Vacation - 'tis the season for home projects!
This week I began work on the basement. Up to this point, our basement has been a disaster zone - unpacked boxes, random unfinished projects, disorganized chaos... As Rachel pointed out, the basement is not a place you want to "be" unless you have some specific purpose.
But in a basement, lies the promise of what could be. A place to work, a place for chores, a place for play, a place for family - all are possible at this point, and if she has her way, our basement will one day serve all these purposes.
So where to begin? Well, since I am the one providing the labor, I am looking out for myself first: a workshop. The house had a workbench previously, but it was unattached, in the corner, and not suitable for big projects. So I am cannabalizing the adjacent storage room and converting the area into a suitable workshop.
The idea is that once I make the workshop, I will have a place to store all the tools that litter the floor across half the basement. From there, we will be able to pick away at other zones in the basement to get the place in shape.
So I cleared the shelves, and armed with nothing more than a hammer and flat head screw driver, demolished the room in a few hours. There was quite a bit of old water damage to the wood, so most of it is not reusable. I hate to throw so much away, but what else is there to do? I am relieved that I did not find any critters, other than a couple of centipedes. The only surprise was a small but long crack in the foundation, which I am not working to get patched up.
In the coming days/weeks/months (timeline TBA, obviously) I plan to frame the wall on the right with pressure-treated wood, hanging some of the original kitchen cabinets, making a new workbench, and storing all the tools.
In other projects, I installed some under cabinet lighting in the kitchen. The room is closed off and short on natural light, so we needed to augment the overhead lighting in the room. The puck lights (from Ikea) are wired to a transformer in one of the cabinets that is plugged into a wall socket I had previously installed. We also did a little reorganization of the cabinets to make storage more efficient. (notice the measuring spoons hanging on the door?)
Tonight our old Realtor is coming over to babysit so that we can go out to the Publican on a date. Fun! Meat!
Tomorrow I would like to take the Christmas lights down - better now when it is 50 degrees rather than later in the month when it is sub-freezing!
-alan
This week I began work on the basement. Up to this point, our basement has been a disaster zone - unpacked boxes, random unfinished projects, disorganized chaos... As Rachel pointed out, the basement is not a place you want to "be" unless you have some specific purpose.
But in a basement, lies the promise of what could be. A place to work, a place for chores, a place for play, a place for family - all are possible at this point, and if she has her way, our basement will one day serve all these purposes.
So where to begin? Well, since I am the one providing the labor, I am looking out for myself first: a workshop. The house had a workbench previously, but it was unattached, in the corner, and not suitable for big projects. So I am cannabalizing the adjacent storage room and converting the area into a suitable workshop.
The idea is that once I make the workshop, I will have a place to store all the tools that litter the floor across half the basement. From there, we will be able to pick away at other zones in the basement to get the place in shape.
So I cleared the shelves, and armed with nothing more than a hammer and flat head screw driver, demolished the room in a few hours. There was quite a bit of old water damage to the wood, so most of it is not reusable. I hate to throw so much away, but what else is there to do? I am relieved that I did not find any critters, other than a couple of centipedes. The only surprise was a small but long crack in the foundation, which I am not working to get patched up.
In other projects, I installed some under cabinet lighting in the kitchen. The room is closed off and short on natural light, so we needed to augment the overhead lighting in the room. The puck lights (from Ikea) are wired to a transformer in one of the cabinets that is plugged into a wall socket I had previously installed. We also did a little reorganization of the cabinets to make storage more efficient. (notice the measuring spoons hanging on the door?)
Tomorrow I would like to take the Christmas lights down - better now when it is 50 degrees rather than later in the month when it is sub-freezing!
-alan
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