Home Improvement, Spupspe Style

Stanley's parents were visiting for the last couple of weeks, and they left two days ago. They helped out with housekeeping and did some home improvement projects, which I will list here.

1. Added a light switch to the kitchen so now there is a light switch at both doors, so you don't have to walk across the kitchen to turn on the light. Excellent for safety, and will probably save several minutes of time in the next several years.


2. Rewired the finished basement lights so you can turn them all on and off from the top of the stairs instead of having to walk down the stairs to turn off some of them.


3. Put a dimmer switch in the basement so we don't have to unscrew certain bulbs in certain recessed lights to watch TV.


4. Put a dimmer switch in the nursery so Blueb doesn't go blind when I change her diaper at 3 am. I had insisted on bright lights before she was born, because it made the nursery look nice, but I suddenly preferred dim light once she arrived. At least at 3 a.m.


5. Replaced the thermostat, which for some reason had been randomly setting itself to 20 degrees F rather than 68, which rendered it kind of useless. You could re-set it once it started to feel cold in the house, but we really wanted a thermostat that automatically controlled the temperature.


6. Replaced several ugly, old ceiling light fixtures with decent-looking ones.


7. Added a mudroom with a pantry at the back entry. Yes, that's right: they added a room to the house. It's pretty terrific. We previously used a bedroom just off the back hallway as a mudroom. This bedroom had doors at both ends, which made it more of a hallway than a bedroom. And one door was right next to the back door. Convenient but kind of wrong for a kid's bedroom. Now we have a real bedroom and a real mudroom, and a pantry! Although we took space from the bedroom to do it, I think it improves the bedroom because it's now secluded, and it has sort of an L-shape to it now instead of being a boring square, which makes it cute and architecturally interesting. Beds and furniture will still fit.

Here are photos showing the steps in the mudroom construction.

Stanley and Mr. Spupspe putting up the frame.

Finished frame. Note the ugly ceiling light fixture.

The bedroom. Sheet rock up, and the goopy stuff troweled on and smoothed out, so all these walls need is paint. Can you guess what color I'm considering? The yellow walls and ceiling will be painted as well. The color needs to work for an office, guestroom, or kid's bedroom, so I thought a light apply green, with a shade or two darker green on the far wall. Not sure about the ceiling; white with a slight hint of green? Note the lovely light fixture. It's new.

Here is the finished mudroom as seen from the kitchen.



Here is the mudroom before Hazel filled the pantry with crap. Mrs. Spupspe does not typically smile this way in photos; I think she was in the process of saying something.

After Hazel filled the pantry with crap.

I still plan to add a rug and some Roman shades and maybe some artwork. I absolutely love this room.

Here is Stanley after sanding the sheetrock. Someone should have worn a mask. Can you guess who? We kept the doors closed so as not to spread the dust throughout the house.

Have a great weekend!