All Work and Still Some Play

Sam went back to work today. I guess it's always a bitter-sweet thing. It's crazy to think that another whole summer has vanished into the memories of our past.

Last week Sam finished another project in the house. As he was doing so,  I started listing the many, many projects he completed this summer.
- Installed 2 doors and one door frame.
- Painted said doors and the baby's room.
- Moved furniture and junk from one room to another to another.
- Put together new furniture and baby's furniture.
- Took out old shower door and installed shower curtain.
- Seeded large sections of our back yard.
- Planted and weeded our garden (I helped with that, too).
- Painted baby furniture & other stuff.
- Hauled in 2 truckloads of dirt and leveled a large section of our backyard.
- Ripped out a large section of soggy, flooded sheetrock.
- Installed a light in a hallway that never had a light.
- Installed a new faucet and garbage disposal.
- He even mowed the lawn a few times. Bwahaha.

Hooray for a teacher's summer vacation!

I'm amazed that even with all the work, he still managed to get in almost three weeks of camping/fishing trips and numerous trail-running excursions. (See his blog here for more on those adventures.) No wonder the summer went by so quickly.

As for the latest project, here's what he did.

Winston's closet went from having wanna-be fast track removable metal shelving that really didn't make much use of the space (didn't get a before photo, unfortunately) to something like this:

Sam remembered to grab a photo before he did any more work.

All complete.

Now Sam has redone or added to every closet (except one) in our house to make the most of the space. For example, he added another shelf to the top of our coat and linen closets because we didn't need a 4-foot space above the last shelf. This has really helped make better use of otherwise wasted space.

I have learned by watching Sam that adding shelving to closets is probably one of the easiest home improvement projects. I think I could even do it all by myself (but I'm happy to let him take the lead). It's helped us get rid of dressers--we now just use the space in our closets.

I've also learned that Winston has way too much stuff. I'm trying to sneak things into the donation box without him noticing...