My house has about 900 square feet of floor space. (And an undoubtedly similar amount of ceiling.)
The living room, dining room and upstairs hallway have about 880 square feet of wall space.
Likewise, the three bedrooms have a combined wall space of approximately 896 square feet.
By comparison, the kitchen has a relatively paltry 168 square feet of wall space (not counting the space occupied by cabinetry).
This gives me a combined total of nearly 2000 square feet of wall space versus only 900 of floor space.
Those of you who use numerology for things such as predicting baseball playoffs may find some significance to these numbers. For myself, what’s clear is that even though they’re all approximations, if I could somehow figure out a way to walk on the walls, I’d have a lot more room to move around.
Lift With Your Knees
When the flooring was delivered on Thursday, it was carried from the van to my living room by two men; both of whom are probably in better shape than I’ve ever been. When they asked where to put it, I went for the easy solution and told them to put it against the wall, over by the window.
Shortly after they left, I realized that having the wood against the wall was going to interfere with my plans to wash and paint the walls. So I decided to move it.
Due to some unexpected circumstances, about the only thing I accomplished on Thursday was to move the TV to the basement. (Someone suggested that when it comes time to move things back, I should think carefully about whether I really want to keep some of the stuff. I’ve only switched the TV on once in 2008; clearly I have some thinking to do.) Friday, I already knew I was going out and wouldn’t get much done at home.
So today I moved the flooring materials into the middle of the room. A box containing 24 square feet of oak flooring has an appreciable mass, but it’s easy enough to move it five feet away from the window.
Moving 40 such boxes requires a bit of caution. (Hint: Bend your knees, not your back.)
Lumbering Along
The flooring material arrived today.
Migratory Furniture
Furniture continues to migrate from upstairs to down. At this point only the TV and one piece of the sofa are left in the living room. Aside from that and a card table full of plants, Terry pretty much has the ground floor to herself.
Compare the basement to a few days ago; it’s definitely filling up.
I’m no longer certain everything’s going to fit into the finished portion of the basement. So I’ve started getting a little “creative” about finding places to put things.
Champagne
Packing It In
This is what my basement looks like at the moment. As you might imagine, the rest of the house is beginning to look somewhat barren. I’m hoping to get a few more pieces of furniture down there in the next 24 hours, then I can start painting. (Presumably I’ll figure out what colors I want before I paint. At the moment I’m thinking “duct tape gray”.) The flooring materials are due to arrive on Thursday with installation commencing the following Wednesday.
And while the basement is filling up, this is probably the most organized my desk has been ever since the day Uncle Dick and I set it up.
Green Jungle
Two weeks ago Skink pointed out that the plant photos didn’t include any “Leafy Green Non-Flowering plants“.
Technically, the hosta do get flowers. Dainty little light purple flowers on stalks three feet high. The hummingbirds love them. But that won’t be until summer gets here. In the meantime they’re huge, green, and so densely leafy that they choke out the weeds.
Blue Bells
I thought the flower photos were over with, but then one more thing started blooming.
Packing Up
What with all the putting things in boxes and throwing stuff out, Wylie and Terry have definitely noticed that there’s something going on. They get stirred up when I pack up for a weekend away (particularly when I begin carting things out to the car) and this goes far beyond that.
Terry hasn’t seen the place this empty since the day we moved in, and Wylie, heck, he’s never seen it empty.
Here’s how the master bedroom looks now:
At this point the bed and the dresser (and sometimes Wylie) are just about the only things left in the room.
Likewise, the guest room is fairly well deserted:
If Marauder plans to drop any more pizza in the next two weeks, he’ll have to sleep on the floor. (And yes, that is a Nerf gun and a super soaker in the picture. Because you can never be too prepared.)
Soon I’ll start emptying out the living room.
Reading is Dangerous
The reading advocacy people tend to gloss this stuff over, but reading has some serious downsides.
Scooby Demotivator Literacy by ~Jaguaro on deviantART