The closet project

I decided to start another project on the long weekend which was to upgrade my closet a bit and add some drawers and shelves.  Frank had no idea that I even had this in my mind until I mentioned it while we were on a home depot trip for another reason.  (There are so many projects in my mind that he has no idea about, poor man)

 In my mind it was a quick project, of course.  But the reality was that it took 3 days of work, almost none of which was done by me.

I did do all of the assembly of the various parts for the shelves and drawers so that counts, right?

Here is the before:

A shelf, a long rod and a shoe shelf that I bought at Walmart

Frank did the demo of the shelving that was in there which was installed quite well and then painted, so it was a bit of a job getting it all out.  He then spackled all of the damaged areas and I painted it.

During:

Everything is ripped out, including the carpet and the spackling is done.

He also cut out part of the baseboard to make room for the new center tower with drawers/shelves.

It was not very hard to paint and I only did one coat since it'll be full of clothes anyway.

I meant to take a picture of the finished closet before I put my clothes in, but I forgot. 

I was in a rush to get all of my stuff out of Carter's room because he came home for the weekend and my crap was ALL OVER the place so he wouldn't have had anywhere to sleep.

Now that it's all hung up, I'm not going to unload it just to get a picture so here is the finished product (sort of):

Turns out I took the picture and then realized that I had more shelves to install so I did that afterwards.

My old closet didn't really have a good situation for shoe storage and neither does my new one, to be honest.

It's actually smaller than your average reach in closet so it's pretty tight.  Luckily we each have our own or we'd be in a heap of trouble.

I do really like having some drawers though since I used to keep things in plastic bins up on the shelf that I can now keep in a drawer.  I like that much better.

The highest shelf is really high... I need a step stool to reach up there.  I haven't put anything up there yet but I'm sure I'll think of something that needs to be in here but that I don't need that often.

Overall, a simple and fairly inexpensive project.

Well, simple for me.  Frank might not agree since he spent a fair number of hours in there putting it all together.

I just have to make sure to mention, on a regular basis, how much I like it and then he will feel that it was all worth it!

Project Mode

We are in the middle of a 3 day weekend!  

We had originally planned to go on a little hiking vacation but that fell through so we found ourselves at home, wondering what we should do with ourselves.  

We decided it was the perfect opportunity for a few projects:

Frank organized the storage room while I worked on cleaning the grout in the bathroom (removing haze that was left from the installation of the floor that I just never get around to doing). I didn't quite finish my project but I am promising myself to keep at it until it is done...hopefully soon!

Halfway through the day, I realized that there was a project that we'd been meaning to do and totally forgot about: putting a plug in my kitchen island.

Let me just say right now that being married to someone handy is so awesome!  If I want a plug changed on my island, I know that my hubby can do it.

Anyway, once I reminded him, Frank said that was indeed a good project for the day and he got right on it...examining the space and how it would need to be done.

I've complained about the island in the past I know.  One of the things that is pretty dumb about it is that it only has 2 plugs and they are both on the far side of the island by the stools.  So in order to plug in my mixer or some other kitchen appliance, I have to plug in an extension cord and drag it across the island to my appliance.  Frank said he could put one closer to the front of the island where I work.  I am ridiculously excited about this idea! ha!

The new plug, while much closer to where I work, does have to be a bit lower because of the drawer there.  Still, I won't have to use an extension cord to access it.

And here it is all put back together!

(Frank even cleaned off the counter, so yahoo for that as well!)

I decided that I wanted to redo my closet, add some shelving and maybe a drawer or two.

I only got as far as emptying the closet but this will be just inconvenient enough that it will probably (hopefully) spur me into action and into finishing the project even after I have to go back to work on Tuesday.

I couldn't talk Frank into going to Home Depot tonight to buy the shelving though.

He was quite surprised to see that I had started this project actually.  He was probably hoping that the plug was enough to satisfy me.

Hiking adventures

We skipped town for a day and went down to Canyonlands National park for some hiking on Saturday.  The weather was AMAZING.  Nearly 60 degrees and sunny.

We've done a few hikes down there so we decided to venture to one we had seen but never felt quite up to doing.  We did the "Confluence Overlook" trail which is a 10 mile hike that is described as "strenuous".   We only did 6 miles though because, well, have you seen us?  We aren't exactly in peak physical condition.  But we've been exercising and trying to improve so why not give it a go.

I do have a knee that gets kind of mad after too much hiking so I was the one who told Frank that I thought 6 miles would be plenty this time. He probably would have done the whole thing, crazy guy.

It was a really fun hike with lots of different kinds of terrain.  The beginning included a fair amount of scrambling up rocks which made us a bit nervous, not gonna lie.  But there were also some flat spots, thankfully!

We did manage to get lost a couple of times.  The first time added a good 1/2 mile to the trek and we were thankful we had brought Frank's new binoculars (birthday gift!) because we had to use them to find the rock cairns we had apparently missed.

Here we are climbing up to what looks like it might be a cool overlook.

This was the 1 mile mark.

Here's a little info about Frank:  he isn't that good at noticing things like, say, road signs and ahem...rock cairns.  He just walks along on the path that appears to be the right one.  Well, on this particular hike, you can go off in the totally wrong direction if you aren't watching.  After our first detour we started being more careful but I realized several times that we had either stepped right over a log or rock grouping that was supposed to show us where NOT to go or we had walked right past a rock cairn showing us a turn. ha! Oh man. We are lucky we made it back, I swear.  It became a bit of a joke whenever Frank was in front.

so pretty!

We actually came across an old ladder that is attached to the side of the canyon so that you can get up this slick rock area.

There were tons of pretty over looks.

And we reached one area where we were excited to look back and see the car!

We knew we could probably find out way back at least.

And it also made us feel like we had accomplished something since our car was just a speck in the distance.

I love this combo of the red rocks with the mountains behind.

This stuff below is called Biological Soil Crust.  It is found in the desert and helps to control erosion, holds moisture and is alive with life.  It's important to never step on it and ruin it.  There was lots of it on this hike, although it's hard to capture in pictures, especially with just a phone.

We stopped for lunch at the halfway point and enjoyed this lovely view.

Although it was nice and warm, there were occasionally shady spots with snow.

Here is the overlook from the beginning and the view on the way back through.

And check out these cool formations that look like a pair of boots!

Here we are at the end of the hike.  I'm looking a bit red, a sign that I actually exercised!

We came back to the car and a big crow who had been hanging around as we got ready to hike, came right back and hung out, hoping for some hand outs I'm sure.

We got in the car and started eating a little bit and I heard a loud noise only to look up and see this:

I opted to keep the window closed to get the picture since it seemed like he might enjoy biting my face off.

We only came across on other person as we hiked and he was headed back as we were going outbound.  One thing we like about hiking in southern Utah is the lack of crowds.

I made a joke after he hiked away, that maybe he had come out here with a friend and then murdered said friend.  Then he came across us!  And so, fearing we might give away his secret, our lives were now in danger.  It was just a joke, but of course after that, I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't coming back! 

Frank started making jokes about "the murderer" and even when we got back to the car we saw a truck waiting nearby and he said,"What if that's the murderer's truck? He's been waiting for us to come back!"

We never found a body and the guy didn't murder us so all is well, except in my imagination apparently.