16 July 2012

Home Improvement, now with less painful comedy!

I'm sorry Tim Allen, but really, you were one of the most unfunny guys on tv in the Nineties. And I should know, I watched a hell of a lot of TV back then.

Anyway, home improvement time! I have several issues with our house that will need some serious addressing. Or have been in need of some serious addressing for some time already. I think it's time to put my shoulders under it and get some of that out of the way, and it's always fun to blog about this stuff, isn't it?

My biggest concern about my house is the lack of storage space in it. We have a small kitchen, with a small amount of available shelving space. There's odd corners and a weird layout that prevents us from getting more out of the space in the hallway. There were three built-in closets when we bought it, but we knocked the wall out between two of those to house our washer and dryer, leaving little space in closets to use for storage. There is still some spaces here and there that we could use for storage, but if I'm honest, I don't think I want to clog up what little space we have left with our stuff. We need to redo the storage spaces we have to provide us with the storage space we want. This is going to require some out-of-the-box thinking and tinkering, I expect, and I hope not too much in terms of expenses, but I am excited to get stuff going so we can make our house a better place to live in.

One of the spaces that has always bothered me, was the closet in our study. As you can see from the blurry picture below (sorry), it was a silly storage space. There was one shelf, to the top, and the rest of the closet was empty space. Not very efficient.



We had tried to build some shelving to the right of the door before for our printer and scanner and the toolbox, but they were not very accessible. The shelves were too close together for us to open the scanner on top of the printer easily, and there was no light, making actually seeing what you were doing a pain. The toolbox is a heavy beast, and heaving it in and out of the space was pretty tough.
The rest of the closet was occupied by an old server that the BF wanted to use for personal fidgeting, but the thing was enormous. The shelf you can see there, with the bottle and the Zyxel-box on top, is resting on top of the server. Just to give you an idea of its size. We had leftover crap like our old hoover, a yoga mat, my ironing board, and other bits and bobs hanging around there. This was actually taken after a thorough cleaning session, when I tossed out 6 plastic bags of crap and old shoeboxes and other nonsense. Within a week, there were backpacks, cardboard boxes and other nonsense stuffed inside on top of the piles you can now see here.

The plan was hatched to add shelving to this closet so we could make better use of the space, but it never really happened. You know how it goes. Then this Saturday, I went to an amusement park and came home to...


Surprise! Shelves!

The BF lured me into the study after I got home at midnight with an excuse ('there's something in the printer, could you get it for me?') and I think I was grinning from ear to ear when I found my new shelving. There's space in the bottom for a large crate where I can store soda bottles, empty or full, along with our old hoover and some cleaning supplies, three shelves where we've got space for crafting supplies, tools and toolboxes, and one that's still practically empty, and a new shelf where our printer now resides with enough space to open up the scanner without having to twist your neck to see if you're doing it right. There's space left to the right of the door between the wall and the shelves where my ironing board fits perfectly. I've got all sorts of plans to use this space even better, I'm going to move some stuff around and get some new boxes that fit between the shelves so I can move some more stuff around...

It's the beginning of something big, I tell you. Like the snowflake that started the avalanche.

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