Loving Renovations

This is a long story, but I'm actually going somewhere, so bear with me.

One of the things that Taigen wanted to get done in our basement this year was a re-organizing of the storage area. The previous owners of our Saco house, Larry & Erika Gray, had finished the basement when they owned the house. It was super-duper nice. Everyone that came to look at the house when it was on the market commented on the wonderful basement. It's the one thing about Maine the kids always say they miss. There was plenty of room to spread out and play. There was also a storage area in the basement that had been done really well and it worked for all of the handy dandy storage bins we keep hand-me-downs, summer/winter clothes and memorabilia in. Taigen and I wanted to mimic that storage area.

Our church was also in need of some storage shelves for one of the attic rooms. (Whoever designed our church was a genius because there is storage everywhere! It's not a matter of where to store things...it's how to store things. Organzied or unorganized? That is the question.) Well, remember the man in our church who did the chair rail in our renovated dining room? His name is Dale and he's a wood-working genius. The amazing fact here though, is that he is legally blind. You'd never know it though. Dale was able to whip out many shelves and get them ready to hang in the church attic so that it could be more organized. When they were done, he gathered a couple of guys, and bang! They were done. The finished result was amazing. Taigen asked him how he did it so that he could mimic it in our basement. The two of them got to talking and it ended up with Dale offering to let Taigen use his workshop and teach him how to do it.  Another thing that Taigen wanted to ask Dale about was how to go about making a new platform for our washer and dryer. The former owners must have been much shorter than I am, because when they finished the mud room/garage/guest room, they built a platform for the washer and dryer that was only about 6 inches high. They left us a wonderful front loader, but I was still bending w-a-a-a-a-ay over to check inside for stuck socks after the load was finished washing. It really wasn't a huge problem, but Carol heard about this and said it would never do! "That's not how front loaders are supposed to function," she said. She volunteered Dale for this project as well and so it was added to the docket of "things to do in Dale's workshop!"

To make a long story even longer, we knew we now had to clean out the laundry room in addition to the storage room in the basement. The current room was a jumbled mess. There was a hodge-podge of stuff stored in there and it was unorganized to say the least. My opinion was that it was a storage room that just happened to have a washer and dryer in it. I had secretly hoped that since the room was going to be all torn apart and emptied, that it could be painted a different color than flat contractor white (with hints of dirt and grime). Never in a million years would I have asked Taigen to paint it. It's December after all, which happens to be our busiest month. I didn't even pray about it. So imagine my surprise when Taigen and I were getting ready for bed one night and he said, "You know, Hon. I was thinking. Since we are going to have that laundry room all emptied out, I should really paint it and make it nice." Can you imagine my utter jubilation at the thought? I quickly agreed. (I nominate him for the Husband of the Year Award.)

The next day I grabbed a curtain that had been given to me when we first moved in. It was from a friend at church that had purchased the curtain for a steal-of-a-deal, but then it didn't fit in a window that she had bought it for. I loved the curtain and have saved it for 2+ years. I took the kids to the paint store and got a gallon of paint. That night, Taigen started the painting and even got the kids in on the action. They had a blast!

The building of the shelves and new washer/dryer platform took place last Monday. Taigen left early in the morning and got home shortly before dinner. Dale & Carol came too and we enjoyed a nice dinner with us before the guys headed downstairs to install them. They were able to finish their installation in about 40 minutes. Those shelves are super-sturdy and will last for decades.

The platform was equally as amazing. I was envisioning a simple wooden box. What the guys hefted in was a beautiful platform about the size of a coffin. Let me just say that I would be proud to be buried in that thing. It was so much more than just a wooden box. It was beautiful, trim and all! Taigen and I put things back on Wednesday night after church and then Taigen has worked off and on in that laundry room here and there. It is finally done. The room looks amazing.

In the process of reconfiguring the room we solved another problem we were having. We needed a home for all of our shoes. Anyone who has been to our house at some point knows that we typically had a pile of shoes in the mud room area just before you stepped up into the house. It was nice that we could take off our shoes there, but they didn't always stay neat and it could cause someone to trip if they weren't watching where they were going. Taigen found some shoe shelves and installed them in the laundry room. Every shoe has a home. This emptied out a closet in the main part of the house which I now use as a ginormous small appliance garage & storage closet. It is a wonderful luxury!



And there you have it. My very long story. I enjoyed doing laundry to begin with, but now, to have everything within reach, organized AND beautiful is such a treat! The laundry room looks like an extension of the house, not a pit in which a washer and dryer reside. I'm so thankful for my hard-working husband who loves me so much in order to work all day and then work all night in order to help make my house a warm and inviting place. I'm also thankful for Dale (and his wife Carol) and his vision to help Taigen with this project. Taigen sure enjoyed using all of his power tools and heated shop! God has blessed us with such wonderful people in our church here in Dover.



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