January 4, 2010

In the thick

Which is, I confess, where I like to be. I seem to work best when I'm this close to project overload, but not quite there (because then I don't have time to clean up the house every morning and I start pulling my hair out and stressing over small things that shouldn't matter!)

I'm almost done with the room by room clean out. Not that the house really looks any cleaner, but the insides of cupboards and underneaths of beds have now been cleared of junk and set to rights. Scarily I still have the two worst rooms to deal with, the playroom and the basement, not to mention some further work on the kitchen. But hopefully by the end of the week I'll have those two in hand.

Will installed a sliding pot rack for one of my cupboards and a rim to keep lids in place solving the ever present, too many pots and where the heck is the lid to this one problem. (Thank you Will! XXOO) And (almost against his will) he helped me to clear out the mudroom (read junk room) and knock out a plan to renovate it. Hell be mortified that I'm showing you this, actually probably not as mortified as I am, but just so you know what a lazy slob I was with this room, here's the worlds worst before picture. Ack!!!Although, to be fair, I'd just ripped off the wretched Orange curtains and a pair of green ones an hour before I took this, so it looks worse than normal, but only just.


The mudroom has been a bone of contention since we closed on the house. I wanted it as an office, he wanted to rip it off totally and design a new and better outdoor/indoor/patio entry/mudroom with possible storage for my "stuff" which sounded great but was not going to happen in the near future, if ever. So since we moved in its been the dump room. Boxes needing to be recycled, old chairs in need of recovering or chucking, excess coats with no place to hang, and an old desk with bags of my craft and sewing supplies spilling out of them scattered around it. It was a mess.Like a giant, under the stairs cupboard where you hide all the garbage you are too lazy to put away. I could hardly look at it without wanting to cry. And so I didn't look at it. I avoided it at all costs. And it got worse and worse. When I took the tree down, giving me a better view through the mudroom door I decided it was time to take the bull by the horns and talk will into doing SOMETHING. So far we don't have much beyond an idea and a can of emerald green paint (oh yeah! I said EMERALD green!) but it's a start. For now I can just dream away of the day when all my sewing and craft supplies have a tidy little home.

My little vanity bench is sanded and ready for some stain, which, if Briton can finish his homework in a decent amount of time so I can get to the hardware store before 5, I'll be able to get started on the staining tomorrow. In fact, I'm kind of tempted to go see if the two chairs that were with the bench at Goodwill are still there. Mudroom/offices need chairs, after all. Hummm. Would adding two chairs to the mix constitute project overload?