eastowners

Current Mood: Ecstatic & Happy & Surprised

So, in a previous post I mentioned a wish list of some projects I want to work on around the house.  Well, the work has begun!  We wanted to swap some rooms around upstairs and give Clare the bigger room that is currently our office, and in order to do that we needed a small storage space to empty a room into.  Brad wanted to put stuff up in the attic…..I however had the though of tarping off our unused back porch off the upstairs to keep things dry and then I wouldn’t have to break my back lifting heavy desks up 2 small flights of steps that zig zag up into our attic space.  We purchased some rather cheap tarps at Harbor Freight, and then in a stroke of genius I remember that we had gotten some gift cards to The Home Depot.  So we headed over there to purchase some thin lumber strips (look in the trim section for these, one of the many reasons I hate detest  really dislike this store….you can NEVER find what you’re looking for), and a staple gun in hopes of easily stapling the strips over the top of the tarp.  However when we got home we realized that there is some aluminum trim around all the edges making stapling not an easy task.  So, we opted to drill holes in the thin strips of pine and screw the strips over the top of the tarps to keep the rain from coming in.  I will admit, I did none of this project…..I watched from the side lines as Clare helped Brad out by handing him screws and pieces of wood that he had cut. I am extremely proud of their little team work effort, and extremely thankful that I didn’t have to do much other than come up with the ideas.  Here are some pics of the tarped in porch when it was empty & full, there are a few more in the gallery under Latest - Uncategorized if you are extremely interested.

After the porch was sealed off work began on emptying out the office.  I brought up a couple of boxes, and began cleaning off my desk.  Clare was a big help, and now I understand why I hated projects around my house growing up…..as with her I was always a runner.  Go get more garbage bags, go bring me this, hey can you go down to the fridge and get daddy a pop.  She was a good sport about it though, and knew that she was helping us out.  Clare LOVES to help in any way that she can, as with most kids, so whenever I can think of a job that she can do to help out without getting under my control freak skin…..I gladly give it to her.  She helped us out a lot yesterday by taking things out to the porch, and putting them in the assorted bags I was working on (garbage, recycling, and Goodwill).  So…..Things accomplished yesterday off the list:

1.  The office is cleaned out (with the exception of one desk that needs to be taken apart, and my boxed up wedding dress we  don’t want to put any where that it will get damaged because my mother-in-law made it (and I want to save it for Clare).

2.  I filled a garbage bag full of clothes out of the closet that was in the office to be sent to Goodwill.  1 closet down 2 more to go!

3.  I sorted through the stuff in the office(well at least the stuff on my side of the space, and the closet) tossing lots…. shredding lots…..and causing a garbage bag full of garbage to leave the house.

Below is what the empty soon to be NEW Clare’s room looks like currently.  We have the paint colors picked out, but have to wait for pay day to go get them on Friday.  The yellow will be replaced with pink, the ceiling will be purple, and the trim repainted a crisp white.  I think I’m going to paint the curtain rods purple to match the ceiling, leaving the same white curtains (only washed and hopefully crisply newly whitened).  Stay tuned for more updates!