Random Projects!

After working on the deck I had a few things that I really wanted to get done around the house. This summer I feel I have really grown as a person in regards to my confidence in what I can and cannot do. I feel more confident working with power tools and just tools in general. I've also been working out with Rachael twice a week so my body feels more capable of doing things without getting injured so that's nice too! 

Under our deck was a mess! It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but we had a big brown cabinet, stacks of wood and Zeke's power wheels under there. I knew I would need to clean that out in preparation for the house to be painted. 

There was also this silly wall. It separated the paved portion under the deck from this little alcove that used to be where we stored our wood. We had just been using it as a place to keep all the cinder blocks. The area under the deck was dark enough I really wanted to take out this wall to bring in more light. Michael told me good luck with that since he was pretty much spent after building the deck. 

So I decided to go for it! 

For some reason even though it was just a wall a section of it was actually a gate...who knows! Well I opened the gate and took one swing with the sledgehammer and off it came. I took this picture and texted it to Michael with the bicep muscle emoji. :) 

The older boys had fun with me swinging the sledgehammer around trying to break off some of the boards. We got a few, but ultimately I had to get out the reciprocating saw to cut the boards in half and then I was able to push them back and forth and they came out. While doing do so one of the boards broke instead of coming off in one piece and it smacked me in the forehead. 

When we were rebuilding the deck Michael got smacked in the head with a 2x4 and got a pretty good cut so I texted him this picture and told him we were even. 

My next project was to clean out our basement. It's always been atrocious and it's just not something Michael wanted to tackle. He's not the organizational one at all. I figured since I had to be outside tending to the fire...remember I'm still burning deck boards...I might as well do something and not just sit there. 

Here is a look at what I was dealing with...these pictures were taken last year when the siding was off the house and the basement had some really nice light. There were a few things that had been moved around, but basically it looked the same. 

The first thing we took out were all the kids Power Wheels. They had a Power Wheel washing day to get them all cleaned up since they were so dusty from all the construction. 

See those brightly colored cardboard cars in the background of the above picture. Those are Zeke's Cars that I made for his 2nd birthday when we had his Lightning MckQueen Drive-In Birthday. Zeke did not want to get rid of them, but some of them were a bit destroyed. I took pictures of him with all of them and in the end we kept 6. What cracks me up is he still fits in them! 

MckQueen and Sheriff

Dinoco King and Red

Sarge & Doc

Ramone & Flo

As you can expect there was just a bunch of random stuff and even things that were from the original owners of the house. I found a box that had a bunch of old contact paper that they used to line our pantry with. So funny! 

Such a mess! 

After getting the kids toys out I just started taking everything out. In order to clean and organize you have to have a clean slate. I had different sections in the yard for certain things....yard equipment, tools, things to sell, things to take to the goodwill and then the dump pile. I wish I had taken a picture. Our yard looked like mess!!!

It took me about a week, but in the end the basement is now a dream!!! 

This is the area to the right when you first walk in. This is the yard area. It's got all the yard tools, equipment and fertilizer. You can't see it very well, but I found a couple small sections of a pallet and I screwed those to the wall and used that as storage for the rakes and shovels. 

This is the area to the left when you come in the door. It's the painting supplies. Michael was worried about his tarps since we've had mice problems in the basement before so now all his tarps are actually stored in one of the cedar lined dresser that's down here. 

Here's the far wall. Like I said we kept 6 cars. This area has all the furniture that we're saving. Two dressers, 4 dining room chairs, a microwave, a recliner and the two bikes that my parents gave us. After this picture was taken I did move down all the hardware that the contractors left behind so we have a whole shelf of bolts and things that might come in handy one day. 

It's amazing what a some hard work and organization can do. It feels so much bigger down here and less creepy since I even swept the whole place out. Now let's hope we can keep it nice and organized!!