A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I’ve wracked my brain trying to think of ways to incorporate more storage into our bathroom without overcrowding it. It’s no easy task, for sure. You’d just have to see it to appreciate how impossible of a task it really is.

I found a shelf at the hardware store that I thought would work nicely. I took note of the dimensions of it, and came home and measured. I thought it would work, but then I thought about the wire shelf that was then in my bedroom. It’s one of those that you can take apart and reassemble in a number of ways, making it wide or tall. I measured the units of it, and they were actually a little smaller than the shelf at the store. So I decided to make it tall and give it a try in an attempt to save money.

I did, and I got it in the bathroom. At first I was proud of myself, because it seemed to fit nicely. I put a few things on it, because I wanted to see what Hubby thought. He was indifferent (which is much better than I expected), so I thought all was well. Ha.

That evening I went to give Pumpkin a bath, and I barely had room to move. Back to the drawing board. It’s still in there for the time being, but it’s gotta go. At least I didn’t waste our money on the shelf from the store, which would have definitely been too big.

I don’t want one of those over-the-toilet shelves, because the window is over the toilet and I don’t want it blocked. There’s just really no room for much of anything else, except if we switch out bathroom vanities. The one that’s in there is tiny, and we could maybe put in a slightly larger one. But that wouldn’t help much, unless we got one that was so tall I couldn’t use the sink without a stepladder.

I guess I’ll have to break down and store the towels (and probably some other stuff we’re accustomed to having in the bathroom) in our bedroom. Now I just have to find a workable way to do that.

I swear I think they could see our house from outer space. It’s the one that’s the hideous mustard yellow color.

On the occasions that I’ve had to give directions to our house, I’ve been telling people that it’s the bright yellow house in the curve. As long as they get on the right road, they don’t drive past it. There aren’t many houses around here (or, I hope, anywhere) that are the same color as ours.

As soon as we get everything else squared away, the yellow has got to go. I don’t mind a light, sunny yellow, but this color is just horrible. I think we’re going to go with nice, sensible white. Normally I’m not that conventional, but I want to leave the exterior shutters and porch railings the shade of green that they are. I love that color, and I can’t think of any other color that I would like better with it than white.

I’ve spent entirely too much time at the hardware store lately. Every time I go in there, I see something else I want for the house. I found a lovely park bench that would look nice on the front porch, and some carpet that would be great in the living room.

I was looking at pedestal sinks the last time I went in there. I saw this stunning black one I would love to have. But then we would need a black toilet and tub, too. Besides, our bathroom is way too small not to have a cabinet underneath the sink. We need a little storage in there anyway!

So I’ve come to the conclusion that I should not return to the hardware store anytime soon. If Hubby asks me to go pick something else up, I’m going to start talking about all the nice stuff I saw in there. That will probably be enough to make him decide to go get it himself.

Today has been pretty brutal for me. No big gigantic life-changing events, just a truckload of major annoyances. Nothing has gone as planned, and I’ll be glad when it’s all over with.

It actually started this past weekend. Pumpkin was sick, vomiting and having stomach pain. It subsided Sunday evening, and I sent her on to school on Monday. But Tuesday morning she said she was hurting pretty badly, so I kept her home for an hour until she perked up and then took her on to school. When she got off the bus it was the same old thing, so I made her an appointment for today.

She went in to school, and I picked her up to take her to the doctor. The plan was to take her to the doc, then take her back to school, and get home and get some work done that is overdue. I got some of it done before I went out to get her, and felt good because I was a step ahead of the game. Heh.

On the way to pick her up, Hubby called and asked me to pick up some more shingles for the roof. I begrudgingly agreed to, but told him I needed the Lowe’s discount card I had given him so I could save some money on them. He was in town, so he said he would meet me and give it to me. I was a bit annoyed about the whole ordeal, but thought that if that was the worst thing that happened today, things would be okay. If only.

So I took her to the doctor, and she said she wasn’t sure what the problem was. She had her pee in a cup, said there were some ambiguous abnormalities, and sent it off for a culture. She checked her thoroughly and said she was going to consult with another doctor about it. And she put her on Zantac.

With little accomplished, I took her to get some lunch and then back to school. Then I went to drop off her prescription. But the pharmacist informed me that it would have to be special ordered since it was the kind for kids, and he couldn’t tell me for sure if the insurance would cover it. I was concerned because it’s technically an over-the-counter drug, but they don’t sell the kind for kids over the counter. Medicaid doesn’t like to pay for stuff like that. He said he felt confident that they would, but couldn’t say for sure until he got the medicine and turned it in. And in the event that they don’t pay for it, it will set us back $200. Yikes!

After that bombshell, I headed to Lowe’s to get the shingles. I went in, and decided to look at shelving units for the bathroom while I was there. Then my phone rang. It was Hubby, who said he was feeling bad and needed me to come get him and take him to his truck so he could come home. I left and went to get him, and he wanted to go to the store to get some crackers. I took him there and to his truck, and then he decided that he would go back to the jobsite and try to tough it out. Grr.

Anyway, I went back to Lowe’s and told them that I needed 15 bundles of black shingles. I paid for them, pulled my truck up to the loading area, and then realized after looking at the shingles that we in fact had been using gray. So I had to get a refund and let them re-ring the transaction, which took forever. Can’t blame them, it was my fault, but it was still a pain in the rear. I got the shingles and headed home.

Hubby got home an hour or so after Pumpkin, and he was feeling awful. He lay down, and I decided to wash a load of clothes so they would be ready to hang up in the morning. I went down to the basement, and heard some lovely noises coming from the bathroom above. I put a rush on getting the clothes started, but Pumpkin came running down there all upset over Hubby being sick. So I quickly dumped the clothes in and started them, and rushed out of the basement, shutting the door behind me.

Once all that was over with, I sat and kept him company for a while. Then he decided that he wanted some crackers, and had me call his mom (who is now 5 minutes away) and see if they had any. They did, so I went to get them. She nearly talked me to death once I got over there, but I finally got away and came home. Then I went to get the clothes, which should have been done, and bring them in.

But when I got down there, I was greeted with a basement full of water. When I rushed out, I had knocked the drain hose out of the drain, causing the wash water to drain out when it got half full. The clothes hadn’t started washing, and water was gushing out into the floor. Nice.

I turned the washer off to give the well pump a break, put the hose back in the drain, and started sweeping water down the drain. I never did get it all cleaned up, but I worked on it until my back couldn’t take it any more. I turned the washer back on, and the clothes washed without further incident (except for getting out of balance and making me run down there yet again to correct it).

So I’ve accomplished very little today. I guess I’ll be up late again tonight.

As promised, here are the top things I don’t like about my new home. I’m going to keep this list to five for a few simple reasons: I am trying to remain as positive as possible about our new home, several of the things I don’t like can be condensed into one category, and I should really be working right now but I can’t quit blogging long enough. Anyway, here goes:

1. It needs lots of repairs. And I mean lots of them. Hubby is working on the roof a little at a time, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We need a new outlet for the dryer before I can even hook it up, the sliding glass door needs to be fixed so it won’t come off track every time you open it, the living room and our bedroom need to be refloored, the shower pipes leak, and so on. We have our work cut out for us.
2. We have the world’s smallest full bath. The only way they could have made it any smaller would be to put the toilet and sink in the tub. Seriously. I’ve seen half baths that were larger. No walk in bathtubs for us.
3. The location of the washer and dryer hookups sucks. They’re in the basement, which normally wouldn’t be that bad. But there is no way to get in the basement from inside the house. You have to go under the porch. Not really a big deal when it’s nice out, but crappy when it’s rainy or cold. We will be adding on a laundry room as soon as possible.
4. There is no real driveway. Just more or less a pulloff from the road to park in. It’s not a far walk to the house or anything, but I worry about someone coming around the curve we live in too fast and smacking one of our vehicles. If that were to happen and we were gone or in bed, they could get away without us ever knowing who it was. At least there’s not much chance of them hitting the house, because it’s up on a fairly steep hill that would probably stop them first.
5. The color of the outside is horrible. It’s one of my least favorite colors, and a vomitous shade of it at that. We’ll be changing that as soon as we get the more important repairs out of the way.

Well, there you have it. There are several things I would like to change. The good news is that we can actually change them. It’s our house, after all. And that outweighs all of the bad stuff as far as I’m concerned.

The bathroom in our new house is very, very tiny. Once we get all of the important stuff done, I’d like to make it bigger. I’m not all that picky over bathrooms, but this one is about the size of a postage stamp. It will take a lot of getting used to, especially since our old master bath was rather large.

I’m thinking we could knock down one of the walls and rebuild it to make the bathroom a few feet larger, and maybe spruce it up a bit. As it is, there is just enough room for functionality, and none left over for style.

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I’m thinking about getting new cabinet hardware for the whole house when we get our tax refund. It’s something I’ve wanted every since we got this place, I’ve just never gotten around to doing it. But I think it’s high time I did.

The handles on some of the cabinets are broken. And all of them are made in a way that I just don’t care for. The tops and bottoms of them are pointy, and it’s quite possible that someone could get hurt on them. Pumpkin ripped her pants badly one one of them one time, so it’s not hard to imagine that they could do serious damage to somebody’s skin, or even an eye if they fell next to them. Not good.

I’m going to see how many we need and figure up how much it would cost to replace them all. If that’s not practical, I should at least be able to do some of them.

I have a lighting fixture in my kitchen that irks me every time I look at it. I call it a chandelier, but it’s more like an upside-down lamp hanging from the ceiling. It’s hideous, and it hangs down too low. I’m pretty short, and I hit my head on it every now and then.

I would love to replace it with a nice, classic piece by Hinkley Lighting or something similar. It’s not going to happen right now, though. Even if I had the cash to buy a new fixture, I would probably have to hire an electrician to put it in. Hubby might be able to handle it with some guidance if he was feeling well, but right now there’s no way he could do it. And I’m just not going to even think about attempting it.

I’ve never been the type to pay someone to do something that I could feasibly do myself. But I’ve never committed myself to tackling a huge home improvement project either. So most of the improvements that I would like made to my house have so far gone undone.

I have no shortage of home improvement ideas. I would love to paint my living room walls, put new fixtures in the bathrooms, and have more attractive carpet. One area that sorely needs work is my kitchen flooring. If I could talk Hubby into helping and get myself motivated, I believe that we could accomplish most of those things without paying an arm and a leg.

LuxuryHousingTrends.com has some great home improvement ideas on their blog. Maybe one day I can really get into beautifying my home and incorporate some of their featured products.

The lighting in my home leaves much to be desired. The “chandelier” in the kitchen looks a lot like an upside-down lampshade, and it just doesn’t do a good job of lighting up the area. I could also use more light in the living room, and most of the fixtures in the rest of the house are drab or just plain ugly.

ShopPremier.com has some gorgeous home lighting fixtures. They’ve got a beautiful mini-chandelier that I can just visualize in my kitchen. And if you’re looking for a bargain, they also have an eBay store where you can find great closeout deals. I could go crazy there if I had the money to spare!