RENOCATIONS

Let’s get one thing straight before I answer that question.

I’m a homebody. My wife and I think staying home, not answering the phone, and indulging in some small remodel is the way to go.

So renocations (there’s a new word for you. It means you stay home and renovate the house. I think I’ll copyright the word and everytime someone uses it, I’ll get a nickel) are the way we go.

One of the more productive renocations was when we converted our old Dining Room into a pantry.

It was also one of the most stressful.

First, let me paint a picture for you. The dinning room was too small to really do much with. It was dark, crowded, and pretty much useless. We’d lived her for over twenty years and eaten in there maybe twice. If we went into the room twice a week was probably too much.

It was pretty much wasted space.

We’d been using the downstairs for a pantry and my wife had gone down to get stuff. She was coming up stairs, and tripped on the top tread. A few more inches and she’d have cracked her head open. I suggested turning the room into a pantry.

The Surprise was she went for it.

My wife is the designer and she came up with a masterful plan. There was just one little thing I couldn’t understand and no amount of explaining on her part could get it through my head that this would work.

We would install cabinets up high to hold glasses and etc. But there would be shelve units built under them.

“We’ll attach the uprights directly to the wall.”

“And how about the ones in the middle?” I asked.

“We attach them up here on the top,” she explained, pointing where the upper cabinets would be.

“We won’t screw them in down below?”

“No.”

“They’ll move.”

” No, they won’t.”

Until I went in and did it, I couldn’t see what she was getting. Nor could I understand that it would hold together. I just couldn’t see that the shape of the structure was all that was needed to really hold it’s shape.

We purchased the cabinet material, the shelving material and flooring. And I took several days off to get it done in.

Demo was the easiest. That meant emptying the room, tearing out the old carpet, and doing some serious work.

One of the first things that had to happen was move the electrical boxes higher. One of the things the room had going for it was that it had a boatload of electrical outlets. The outlets were along the floor and needed to be raised several feet up so they would clear the countertops.

This was a very straight forward exercise. It involving a yard stick, a square, a box cutter and a wire fishing pole. The process was the same. Remove the outlet. Cut the hole. Run the fishing pole down to the old outlet box, and tape new wire to it. Connect the new to the old and repeat around the room.

The only place this differed was on the wall that opened into the formal living room. This entrance would be closed off. I’d installed several 2X4s vertically into it. I ran electrical from the nearest outlet and put a couple of outlets into it.

With that wall sealed off, things got fun.

My grandson Austin came over and help hold over cabinets in place while I secured them into the wall studs. Then we moved the lower cabinets in. Julie painted them and I put the butcher block countertop on.

With all that done, there was one last thing to do. That was put down the flooring. It was the kind that supposed to click and lock in place. I couldn’t make it work. I was getting more and more frustrated with it. Indeed, if it’s possible for a God serving Christian to lose his salvation, I was close.

Julie said knock off for the night. I got up the next morning and went back to work. Within an hour I had the floor down.

Finally came her big plan. I screwed the uprights onto the shelves, and cut shelves that would go in. That’s when I saw how this would work. The shelves themselves would hold the uprights in place.

It was a lot of hard work, but the results were worth it.

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