It rained uncommonly hard in Seattle this past weekend. You might be surprised to learn that it’s not all that rainy in Seattle; it’s just usually overcast and slightly damp (with amazingly gorgeous summers!). It rains most days in the winter, but it rains less than 20% of the time (hour-wise) even in our rainiest months. But this past weekend, we got something like four inches of rain, and it was quite windy to boot.
What to do? Sarah had a rare day off on Saturday and a couple of library books that come due soon, so she got under a blanket and kept the couch from floating away. Reading and watching the weather show was tempting to me, but instead I retreated to the basement to try to build some shelves and get our mess organized.
It’s been a while since we posted here, but you’ve been killing time by re-reading our older posts, so you’ll recall that I discussed the less-than-useful shelves that were left in the basement for us:
Slightly more useful than an inflatable dartboard.
And you’ll recall that nothing really fit on them, leaving most of our basement a pile of mess:
Clutter much?
So, with the rain hammering on our windows, I put some tunes on the boombox, grabbed my four-pound hammer and my wrecking bar, and put those poor shelves out of their misery.
Definitely not the worst way to spend a rainy Saturday. Incidentally, this being our first big rainstorm since we bought the place, I was glad to find zero evidence of any leaking in the basement. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
With that taken care of, yesterday I got busy building some more useful shelves. I framed them out with 2×4’s I got from the neighbors and from my friend Joe:
Then I cut shelves from scrap particle board and MDF.
The shelves are able to hold most of the boxes and miscellaneous randomness that was cluttering our basement.
The basement is mostly clutter-free now, with the exception of my ski gear and golf clubs, plus some boxes and things for the Goodwill.
I think that someday soon, I’ll add a third wall of shelves, and some custom storage for our skiing, climbing, and tennis gear. But next in the project queue is to get started on the bathroom.