Blog de Puree

Sunday stated innocently enough. After I hearty breakfast, we went to Lowe’s. When we left Lowe’s, our car was weighed down with two plastic shelving systems, shutters to replace the broken blinds in the bathroom and thin plastic threshold strips to be used in the mudroom.

Once we arrived home from the market, my day consisted of working with those three items.

First I took down the broken blinds in the bathroom, which I replaced with colonial style indoor shutters. The don’t extend from completely from top to bottom of the window frame, but go up about 2/3. We did this on  purpose so that there would privacy, while allowing some natural light coming in through the window during the day or light from the street lamp over on Currier Ave. Now we don’t have to use a night light in the bathroom. (Actor and environmentalist Ed Begley Jr. would be proud of us.)

Once that task was finished, it was time to replace the botched threshold job I did in the mudroom. When we first installed our upright washer/dryer unit, we had to cut away a portion of the carpet so that it rested on the original linoleum floor underneath. (We think that section of the house used to be part of the old bathroom). But that left loose ends of carpet. I tried installing aluminum thresholds, but cutting the corners was a bear without proper tools and we ended up with sharp and dangerous ends. This time around, I used rubber/plastic material that cut easily with a utility knife. And if I say so myself, the end result looks 10 times better, and the corners of the plastic is so much easier on my toes.

After a quick lunch break, it was time to tackle the basement. After two renovation projects—the kitchen and the closets—it was a mess of siding, unused wood and other miscellaneous items strewn about in piles. With the upcoming fall rains, the need to get everything off the floor is paramount. I had to move a large pile of vinyl siding, fence posts and boards, and miscellaneous scrap wood to another section of the basement. Then it was time to sweep the area, and afterward, I built and placed the plastic shelves. I then played scrap wood Tetris for about two hours, to  get all the siding and wood off the floor. This also included three wood doors, aluminum shutters, a rowing scull rack and two bike racks.

But the problem with basements is that while you’re doing one project, you always find more. So, I was compelled to get the old broken clothes dryer ready for transport to the local scrap metal yard. (I hauled this away in my trusty VW Golf on Monday.) And the shelves with our gardening supplies needed to be reorganized, stuff for an upcoming possible yard sale was moved out of the basement. If Randye hadn’t called me out of the basement, I believe I would have been there for the better part of the night.

I’m just glad that I had Monday off from work.