home improvements

The last couple of days, a friend who is starting a handyman business did some work for me - both inside and out. He did a great job at a reasonable price. He took apart an old, rusty metal shed, hauled the pieces away and put up my new RubberMaid shed. It looks great! He also did some odd jobs which I couldn't do for myself - like fix the back gate, clean and stain one part of the deck which was just too high for me to work on (I'm a coward when it comes to heights), replace a piece of drainpipe which had several leaks, and install a light in a small room in the basement (intended as a bathroom, but no fixtures). This room is going to become a studio where I can 'play with clay' at home. I never work at home because it is such a mess to clean up the clay that inevitably falls on the floor and, frankly, my dining room table, which is the only place I could work, is never clear of papers!

So now I have a room for my clay adiction. The only problem is -the little room is already pretty full of other stuff, including several buckets of hardened clay. (Bone dry clay can be recycled, but requires some work to make it usable.) There are 5 plastic bins of seed for the birds, a 40 bottle wine rack, shelves that hold laundry supplies, empty flower pots and other odd bits, two large metal coolers, a chest that holds my old record collection, none of which I have played in at least 10 years, and some empty boxes that are nice and sturdy and surely will be useful someday. I'm sure you get the picture. I confess, I am a packrat, a hoarder. I cannot seem to get rid of things that 'might come in handy someday.' Kate, who is ruthless about getting rid of unneeded stuff, has offered to help me clean out the basement the next time she visits. (I'll have to make sure we have many more interesting things to do, so that she never has time to do this!)

Anyway, I really am going to get that little room cleared out and turned into a studio --- one of these days. Some of the items in there can (and willl) be discarded. Even I don't keep all the empty boxes that come my way. Some things perhaps can go in the new shed. However, before that happens, I have to sort through the things that were in the old shed and get rid of some of them. Help! Getting rid of stuff is difficult even after I have decided what to discard, because our trash people will only take certain items, so I'll have to drive the other things to the dump or wait for a 'dumpster day' here in the development. Luckily, just now I seem to have some extra energy (don't know where that came from, but I'll take it, thank you.) so if I get started tomorrow and keep at it through the weekend, perhaps I will be successful at discarding and reorganizing. It's supposed to rain on Saturday, so I won't be tempted to work outside. I'll keep you posted on my progress or lack of it!

I think I'll take a photo of the room as it is now and then when it's finished, and 'one of these days' I'll put the photos up here so you can see my accomplishments.