Why didn't I think of that?

One of those random so-called "life-hacks" on one of those stupid meme sites that makes the rounds on Facebook actually paid off this week. It was so simple that the minute I saw it, I felt silly for not thinking of it myself.

In literally minutes, we turned this:

 Into this:

(yes, the picture was taken the following morning, but only because it took me some time to load it up with supplies, not because of installation time)

The shelves in this closet don't go all the way to the door, providing plenty of clearance for putting something on the door without stopping it from closing. Maybe the architects anticipated something like this.

Standard $10 over-the-door shoe rack, trimmed to fit (they seem to all be 19'' but our door is so narrow that we cut one column off), hung with nails using a molly bolt (there wasn't enough clearance at the top to put the brackets over it and we needed a molly because the doors are hollow inside). 20 minutes or less.

We aren't putting some things in there that are particularly heavy or anything that specifically makes sense under the sink (like dishwashing detergent, stove cleaner, etc.) but all the lighter weight cleaning supplies now live here. I didn't take a "before" picture under the sink, but trust me, this is a huge improvement:

New-found Basement Space

The new freezer and resulting basement rearrangement got us thinking about other ways we can reorganize the basement. We had to move the laundry shelf over near the furnace, to make room for the chest freezer. We wondered what other areas could use some shelving.

Answer - the empty space near the utility sink, under the wood shelf unit that was attached to the wall. It's behind our cat litter boxes, but as long as we put things there we don't need regularly, it was a lot of valuable space. So we went to (of course) Ikea and found OMAR, which was a near perfect match, size-wise, to the space we had.

The idea was that we could move the paint cans there, since we were keeping paint supplies up above it anyway, and that would clear out the space where the paint was currently residing, giving D a place to put all of his bike tools, which had taken over the whole floor. Plus the plastic shelves weren't really equipped to hold so much weight and they were starting to flex a little.

So last Sunday we got to work moving things back and forth. We had company, of course:

(Yes, we finally are posting a picture of our baby).

In the end, we got all the paint moved to the back corner of the basement, and even sorted it by type on each shelf (primer, ceiling paint, colors).

The other side isn't exactly neat, but it's a big improvement - I can see the floor again!

It definitely pays to reevaluate a space every few years. We thought we had no more free space in the basement but we have managed to put in a chest freezer and new shelves just by giving up the extra expandable drying rack (that can get set up in the middle of the floor or in the finished part of the basement, if necessary).

A Post about a (Lamp)post

Back in May, we had a electrician come give us an estimate on how much it would cost to fix the severed wire that led to our lamppost. And the answer was - not cheap. His price of $380 did not even include digging up and then re-burying the wire, just the electrical work and putting the wire into a PVC pipe to reduce the chance that we would cut it again. He sweetened the deal by agreeing to throw in an electrical socket at the post, which was pretty enticing since we don't have any outdoor outlets for holiday lights. We agreed to call him in the fall, once our lawn and garden were dead - no sense in tearing up a trench during the one time of year our yard looks nice.

And we did. We tentatively scheduled him to come in early December. And so, in what I hoped would be labor-inducing work, I used a little trowel to try to find the wire. I started in the garden area, since I was almost certain that was where the cut was (the light used to work - it stopped working sometime around when we dug up all the invasive grass, though we'd seen the wire at that time and tried to be careful).

And I was right! On both accounts. I found the cut in the wire in the flower bed AND I went into labor that night. So the project was on hold for a little while (during which we hoped no one would break their ankle in the trench on the way to our door).

Then our fabulous electrician friend, P, told us we'd be crazy to pay the electrician so much for the work and offered to do it himself. We originally planned just to fix up the wire right where it was severed, but P suggested that we should still go through with the original plan to re-run wire all the way to the post and put in a socket. In fact, why not install TWO sockets - one at each end.

Friends are awesome.

And so I cancelled the electrician and one sunny day in December, P and D got to work.

Step one - buy supplies, including PVC pipe that doesn't quiet fit in the vehicle:

Step two - finish digging the trench (we'd stopped once we found the cut wire, since we thought we might just be able to fix the isolated spot). This goes a lot faster with giant shovels and lots of help - and not being over 9 months pregnant (actually, I didn't participate at all, just watched while everyone else did the hard work).

 Step three - run the new wire through the pipes:

Step four - install electrical boxes. This turned out to be more difficult than everyone expected, because our lamppost is cast iron and broke several drill bits. There was a lot of magical electrical work going on too, but that part is beyond me, so I'll skip over it. This is definitely not a true step-by-step guide here.

With fancy new electrical boxes installed onto the lamppost and the house, the wire laid enclosed within PVC pipes even at the corners thanks to the PVC elbows, and a quick test to make sure everything worked, our team even buried everything back up -

And the grass is looking so sparse this time of year that the covered trench is barely noticeable. We just have to remember to throw some seed on there before spring.

In total, $100 in parts, some beer, some hard work, and it's even better than if the electrician had done it. And a lot cheaper. And more fun, since I got to hang out with good friends.