Other Projects

THE FLOOR

In our first home (and all our previous apartments) we had linoleum floors in the kitchens and bathrooms.  I always thought that I wanted tile floors because I hated the way the linoleum looked.  So I was excited that this house had tile in the kitchen, entry, and bathrooms.  I like the floor tiles, but there were about 30 of them which were cracked and broken, so when I mopped, those sections always looked dirty.  And I hated the grout. 

Whether this is the color they chose, or if it was just so dirty that mopping, bleaching, scrubbing, and steaming couldn't get it clean, I'm not sure, but it was a disgusting dark brown color.  I felt like no matter how hard I scrubbed, the floor never looked clean.  There were also several sections where the grout had chipped out and there were just big empty spaces between the tiles.  Guess how much fun it was to sweep around that.  I don't have a lot of before pictures of just the floor, but this is a picture we took after St. Patrick's Day to show the leprechaun footprints.  You can at least see the color of the grout in this picture.

SO, I decided to replace the broken tiles (the previous homeowners left 4 cases of extra tiles in the garage) and re-grout the entire floor.  I didn't realize quite how awful this project would be.  It took me a total of 9 months to scrape all the grout from between our nearly 300 12" floor tiles.  Then several days of intensive labor (and Grandpa's help again) to break out all the broken tiles.  Then several more days of intensive labor to set the new tiles and grout the entire floor.  But, I am very pleased with the results!

THE BUILT-IN SHELVES

Another strange feature in this house was the window ledge in the TV room.  It extened the length of the room and was covered in carpet.  I always felt like it was just wasted space. Although the kids did like to sleep on it.

So I of course came up with a design plan to make use of the space.   With Dad's help (what would we do without Grandpa?) I built shelves to fill up the space around the 2 windows, creating the perfect place to store our movie collection where the little ones couldn't reach (and subsequently destroy) them.  We even made the shelves adjustable so if the next homeowners want to use them for something else, it will be easy.

RABBIT HUTCH

This project is not a pretty one, but I'm still proud of it and I'll tell you why.  We got a baby bunny for Easter one year and she was so cute and tiny.  We had her in a cage in the house, but she grew so fast and smelled SO bad, that I knew keeping her indoors wasn't going to be an option for much longer.  So I started looking into buying a hutch that we could keep in the yard.  Used hutches were going on KSL for over $200!  I figured I could just build something that would work.  So, using scraps from the garage (leftover wood from the deck, extra flooring from the piano room, unused boards from my shelving projects, etc) I was able to come up with a design and build a rabbit hutch ALL BY MYSELF.  I spent $17 on the cage wire and the hardware (hinges and a latch), and everything else was built from scraps.  So if it looks like a modge-podge of building materials, that's because it is!  And Hazel-Rah the Rabbit LOVES her home outside and has now survived 2 years in my ugly, yet snug hutch.