Shipments At The Bamboo Lagoon

Well our shipments have finally come and the house is chock full. We got the last of the moulding installed the day before the first one showed up. We went from mostly empty to pretty darn full.

These first ones are only the first shipment, which was the stuff that had been in storage for 7 years while we were living out of the country. A lot of this stuff is getting purged.

Pile in weight room

Tons of book boxes taking up part of the living room

Dishpacks and book cases in the lving room/diningroom

Just one wall in the project room

The space I am living in until the unpacking is done

Our once empty laundry room

Then three days later (after working 2 10 hour shifts, so no unpacking was done) the second shipment arrived...basically a second half weight-wise. This was the stuff we took overseas with us and is the day to day stuff for the most part.

Weight room with even more stuff

Stacked in front of the first pile

Coming up the stairs to the main floor

Bedroom

Bedroom looking towards closet

Livingroom...so much stuff

Dining room...and table isn't in here yet

Kitchen with squiggle room on the sides

Backporch where some stuff will stay for a while

The nice thing about having it all here, is the ability to get rid of a bunch of stuff that we don't need or won't work with this house. Fortunately we have some great places to donate so a lot of stuff isn't going in the trash necessarily. I am not really interested in selling much of it, I would rather donate, but there are a few items that need to be researched in case they are worth more than we think. As a box gets emptied, a lot of times, it gets repurposed as a donation box for one place or another....we have ReStore, St Vincent's, BioMass, and a book exchange for the majority and then of course a good recycling center for the packing materials and boxes.

It will be quite a while before all of this stuff is unpacked and organized but hope to get the majority of it knocked out over the next few weeks. Even if some of it stays in boxes for a while, it will be organized to deal with at a later date.

Closet Fix (Finally)

Without the support on the end

This one has been on the list forever. This was broken when the water damage happened and we had to have that section of the closet replaced. Up until recently, we didn't need to hang anything in that closet so it wasn't a priority but since we have all of our stuff coming soon (like tomorrow), it was something that had to be done.

It really was quite easy...first mark where we needed the piece of wood to sit, and mark the studs in the wall. It was a piece of 1 x 4 that I used and cut to length on our chop saw.

Then predrilled two screw holes to mount the board. Once the board was mounted, then attached the plastic piece that holds the pole in place....really a pretty easy job and should have been taken care of ages ago.

Support in

Oh well, it is done now...and we probably won't end up hanging much in there since that closet is in our sports/weight room. Still needs painting but that will happen when the room gets painted.

Pre-delivery Garage Cleanup

Before cleanup and organization

We have 14,000 lbs of stuff showing up in the next few weeks and getting space in the garage is a must.

In the midst of this, we are having our floor replaced in the main section of the house, so we are really under the gun.

Dismantling the old vanity from our downstairs bathroom that we have been using as counter space in the garage is one of the big things. We can't take it to BioMass without getting all the hardware off it and removing the laminate top. There is also a big stack of wood from the kitchen and entryway tearouts that needs to be sorted.

Over the last few months the garage has been the dumping ground for a lot of the supplies we have for various projects without there really being any organization to it and that has to be dealt with.

Truck loaded up to go

Once everything that was being kept was organized and moved to one side of the garage, the stuff going to Biomass and Restore was loaded in the truck to be dropped off.

Ready for deliveries

Overall the cleanup was very satisfying and absolutely crucial to the eventual delivery of goods.