And today the kitchenette is in the family room.


And for this week it was in the laundry room (before the w/d arrived).

I'm taking up Boxing...

It's not even funny. No, seriously, I don't have a single funny thing to say about living among the Stonehenge of boxes here.

I guess it wouldn't have been so bad if all we were renovating was the kitchen. I could have designated one other room in the house as the holding area and maybe hung some curtains around it so I wouldn't have to look at the clutter 24/7. But, because we're changing something about every room on the first floor I feel like I'm in the life size version of one of those little junk puzzles you used to get as a prize from the dentist. You know the one where you have to slide the little plastic squares one by one around the track to form a picture of a zoo animal or firetruck or something.

Welcome to my mess... pull up a box, we'll chat.

You Spin Me Round, Round, Baby Right' Round...

Ok, yeah, so the thing about a blog is that it doesn't do anyone much good unless the person who initiated it actually writes things and post photos every now and then. So sue me, I've been busy.

One day when Madison was somewhere in the 3 1/2-4 year age range and we were inhabiting the townhouse I owned between husbands, she was standing in the doorway of the laundry room learning how to fold washcloths. She was really into helping with chores back then and in retrospect, I wish I had taken better advantage of it -- maybe opened a little Chinese Laundry / illegal sweatshop for some extra mad money. Ahh, but I digress...

So, she pointed to the big square thing we were taking the laundry out of and asked, "What's that called?"

"That's called the dryer. It dries the clothes," I answered.

After only a moment's hesitation she cocked her head and nodded slowly like she just discovered the Pythagorean theorem and pointing to the other big square thing said, "Oh, right. So, I guess then that would be the wetter?"

So, the first thing that the Robs did after the initial wall and pantry demo was hang some kitchen cabinets in the laundry room. All we had in there before were wire shelves and an aging wetter & dryer. They both still worked, but the washer at some point lost the little pointy doohickey that tells it to rotate through the cycles. It was probably a 50-cent part that GE would have charged $99.99 plus shipping for, so we never got around to replacing it. Instead, we took a page out of the trailer park handbook and did what our white trash brethren would have done -- we duct taped the crap out of it. About 8 times out of 10 we'd have to run the rinse/spin cycle a second (or third) time after a fresh application of "silver magic," but we knew that eventually the new W/D would arrive and the angels would sing and all would be right in the world again.

We decided on the LG front-loading steam washer and dryer in white without the pedestals, but my back sent me an email with a CC to my chiropractor the other day insisting that we reconsider that decision.

The photos below are the before and after shots of the Laundry Room (click on the photos to enlarge them). Rob put down a new tile floor and installed the cabinets and existing piece of formica from the kitchen. Steve actually tackled the paint which is an astounding accomplishment because sometime before I met him, he coined the phrase "Jew don't paint" as a way of getting out of all Sherwin-Williams-related jobs. I didn't believe that he really had zero aptitude in this area, so a few years ago, after a full day of painting our new offices, I bullied him into helping me out with the last wall. Wouldn't you know it? On the third stroke of the roller, the handle broke, the paint-coated roller went flying, spewing a lovely shade of buttercup everywhere, and he just looked at me with that "I told you so" face. Anyway...

The "Family Organization Center" is from Pottery Barn. Each of us has our own mail slot and place to charge our electronics. I also got the corkboard and key/"stuff" organizer. Hopefully this will help us keep the clutter out of the new kitchen.

If you have any ideas or comments, please feel free to post them. You just need a free google account. Ta-Ta for now. --LJ


So this is the messy old laundry room. What you can't see in this picture is the litterbox to the right of the W/D behind that junky chest of drawers. Kitty ended up in the big catnip factory in the sky however so he didn't factor into the renovation.



Ta-daaa. Presto-chango. Humans live here now.



This is the view in from the garage. The white 'blob' on the wall is a reflection from the overhead light, not a reflection of my dear husband's paint job.



And this is the coat/backpack rack that Steve made and some more inspirational artwork. Hopefully our kids will have good stories to tell and won't end up on Dr. Phil touting their Running with Scissors-esque memoir one day.

Let the Demo Begin - July 7th

On Monday, July 7th, after a nice, long holiday weekend, our contractor Rob and his sidekick, (also named Rob), began the demolition portion of the remodel. The first thing he did was smash a few holes in the wall with the head of a hammer to perform a little "wallinoscopy" with his cool new video probe. He was able to determine that there was nothing important in the wall we intended to demolish (like duct work or tarantula colonies) and we could happily move forward with the existing plan.

I had to leave for a dentist appointment, but joked on my way out that I thought Steve might have a few polyps, and would he mind helping a brother out with that nifty scope? I figured it was important to give them a shot of my warped sense of humor right out of the gate so they'd have a taste of what they'd be in for over the next few weeks.

By the time I got home a couple hours later, they did indeed have the wall down. They also tore out the old pantry and discovered that some plumbing had to be moved. Ahhh, our first snag. And so it began... (click on photos to enlarge)