Winter Storm 2014

Oregon finally had a winter storm.  It began Thursday mid-morning and shut down schools (and work) by 1:00 pm.  It took me almost 2 hours to get home.

Coincidently, Thursday was also the day we had our new heat pump installed.  That required them taking out the old furnace

Boo!  Hiss!

Yeah!!!

Friday brought more snow and work was canceled.  Sandi and I had to run a few errands and fortunately, the roads were passable. 

By Friday afternoon, the roads were getting worse and more snow was falling.  Though Sandi had Friday off, the storm was bad enough that we were both concerned about Sandi's ability to get to work on Saturday evening.  So Sandi packed enough food and clothes for 3 days of work and we trekked out to catch the MAX at Beaverton Transit Center. 

The train leaving for East Portland left at 5:00 and Sandi headed to a nursing friend's house near the hospital.  I walked home to a quite house and more falling snow. [Update: I just talked to Sandi before her shift on Saturday night and she said that the MAX is severely delayed tonight; it is doubtful she would have made it to work from Beaverton today.]

This morning there was a nice reprieve from the wind and snow. I took a walk and enjoyed the quiet from a snowed-in city.



a little creek



the local toboggan run

The house is quiet and warm thanks to the new heat pump (big industrial looking thing on the right side of the house).

 

ice-cycle at the front door

 

quite streets

 

blanket of snow

Sunday will be another quiet day.  All the churches are closed.  The only thing I will have to do is walk to the local Red Box and return the DVD I rented.  If there is anything left on the shelves of Safeway, I might getting something for dinner (all the dairy was gone and chips & snacks isle was decimated).  Other than that, I'll stay on the couch with a good book.



Closet Remodel (or the Kruger Reclamation Act of 2014)

Sandi brought with her into our marriage a love for all things 'Elfa.'  Elfa is a closet organizing system sold through the Container Store.  Every January, they have a 30%-off sale.  For us the timing was perfect.  We had someone stay with us for a couple weeks in December and we were surprised how displaced our belongings were as we made room for her in our guest room.  Certainly, there has got to be a better way to store our stuff.

 

 

Notice on the right the 'linen closet' is used to store Sandi's clothes (not that I ever used the linen closet as a linen closet as a bachelor).

 

It took us a few hours to rip everything out.  We decided to permanently remove the doors to give better access.  That included the trim.  (As an aside, someday I would love to either replace or paint over the dark-stained trim in the house.  It's dated.) 

Here is Sandi painting over 35+ years of patching

Now comes the fun part: installing the shelves

We did it!

 

We almost emptied one guest room closet and part of an other into our updated closet.

(For the record, I still get my 1/3 of the space.)  We reclaimed the linen closet and were able to convert the guestroom dresser back to it's intended purpose.

We finished this in one day.  Phase II was a little more time-consuming.  We wanted to visually blend the closet into the rest of the room.

 I still have left-over drywall from when I finished the garage.

 

 

 

I used an entire bucket of mud to patch the drywall and blend it to the existing wall.  I'm sure a professional would have used 1/2 that amount.

Texturing drywall is an art and a skill.  I'm getting better at it with each project but it still is a nerve-racking experience.  Painting the textured wall went pretty quickly.  And now, for the trim:

 

 

To be dramatic, here is the before and after: