Last week I mentioned that we finally filled in the wall cracks where our electrical cables are laid. That little project only took us about 2 hours to complete…but we needed about a year to get around to actually doing it. Please forgive my poor photography below.
Since it was a nice 4-day weekend here in Germany, we were looking for a project to do. There was a high likelihood that it would rain off and on the whole time, so we started to wonder if an indoor project might be a bit more practical. It was also very blustery and windy which really would have made work in our garden just yucky.
So we decided that, although it was not at the top of our to do list, the mudroom would be a really fantastic project to make a few strides forward on, especially since we’re going to have a guest here soon. We actually thought she was coming on April 6th but now she’ll be here starting on the 10th. But I can assure you that even if we use guests as an excuse to do things around here, the projects are still mostly for ourselves. And once the mudroom is finished, it’s going to be the greatest thing ever.
You may recall that it looked something like this in the last post:
And below is what is looks like now. Saturday morning we first went to the home improvement store to buy more paint rollers and trays…and all the shelving components we needed for our big mudroom closets. We started with painting on Saturday afternoon when we got back and were finished in just a couple hours. It never ceases to amaze us how much difference a bit of paint can make in a room.
See? No more bullet holes all over the place. 😉
Now, as is par to course with us, our measurements didn’t end up perfect so the amount of shelving and the layout I thought we would have had to be modified a bit as we started building. And unfortunately, the building materials are a bit on the crappy side even though they seemed to be decent quality when we picked them. When we went to set one of the shelves upright, the whole thing collapse together. We should have set it up differently…or better yet, built most of it standing up like we did parts of the first shelf. Live and learn.
This coming weekend we will go back for a few replacement parts (side and middle boards of the cabinet) so we can build the second shelf. But we may have enough pieces to take back that the extra pieces will still be covered in the original 700 euros we paid for everything (plus a few other random things at the DIY store). Which would be really nice. Perhaps we can even talk our way into getting the broken pieces exchanged. Who knows but it’s worth a try.
When it comes to these shelves, I have to be honest — when you’re talking about buying furniture that you just screw together here and there, it’s probably not going to last generations. We’ve moved our IKEA furniture from time to time…but anything that has to be taken apart and put back together never fits quite right after that. Sadly, inexpensive closets are just not feasible when you’re building with all wood –nor is it quite as simple to assemble. Even Mackenzie was ready to start putting the shelves together by herself after watching her daddy do it a few times. The shelves seriously assembled in minutes with no instructions at all. Although I’m sure we could have benefited a bit from instructions when it came what the proper way to set the shelf upright was.
So here’s the halfway finished closets. There’s still a bunch of junk in this room that shouldn’t be there…that black tower of drawers for example…but hopefully you still notice the wonderful, finished feeling the room is starting to take on. We still have a little ways to go until it’s really finished, but it’s all pretty simple stuff now.
Behind the blue ladder above is a metal drain spout that has to be Flexed off…not a fun task and we have to find the key to our Flex so the blade can be changed…but after that the shelf will hopefully just fit over this hole.
We have to go get the side and middle piece for the other shelf…which will be similar to the finished shelf…just have a slightly more narrow closet area. The closet which is finished now will hold the jackets we are wearing regularly and the out of season jackets will be stored somewhere else. Shoes will be kept in the bottom of the closet. And I have very little idea at this stage as to what will go in the rest of the storage space…but I’m certain I will find plenty of things. Did I mention I already love this closet?
This rack below used to hold some sort of saw or drill…I can’t remember if we actually saw the device that sat on it or if it had been removed before we bought the house…but it must have been a seriously heavy piece of machinery because this insanely hardcore stand is cemented into the wall. We bought a Country Living Grain Mill last year and Stefan built a really nice mount for it…but we put it in one of our storage rooms because we just weren’t sure where it would fit anywhere else. Unfortunately, we are rarely in that room so we never grind any flour…and it’s mounted too high up on the wall. So, Stefan looked at this green arm as we were moving stuff around and realized that it would be perfect for the grain mill. Certainly sturdy enough and a decent height also…plus every time we walk in that room, we can turn the handle a few times and we’ll have plenty of freshly ground flour in no time.
The light above it was also there from the get go and I think it has great character…so it will be staying also. I guess I can use it to inspect my grains and the parts of the mill. 😉
We’re also planning to put in a counter top over our washer/dryer and mini-fridge which will give us plenty of extra counter space when we’re cooking huge meals, or making wine, or doing just about anything else. We’ve also found that the mudroom is the perfect place to use our fryer. Most of the fat smell stays in the mudroom instead of making our house smell like Kentucky Fried Chicken.
And the last little part of the mudroom puzzle will be to close off the holes that were created when we divided up this room (see the photo below) which run down two corners of the room. It’s a bit hard to grasp what you’re looking at here but the white part is what we’ve just patched. It’s about 2 inches thick concrete wall panels…and then there’s a gap and the gray part is the outer wall. Through these areas is where our little mouse friend was getting into the space above our kitchen and throwing parties…but I’ll discuss more about him later. We hope that foam insulation, a little drywall (if necessary) and plaster will get the job done.
We hope to get the replacement stuff this weekend and, depending on the weather, we’ll either put together the shelf and make more strides here (although it’s such a quick process we will probably do it in spite of anything else we have planned). And assuming the weather is decent, we’ll also be putting together an aquaponics system somewhere on the farm…either in the courtyard at a new location we discovered yesterday or in our greenhouse in the garden!
As a side note, the home improvement store Bauhaus in Hanau may want to consider training their check-out clerks a bit better. As we pulled up with all the pieces of the cabinet (and it was a LOT of stuff), the cashier asked why we didn’t just purchase something pre-built from a store. We both looked at her like she’d said the sun was shining green today, and explained that we were building something custom to fit a specific space. There was no chance to find furniture somewhere that would fit this. Not to mention that the corner is at a 100° angle instead of 90°. I mean is that company trying to make money or not? Why encourage your customers to shop elsewhere, I have to ask. Are they trying to get out of the home improvement, DIY segment? Doh!
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