Hallway remodel

Here is the top reason for not updating the blog lately--construction is tough. We re-built part of our hallway over the past 5 weeks--with the holidays, it seemed to stretch out forever. The hallway has always needed a little help. We have our laundry facilities in there, as well as our food storage pantry. We had a few of the walls torn down and re-built, bumping the wall out 6 inches to give more room in the closets. We put all the dryer venting inside a wall and cut a new hole in the roof to re-vent it (making it not visible, whereas before it ran externally up the wall), put in all new electrical wiring, put in recessed lighting in the hallway, and new can lights in the laundry and food storage, and built both closets in with shelving...a lot of dust, everywhere. One of those home remodeling projects that's not exciting for anyone else except the homeowners. And probably my parents :).

A sort-of before shot...the single bulb light hanging down is no longer...the laundry area (without the doors) and the food storage closet (with the doors). We also built door frames around both closets, which weren't there before.


The beams in place to bump out the wall...

We had to pull down part of the ceiling to put in the lights, and put in a new ceiling above the washer and dryer because it was just plain ghetto...
And as a fun twist, the washer flooded the first night the washer was put back, all over the floor...the hose wasn't connected to the back of the washer...I literally stood in the hallway and bawled, and bawled and bawled...then pulled myself together and ripped out the carpet for the 2nd time in 6 months. We hope to never see that orange linoleum again.


Putting in shelving in the laundry...we now have 3 shelves and a rod...


And my fantastic, come to my house at the end of the world, food storage closet...six 24-inch deep shelves, plus the bottom for water storage...I really let my reserves go over the past couple months, but now I've got the space to really build it back up...many people probably don't understand the excitement in this, but for us Californians who don't normally get basements and have to pay an arm and a leg to get a dinky house anyway, a closet like this is very exciting to me.