About this time last year I was flush with doing things that I called the Little Projects. Pandemic life made me look around and evaluate my lack of organization and all of my messes. So I commenced to cleaning up stuff, organizing things. I felt like I made really great progress on my life. I threw out things, I got things out of storage and put them up on shelves to make me happy while we were going to be home all the damn time. I ran out of gas a few months into the process. Brodie died, I think I was much more sad about that than I initially imagined. I was derailed.
In the fall, I tried to kickstart myself a couple of times but just could not get things done. Work got insanely busy. I got the Covid. I had to pack us to move, and I bemoaned all of the things I'd unpacked as I put them back into boxes.
All those books. Jebus.
We got here and this house is very much the same size and style wise as the other house with a few exceptions. The floorplan is slightly bigger, and it is laid out differently. And we have a whole huge finished basement downstairs to make a second living/working/office space.
I got about 90% organized down there. Doug kind of messed up my flow when his office gave him 2 monitors and a new laptop, so he stopped working from the couch and set up downstairs. So that has monkey-wrenched my furniture and book placements but we'll make it work out. I am glad we have that space because otherwise I'd be trying where to force all the things I have into the living room, our bedroom, the guest room, places. I keep waiting for a truly rainy day to go down there and organize the heck out of everything.
During the pandemic, we managed to save a lot of money and went and got a nice living room set. Well, nice for a discount furniture company. It is nice, it's just not West Elm nice but nice enough. It is much nicer than the used Bob's Furniture Discount couch we inherited from my college roommate's uncle when it didn't fit in his house, and the IKEA couch we got for free from one of my coworkers who relocated to Spain. Raising kids, especially The Boy we just never wanted to get new furniture because we knew that he would wreck it relatively quickly.
Once the furniture was placed in here and after two strong arguments about how far over the couch should be (I have given up) we started to get a good idea for other things which have been kind of crammed into the dining room or sitting in boxes.
I set up the black glass-front cabinet that my friend Lita gave us when she moved to be our liquor cabinet, and put a 2x4 IKEA set of shelves under the window beside it.
A few months ago we got a corner hutch for the glass and the china at a place called Community Forklift. They specialize in recycling furniture, appliances, all kinds of house and yard things. It took me forever to get Doug interested in going down, for as much as he's totally into buying used furniture and the shabby chic-ness of the style.
We should have a camp cottage somewhere full of shit that we'd both envision having. But once I got him there, well. He's a big salvage fan now.
The hutch needed some cleaning up. There was tape all over the glass, but a little windex and Mr. Clean Magic Eraser took care of that. Doug got some Howard's Restor-a-Finish and a couple coats later all the scuffs and mess were rubbed out and it was ready for living its next best life looking fantastic and shiny.
It is full of our super expensive glass and our cheapassed wine glasses someone left behind at the cooking school. The Noritake china is down in the bottom, looking good, waiting for holiday dinners.
We went back to Forklift yesterday in search of end tables and lamps which you can see in the living room shots.
We scored exactly what we needed, and the bonus is the lamps match. We found one at one section of the warehouse, and then while walking around double checking to see if we missed any good end tables anywhere else we found a larger version of the same lamp. They were separated from each other for displays, but we reunited them joyfully.
Geoff's bathroom in this house is huge, as opposed to the tiny assed shabby shitty bathroom in the last house, which was actually too small for me to even clean with success.
I took an old table we'd been schlepping around since before he was born. I've used it in the bathroom before, I believe I have a picture of it here in the blog from our years in the Brown House.
It is a perfect size for a couple of towels and hand towels under, a drawer for nail clippers and extra razors, and the top for anything you need like paper towel, cleaners, TP and stuff.
Doug's grandfather used to get old Saturday Evening Post magazines at yard sales, and then frame advertisements that he liked. Kept him out of trouble, I guess. And we inherited a large box of them.
There are four that we've used in the bathroom before, two from Kohler plumbing, one for Scott Tissue, and one for soap (Lifebuoy?) where "The Health Doctor" is credited for giving advice to women to wash with this soap and keep their youthful complexions. Thank you Health Doctor!
We have dozens of these, a lot of pipe tobacco or beans ads, but I wanted to find something in the collection for Geoff's bathroom once I got this table in there. I found two ads for bandages and gauze, and thought that my future X-Ray technician could appreciate them from the medical perspective (which he did). They are slightly askew in this picture but I did go back and fix them later.
Our walls up here on the main floor are not drywall. In fact, I think Geoff's bathroom is the only room in the house that is drywall. Hmm.
These walls are as hard as stone so I have to get special hanger dealies to stick stuff to them, hence in the photos you can see my four ads are sitting on the living room table to remind me to get this figured out.
Carrie had shipped a bookshelf to me at the old house which I found I didn't have a good space for, so it sat in a box until today. I broke that open, and set that up. It has 4 lovely little shelves now full of glass knick knacks and paperweights, some small toys, Uno Cards, all kinds of things I have been waiting to stick out in public. This helped me get rid of several boxes that were sitting in the dining room, taunting and annoying me.
We still have a couple of things in the dining room that need homes, and I'm getting the itch to hang stuff up on these damn boring sand colored walls. But we are infinitely closer to actually like, living here.
On that note, gotta get some more things done before I run out of gas! As it is Father's Day, either Geoff or I have to go to the market for good grillables. Geoff said to Doug "Seein' as it's Father's Day, how about I grill for you tonight?" Which I think is the sweetest thing he could say.
Here are some pictures of the aforementioned things. Enjoy.
And below, After but before the china and glass were put in.
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