The Monica Closet

Admit it. You have one. A secret closet crammed full of disorganized insanity. It stresses you out, but you have it.

What?

*hangs head in shame*

I’m the only one?

Hi, I’m Lpod. I have a Monica BASEMENT. Yeah. An entire floor of my house is disorganized piles of insanity. I have to walk past jump and teeter through it to do laundry (which is now every day, thanks CJ), to go to my car in the garage, etc. Our basement is actually beautifully finished and has a lot of daylight. But it is a furniture graveyard and box storage nightmare.

So, I’m confessing it to you all. You’re on the inside now. Now you have to hold me to my newest project: Transforming that nightmare into a cool playspace for carter joe.

It’s a 14×20 foot room with a fireplace tiled in neutral orangish tone tile and rust stained concrete floors (what? you can’t tell that through the clutter?).

I have a few chairs from Marmie (my mom’s mother) that need some repair and recovering. I’m working on that part right now. It will probably take me a couple of months to get the project finished, but I promise to keep posting updates (it’s the only way I’ll get it done)!

For now, I will leave you with the inspiration page I created for the room

Tweet Tweet!

No, I’m not twittering. I’ve just officially gotten the bug. I’m nesting. Oh my goodness, I want to clean, declutter, and scrub every last inch of this house. Poor Scott. This last weekend was an all out assault on the garage. I mean, how am I supposed to cart the little baby into a cluttered garage to go run errands with me? Yeah. I’ve lost it.

The garage is one of those spaces in the house that has been a dumping ground for our lack of storage in the house and has never been organized since we moved in. It just keeps collecting there so we don’t have to look at it.

just enough room to squeeze in a car

As you can see, we got rid of a lot of clutter that we intended to toss or give to goodwill a long time ago. We consolidated a bunch of the stuff that was on floors into the shelves and drawers we already had available. Scott enjoyed using my label maker (thanks, Sharla!!) to label each of his tool chest’s drawers. A few more of the items that are laying on the ground will be hung from the ceiling to keep stuff up off the floor, but for now we feel so organized. We’re TOTALLY ready for baby now, right? Right.  

ahhhh, room to breathe

I’ll be honest. Most of this was spurred by the fact that I want a second fridge. I feel cluttered in my one fridge. I get these little obsessions and I can’t let go until they happen. I now have mountains of laundry sitting on the floor of the nursery waiting to be cleaned. On to the next little nesting project, I suppose (I have a hankering for the drawers and cabinets in my bathroom and kitchen too).

My Hero

I have a reaaaaaaaaaaally long list of projects for the house. Little things here and there I’ve wanted to get done over the years, but never started for some excuse I can’t remember. Scott has been my champion of house projects in the last couple of months. This weekend, he got up on Saturday morning, put a coat of stain on our new mantel, made himself a lunch, and headed off to work. I was barely out of bed by the time he was out the door.

He worked all day, getting home just in time to get dressed to go to my company’s annual anniversary party. On Sunday, he finished staining and oiling the mantel before he cleaned out some old boxes in the basement. THEN he edged and mowed the yard. I needed him to go to Costco and the grocery store with me after all that, because no one should go to Costco alone on a Sunday. They might not return alive.

We got home, unloaded the car and I put the groceries away. While I did that, he swept the walkways, the back porch and the garage, and took all of the boxes out to recycling. He took a few conference calls in between all that mess of a Sunday and eventually went to a work dinner on Sunday night. I’m sure he was really well rested by the time he got to work this morning.

Check out my cool new mantel! Now we finally have someplace to hang little speck’s stocking at Christmas. Thanks, my sweet husband for taking on all of my crazy projects.

mantel ready for deocration

Now I get the joy of decorating the mantel. These pieces are all just for show and belong elsewhere in the house. Can’t wait to decorate my first mantel!

You Know You Are Getting Old When…

Jessica called me out. Getting excited about installing new windows in your house classifies one as old. Call it “settling down,” or whatever, but the idea of the below being your idea of a full weekend of fun instead of a weekend of traveling with friends to camp all weekend at a music festival, pushing the limits until Sunday night….well…this is it kids:

supplies and general messiness

That’s right. We’re pushing the limits all right. Adding the next coat of teak oil to those windows until ONE AM on a Sunday night. Staining windows with a Q-tip kind of fun!

happy cott loves the detail work

I feel so wild and crazy. Actually. I feel nice and cool with the cross breeze. It’s nice to be able to open windows! Here are a couple of the work-in-progress project.

double casement to cool off the hot kitchen

living room corner with a picture window and double casement

If all goes well, we should have the windows 100% complete by Tuesday morning, allowing us to get a start on fixing the drywall that was broken in the process. Like I said… We are crazy!

Good-bye Cold Winters, Hello Cool Summers!

That is what I thought I was inheriting when I moved to Seattle. Well, with this year’s record breaking 2 feet of snow and 15 days of sub-freezing temperatures and subsequent all-time-hottest-day-ever record breaking heat wave (which has fortunately ended), we decided it was time to invest in some windows. No more standing in front of our windows and letting your hair blow in the breeze.

Day 1 was ok. Four of twelve total windows are installed…tomorrow will be the remaining 8 plus all the trim. I hope they show up on time! I want this project D.O.N.E. tomorrow.

Check out the contrast of our old window (on the left) and the new window (on the right)… The left window will be replaced with two casements that will open in opposite directions to create more air flow (to assist with the next 103° day).

old drafty vs. new pretty