Laundry Room Makeover: $5

 I wish I had bothered to take a before picture.  But, you see, I didn't realize that I was going to redo the laundry room until after I put in the first wash of the day and began to sweep, and to clean, and to organize.  The laundry room redo took even me by surprise.  So, if you are able, picture a very dirty white wall where that chalkboard wall now resides.  As you venture through the rest of the photos, try to imagine bare and scratched walls covered here in there with cobwebs.  If you look at the floor, you can probably imagine the walls.

 Now the chalkboard wall hosts the boys' morning and nighttime chores.  They will probably continue to ignore these instructions, but I will be unimaginably comforted by having written them down.

 A make-shift laundry chute.  This is actually an air-return vent into our bedroom.  Soon after moving here I realized that it was just a glorified hole in the floor perfect for shoving laundry down.  We call it the laundry hole.  Isaac and Sarah love to dangle their limbs down the hole and ask me to grab their feet and hands:  lots of fun.

 These shelves predate us.  We would never have attempted such a feat of carpentry.  IKEA would have had to do that for us.  A few years ago I junked the boys' dresser and moved their clothes onto shelves in the laundry room.  It saves me a whole lot of hauling around laundry baskets and keeps the boys clothing explosions contained to one room.  Underwear, socks and pjs in the milk crates; pants and shirts on the shelf beside; hoodies on the nails; and dress clothes on the shelf above.

 My first thought at putting up art in the laundry room was, "What?"  And then I thought, "Of course!"  That starry night you see is Jacob's and the winter scene is from one of Dave's former students who has since gone on to an art school in New York.  And where does the $5 price tag come from?  Those letters come from a large sheet of sticky decals that I bought at our local Stedmans.  The kids had already used the W,A,S and H that I would have liked to affix above the washer, so I was left with CLEAN.  The sentiment is the same.

 The second starry night is Hannah's.  I love the contrast of colour with those bare white walls.  Those paintings really make me happy to be in that room.  And I'm there a lot.  The broken dresser comes from Sarah's room.  We bought it when the twins were born and the top pulls out into a change table. This is the first time in 12 years that we have not needed a change table.  (Tears will squirt.)  I found a solid wood dresser on Kijiji and we picked it up last week and transferred Sarah's clothes into it.  We were going to bring the old dresser to the dump when I realized that it was perfect for the laundry room.  I had run out of A's and thus I used an upside down U with a pencil through it as the A in SOAP.  The arrow lets me know which soap is in use; strangely, I actually find this helpful.

 I happened to have the letters for DRY and so decided to use them above the drying rack.  I expect that the DRY sign will be of great assistance to the boys who still struggle when I ask them to get something off of the drying rack.

Proof that the chalkboard wall is in use.

The gift of siblings

 This is Joseph, 7 years, and this is Sarah, 2.5 years.  I asked Joe on Saturday if he could get Sarah dressed for me and help comb her hair.

 Joe, despite his devil-may-care approach to life, is actually surprisingly good with babies and toddlers.  I hesitate to say preschoolers as this term quasi-covers Isaac; and let's not talk about Isaac's and Joe's relationship.  However, Joe is tremendously caring with his youngest sister.

 Sarah balks when I try to comb her hair.  I confess that I am often in a rush and a little too rough.  Her siblings, however, don't feel the same pressing nature of time as their mother does.  Consequently, she much prefers when the younger people in the house do her hair.

 I imagine that this sort of behaviour will stand Joe in very good stead when his eyes are opened to women other than his sisters and mother.

 Much of life takes place in the bathroom, doesn't it?

 And two last shots to illustrate the gift of siblings and friends.  In this case, little Lauren, or, as we affectionately call her, "Baby Doran" is a regular feature around our house.  She is, I believe Isaac's and Sarah's best friend.  She falls right in the middle of them in terms of age:  Isaac is 4.5 years, Lauren is 3.5 years and Sarah is 2.5 years.  They make a wonderful trio, even if their ages don't seem to correspond to their stature.

Isaac and the ladies, or Isaac as John Ritter.  Back later this week with  laundry-room redo that cost $5.

The Big Basement Reveal

 Well, I said that I was going to do it and I did.  What started as washing the walls of the upstairs great room ended in the redoing of the basement.  Last Monday I washed the sooty/dusty walls of our cathedral-ceilinged living room.  Afterward I thought, "Hey!  I just finished that mammoth task; why can't I paint the entire basement?"  So, I did.  Behold the before and after pictures ...slightly out of order.

 Remember those awful canary yellow and burgundy walls?  And the diamonds, please don't forget that genius of decorating skill.  Gone!  Replaced by a stony-beige-neutral.  Truthfully, I don't know what the colour is or where to use hyphens - so there.  Hannah and Joe picked the colour and Dave seconded.  I went to the paint store, messed up and came home with a colour that amounted to painting the walls the colour of drywall.  Certainly an improvement on the before photos; but more like a genetic reprogramming of the walls back to their original state.  (Can you tell I have been listening to bioethics lectures on youtube?)

 And the carpet?  Where oh where did that come from?  Well, six years ago Dave's mom bought carpet to redo the house of diminished circumstances.  (Recall the cottage on the farm in which we lived for five months).  At the same time that she purchased the carpet, Dave installed laminate throughout the entire cottage as a surprise for his parents.  Except that three huge rolls of new carpet came to languish in our present basement ... until Dave and I decided that we could lay carpet.  And we did.  Well, sort of.

 Bet you want to come over now.  The wonderful thing is that almost every piece of furniture that you see was a gift from someone else.  That painting?  A wedding present from our best man/priest.  That table?  A gift from Jacob's godparents, now refinished in chalkboard paint (the table, not the godparents).  (Who needs paper for tallying Scrabble points?)  The Lazyboy?  A cast off from the in-laws.

 Amazing how 200 applications of polyfilla, one coat of primer and two coats of paint can change a room.  Oh, my aching muscles.  I actually kept Hannah home from school for a morning and an afternoon to help with the brushwork.  Praise God for that not-so-little girl.  The boys protested that they should be allowed to paint.  And then they fought physically over the issue and seemed to quickly understand why they were not that trustworthy.

 Look!  An exact before and after.  The rocking chair?  Made by the brother-in-law of a sister-in-law of Dave's dad on the occasion of Dave's parents wedding over 40 years ago.  Did you get that?  The funny thing is that I noticed that our parish rectory has the identical rocker; obviously made by the same man who, yes, is a parishioner.  Note Our Lady of Tenderness watching over the children with her maternal eye; hopefully encouraging certain boys toward a more civilized life.  I think I will add glow-in-the-dark paint to her eyes to increase her effect.

 I even painted over Sarah and erased her from the photo.

 And replaced her with a chalkboard wall.  This was by far the funnest paint to use.  There's just something to be said for painting an entire wall black.  I got so carried away that I painted one of the very dirty walls of the laundry room with the same paint.  I argued that I could use it to write notes like:  Put your dirty clothes in the basket!!

 And, for those of you who know us well, it will come as no surprise that Dave is now using a stand-up desk in an effort to counteract the physical effects of sitting for too long.  Surprisingly, it's actually quite easy, if a little odd to behold.  Also, I lost my coffee table.

 I can't seem to move this photo into the correct line-up; so, here it is for you to ooh and ah over.  Please know that you are very welcome here.  We are so very, very blessed and truly want all our loved ones to share in that blessing.  We even bought a super-duper space heater, Mom.

A February Mash-Up

 So, where are we?  February, that Wednesday of months:  sort of like hump-day;  getting through it brings us one month closer to the end of the winter and the beginning of spring.  It's actually an extremely hopeful month.  Which leaves November as the sole month in the calendar in need of redemption.
Anyway.
Our children love to read.
This is where I cough and add, "Except for Benjamin."  Ben loves to read ... NHL statistics and game schedules.  Thus, we are forcing him into a little USSR.  Please tell me that you children of the '80s remember that acronym?  (The educators who came up with Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading must have felt so clever and somewhat subversive.  Sort of like they were contributing to the fall of the Berlin Wall by forcing classrooms of students into 15 minutes of literacy.)
However, there is one problem.  Ben is easily distractible when a book is placed in his hands.  Thus, he has decided to wear his father's industrial-grade ear protection.  Dave uses these when he logs with his father on the farm.   Now, a moment of silence:  Dave with yellow earmuffs, lumberjack jacket and a chainsaw in his hands.  Where did I find this man?

 He cleans up well, though; even if he looks incredibly short.  I blame the towering group of men who attended the baptism of our twin nieces.  And I'm forever grateful to Benjamin who advised me to wear the above dress instead of a tunic and leggings about which he so wisely remarked, "Just looks like a really short dress and tights, Mom."  You had kids for a reason, Elena.

 Here are Isaac and Sarah on their best baptismal behaviour, fully aware that their father is well-occupied and out of disciplinary distance.  Sarah is currently expecting our first grandchild.

 Why oh why would one need parental discipline when life already doles out its fair share of corporal punishment in the form of wing chairs mysteriously interrupting one's Olympic circuit around the living room?

 Hannah has discovered the Notability app on the iPad and regularly produces reconfigurations of her brothers.

 Dave was not so happy with this gender modification.   Ahem, Josephina.  Hannah is negotiating a lucrative graphic-design contract with our provincial premier.

 With an eye to the final product, Hannah has begun to pose her brothers.  I think I overheard her say, "Cough like you're going to die."

 Because you are a vampire with an anaphylactic allergy to your main source of food.  Or, perhaps, you are a student reacting to the new Ontario sex-education curriculum.  If we could all do this simultaneously, we might produce a graphic and effective political sit-in.

 You might think that she posed him as a zombie?   No, no, no.  Jacob, in fact, is demonstrating the proper reaction to our basement decor.

 Canary Yellow.

 With an accent of burgundy and diamonds.  Because who doesn't immediately think of diamonds when designing a basement.

 And who fails to measure so that the last row of diamonds forever plays tricks with one's mind?  If you answered with an enthusiastic, "Former homeowners!!", then you are correct.

But, relax!  I've taken the situation in hand and all those white spots are Poly-Filla.  The basement is now primed and awaiting a coat of paint in a soothing neutral.  That's 400 square feet of wall space that I painted solo this morning.  You should count yourself lucky that I was still able to pound out this post.  Very lucky.