Ice storm

(Originally posted on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 by Cathy)

Post? You wanted a post with your photo?

Dalty's Playroom

(Originally posted on Tuesday, February 6, 2007 by Tim)

Dalton?s playroom is coming along nicely. It was painted in the big pre-labor painting fiasco this summer. We then had new windows put in but the guy did a lot of damage to the frames installing them. I would say I spent a good 8-10 hours repairing the damage and repainting. I think we?ll hire someone else next time. I?ve also patched and repainted the mark/hole in the ceiling where the old overhead lamp used to be. Oh, and it has new carpet. I had to patch up some of that job as well, but most of that was replacing a piece of broken trim.

This makes it time to start furnishing the room. We?ve even already spent some money. The Grand, a furniture store near us had a sale this last weekend. We had a coupon for 10% off so we headed over to see if we could find a sleeper sofa for the playroom. We?re not usually sale shoppers and I realize that they probably marked everything up 20% and then sent us a 10% coupon, but we do need a couch in there.

We?re not likely to ever really take advantage of a clearance sale. We?ve gotten kind of picky in our old age. We wanted a specific color and fabric to our couch and we were willing to pay extra to have it customized. We also paid extra to have them put the stain guard on it. I?m not sure whether that was a good choice or not. I worry that stain guard is something like the extended warrantee on appliances, not needed but they sell it to you anyway. I also wonder if we could have done the same thing with Scotch Guard or some such. Well, in theory, stain guard is a good idea since it will be in the playroom and Dalty will be on it a bunch. We?ve also been of the opinion that we have much more money than time these days. It helps that we?ve saved so much by skipping on Dalton?s vaccinations.

So the couch is on order and we were trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the room. Cat wanted to put up some shelves or bookcases to hold toys and leave the rest of the room open for play. In surfing for storage systems, we came across this company that makes modules that you can arrange as you like. As a bonus, it's made in the USA which is pretty hard to find these days. I'd much rather help employ American workers than assist China in becoming the next superpower.

We?re quite smitten by the system and will probably order 18 or so blocks in a week or so. The pictured structure is designed to run along the wall and under the window. As such it needs to be one row high for those 6 boxes in the middle. It can only be 3 boxes wide on each side. On the sides, the height can 1, 2 or 3 and it doesn?t need the shelves (it could be solid boxes). The red matches the couch to be, the yellow matches the walls, and the white matches the trim. I?m providing all this information on the off change that you have greater artistic ability than we do. We're pretty happy with this design and colors, but we wouldn?t be surprised if someone else came up with something better. You can find a power point file with our design here for easy modification (if you have power point). Try to keep from going too nuts on triangle openings as we think it will be hard to place stuff in those cubbies.