Rearranging Family Room

Our basement is a pigsty and has been getting steadily worse for a couple of years. We have too much stuff down there. We've been meaning to clean it up, but it never makes it on the task list. The desire to get ready for seismic bracing finally inspired a bit of effort this past week.

The before pictures are really bad and the after pictures aren't much better. We're still sifting and trying to get rid of stuff. We gave away the huge oak entertainment center. It looked nice, but it really wasn't working with the doors. We couldn't close them because then the remote controls wouldn't work—Why do they design entertainment centers like that?—so the cabinet was filthy inside.

Since it was so difficult to clean, we decided to try something more open. We swapped out the cabinet with a sofa table we've had for like 20 years. We're hoping this will be much easier to clean.

Before

After

We also had to shift all the bookcases to interior walls from the outer walls so we can open the walls up and install the bracing.

Before

After

The futon is too large for the basement, so I'm keeping an eye out on craigslist for a Murphy bed we can replace it with. And I need to figure out how to get rid of more stuff. Ugh. Sifting is such an unfun job.

We also went and bought the wood for the garden shed/coop and it was delivered last night.

We're hoping for several days this month with decent enough weather to make good progress on this project. I still need to track down green roofing to match the house.

Selling the Cherry Wood

It's been 3.5 years and we haven't done anything with this huge pile of cherry wood. We need to dig some space out of the garage so we've decided to sell this wood. Do any of our followers have any clue what kind of price we should ask on craigslist?

We have finally almost unburied ourselves of the huge pile of tile we bought in 2015. We used the subway tile in the bathroom and after months of listings, we've managed to sell most of the colored trim tiles. Whatever is left at this point will probably get donated to The Rebuilding Center or I'll put a free ad on craigslist.

We have too much stuff. We have so much stuff to get rid of. I pretty much have ads on craigslist all the time. We definitely have to participate in the Laurelhurst garage sale this year. (Yes, we could donate a lot of stuff, but it turns out when you have almost no income a tax write-off is worthless.)

Plant Shopping Season

I would like to do something with this part of the yard, under the black walnut tree.

Most plants can't live under black walnuts because the tree produces juglone. I've been hunting around plant lists to find some shrubs to start getting them established this spring.

East Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District (EMSWCD) has an annual native plant sale. This year's sale just opened up for orders yesterday and most of the plants are only $3.  I ordered shrubs that are supposed to survive under black walnuts: Vine Maple, Mock Orange and Red Stem Ceanothus.

I also ordered an extra Vine Maple to replace the overgrown mystery bush we took out to make way for the French drain in summer.

We bought many of our original rain garden plants from EMSWCD, but sadly they don't sell ferns and flowers anymore. We'll have to visit some of the other local nurseries to pick up smaller plants.

I've also started shopping for some vines to plant on the pergola. While I'd like to buy grape vines, I suspect we're going to end up with kiwi because grapes are poisonous for dogs to eat.

So Much Snow

In the 20 years we've lived in the Portland area, we have never seen this much snow. Ever. In past years we could usually count on about a week of snow, and that was it.

This year, however, we have had snow and ice almost everyday since my last post on Dec 8. Though we haven't had snowfall since a week ago, our streets are still covered with ice pack. The City of Portland has shown itself to NOT be the City that Works as they seemed to adopt a policy of "let it melt," so most arterial streets are still covered with icepack and dangerous to travel.

During the day, our temperatures just aren't getting warm enough to make much headway in melting the snow.

January 16 at noon.

January 17 at noon.

And, sadly, we didn't get the wood cut for the bathroom during the tiny one-day window we had in December. The dogs were way too stir crazy and Jeff spent the day outside wearing them down and restocking our provisions.

Last Tuesday, we had an eerie night when it was so bright outside, Jeff took this photo at 11PM.

For the most part, our fur children are going stir crazy inside as they are no longer getting daily visits to the dog park. But sometimes it is nice enough to play outside.

View out in front of our house this morning.

Today's forecast calls for freezing rain, on top of this snow already there. At this rate, we can expect to dig ourselves out of winter sometime in April. :)

I wish I knew what pile of boxes the bird feeders were in, I'd go and try and dig them out. I feel sorry for the birds who are quite unaccustomed to winters like this.

For now, we're just hoping the power stays on.

First Snow for the Season

I tried to take pictures of how blustery the snow was, but you really can't see it in the pictures. We've settled the bird into the basement with heaters and we're making our winter basement bunker. We'll see how long this lasts.

This picture below is taken out the window in my sewing room. I wish we had room in the garage to bring the furniture inside. We need to get rid of more stuff. :(

Shasta's New Toy

I had seen advertisements for the CleverPet many months ago, but at the time they didn't have any units for sale. They had a sale on Cyber Monday so we picked one up,  trusting it wouldn't be a waste of money.

We set this up yesterday evening. This is Shasta, barely more than 24 hours after we got it! Go Shasta! It's already getting harder and I don't think it's "paying" her every time now.

Yes, she's eating a lot today, but she's still learning how to use it. Our plan is to actually feed her all her regular food through this delivery method as soon as she gets the hang of it.

Bailey, so far, isn't interested. We plan to set it up so she can watch Shasta playing it while we hang out on the couch together. We're hoping she'll learn it too.

December Update

I have no idea how it is December already!

We finally found the solution to our light hanging headache. I ended up buying each of the available picture rail hooks from House of Antique Hardware and this was the winner. It's wide enough on top that it stays on the rail when you're jiggling around the string of lights and the top hook part perfectly fits our picture rail. It's pretty unusual for us to spend money right after Thanksgiving, but we did this year. We bought 60 of these things during their Cyber Monday sale.

Portland had an absolute TON of rain in November and our basement is still dry! (Happy dance.) I'm so glad the guys installed the French Drain last spring. It's working!

We have not finished the bathroom shelf. Oh well. Whenever it's sunny out, the fur children remind us it's time to go to the dog park, not go work in the garage. We'll eventually be tired of having nowhere to hang towels and get it done. I did dig out a board from our pile of fir, but we need to unbury the table saw to rip it to size.

We also spent many hours this month writing our first book. We're almost done with the rough draft and it's over 200 pages. I expect we'll be done with it in the next week or two then we're actually going to set it aside for six weeks or so before we edit it again.

Oh, and since we're disappointed about everything we've been reading in the news lately, we decided to escape to another land. We started playing Elder Scrolls Online (cringe). Only, after three years of behaving like teenagers, this time we're acting like adults (so far). We're doing our task list BEFORE we allow ourselves to sign on and escape to Tamriel.