Laundry Room and Neighbors

Things are starting to happen so fast around here we can hardly keep up! Last week, we had the basement painted and tomorrow the carpet gets installed. At that point, we consider the basement complete. We do plan to do small changes over time, like replace windows and interior doors, but as far as phase 1 goes, it will be done tomorrow. Today we finished up the laundry room. We had large black matte hexagon tile installed.

Can you spy the door to the cat "water closet"?

This shot looks into the TV room. Tomorrow you will see carpet not cement!

Please forgive the still cloudy tile. The pictures were taken as soon as the grout was finished so everything still needed (and needs) a good wipe down. As soon as we could walk on the tile, we got to work installing the pipe shelves we made a while back. Since I wasn't going to get my clean white laundry room, we are embracing the industrial look.

standard pipes with cut to size boards, stained and poly sealed

Adjacent to this shelf wall, we installed a pipe that is perpendicular to the wall. The idea is to allow us to hang dry clothes. Luckily, this puts the drip dry items directly over the floor drain.

The plan is to put in a hanging ironing board. There is also a place for the steamer. Now that I am not using it to tear out old wallpaper, I can finally stop looking like a homeless person at work and iron/steam my clothes. We moved the washer and dryer back in, and by we, I mean Michael and a guy everyone calls Pancho.

The leaning board to the left will eventually lay on top of the washer and dryer. Because I have zero experience and making most of this up as I go, it was of little surprise that I measured incorrectly and I now need one of the guys cut it down a bit tomorrow before it will fit.

I can't wait to update you all on the carpet and any decorating tasks that will be happening over the weekend. Until then, I would like to introduce you to a neighbor Michael met on his way out to the car today:

It is a toss up as to who was more startled, Michael or the snake. The dude was just sunning on the sidewalk like he owns the place when Michael comes cruising out to his car (like he owns the place) and both critters were startled. The snake made for the fence (seen above) and Michael continued to the gym, albeit, a little more jumpy. It is so funny to think that we are roughly 3-4 miles from our previous house, but those miles are up the mountain. This results in being MUCH closer to nature than we had prepared ourselves for. To recap, here is a list of our neighbors:

• Snakes (obviously)
• Rabbits (my favorite!!!)
• Deer
• Mountain Lion (captured two blocks away, as per Channel 13)
• White Ferret (lives in our front bushes according to our neighbor)
• Badger (as reported by our human neighbor)
• Rats (usually as road kill, hence the snakes)
• Praying Mantises
• Some large odd looking leaf bugs
• One gangly rabid looking poodle

A coworker of mine lives two blocks north of us and he has seen giraffes from his back porch. To be upfront though, his property backs up to the zoo so......maybe that does not count.