Our journey to household awesomeness

Let’s start with wood floors, since I really think that this is the second-most pressing issue in the house, after the basement walls. And to be clear, this is NOT just about the, erm, aesthetically displeasing carpeting that spreads around the main floor of the house like a fuzzy disease. Since we’ve started living in this house, we’ve been sick. It’s not the mold, since we have that under control through careful tinkering with the house’s humidity levels. It’s not the cats, since we’ve had them all along without (mostly) ill effects. I’m pretty sure it’s the carpeting.

The current carpeting has been in place in the house since somewhere around 1988, and in the intervening 22 years, it’s been exposed to who-knows-what, including dangerously toxic mold/mildew levels, pet dander, dead skin cells, and whatever has been spilled on it over the years. The result is that I’ve had to start taking my allergy medicine year-round, and most of the time while he is home, Kevin can’t breathe without a very heavy, wheezing crackle. It’s scary, and it needs to be resolved. And if it’s something other than the cruddy carpeting? Well, we’ll move on to the next possible solution with glorious new flooring.

Here is where the herringbone comes in: I’m obsessed with hardwood floors in this pattern. Lookie here, and you will be, too:

The problem with having such a long list of things that need to be done (or purchased) is that it’s difficult to know where to start. Well, we KNOW where to start: the basement walls. They’re cracked and bowing, and they need to be addressed first. We’re going to be installing wall anchors to pull the walls straight from the outside, and that’ll probably be done first thing after the ground thaws out and dries out this spring. It’ll be a pretty big, expensive project, although hopefully it’ll be taken care of within a few days’ time.

The problem, then, is figuring out what to tackle first after the walls are completed. Here are a few prospects:

• Tearing up every square millimeter of carpeting in the house and installing hardwood flooring ourselves
• Tearing out and rebuilding the basement bathroom
• Tearing out and replacing the stairs leading down to the basement, and walling-off the stairs and putting a door at the bottom of them so that it’s a separate space that isn’t open to the upstairs
• New couch
• The Kitchen of Doom

I’m going to follow this up with a series of posts filled with ideas that I have for these projects.
Where would you start?

Over the weekend, Kevin and I finally came to the soul-crushing conclusion that we need to get rid of the Expedit bookcase in our living room. It was soul-crushing for me, anyway. After moving it twice, I think Kevin was sort over the whole thing. Basically, our living room is simply too small and dark to have this black, hulking piece of furniture taking up so much room. Plus, we’re both trying to pare down our belongings, to move out of the realm of packrats who are owned by their belongings, and each and every one of those cubbyholes calls out to me in my sleep to be filled with new and interesting bits of nostalgia and kitsch. I can’t do it anymore! Behold, bad cell phone pictures:

Our lounge really isn’t a bad size, considering the fact that we live in a pillbox rancher from the 1950s. This bookcase, as you can see, makes the room look quite a bit smaller and more crowded. Also, it really limits the layout of the room, because it’s impossible to put it on any other wall. And sure, we’ve got cool stuff, and we like to showcase the REALLY cool stuff, but it doesn’t need to be out on display at all times. We want to streamline.

Over the weekend, I came across the shelter blog The Brick House (via Anna from Door Sixteen) for the first time, and I became smitten with her DIY shelving wall unit project. I’m talking deep smit. I love the very minimalist lines, with lots of wall white-space visible. Kevin’s into the idea, although he thinks it might be a little too “industrial” for his taste. Any ideas on keeping the same general concept, but making it a little foofier?