Sunday, February 10, 2008

"Spring" Cleaning & the new buffet

We have started doing projects around the house again. Slowly, very slowly, but things are getting done. A couple of weekends ago, we put more shelves into the huge armoire in our room. This gave us both reason to empty our clothes out and sort through them - eliminated some, really need to go through again and eliminate more. Also need to do the same with my hanging closet.

That same weekend, we replaced one set of kitchen cupboards with drawers - IKEA kitchens are really wonderful for this - you can walk in to IKEA and out with replacement cabinets. Anyway, that led us to empty out the cupboard under the phone - three years worth of clutter and junk- and throw a bunch of it away. It also allowed me to put the massive amount of pens and pencils into a drawer and clean off one end of the kitchen counter.

I also did a total reorg on the linen cupboard in the main bath.

This weekend, we bought the new buffet and hutch for the kitchen. When we did the reno, we built a spot at the end of the kitchen to hold a specific piece of furniture - 18 inches deep, up to 6 feet long and as tall as 8 feet. I had that furniture piece in my mind from day one. This year, before Christmas, we found a Canadian furniture manufacturer that could custom build one to our size requirement. They have beautiful furniture, and the price seemed reasonable at $5K. So we thought about it, and set out to order it my last EDO. We ended up out in Sherwood Park and stopped at Costco because we couldn't get in to a restaurant for lunch! There, at Costco, was a buffet & hutch that matched our dimensions and was really similar to the design we had in mind. It did not have upper cabinet doors though. It also had a matching, counter height table of the right dimensions for our kitchen! And, amazingly, the buffet was $710. Not much of a decision, but still one worth thinking about. So, this weekend we set off to the Costco near us for the buffet. The price at the local Costco was $390! So for less than a tenth of the price of the custom made one, we have a hutch that fits perfectly into our spot, matches our kitchen well, hides the clutter that was being stored on a set of bookshelves in the 'interim' (if 3 1/2 yrs is interim). Beautiful. We now have a well organized kitchen, a nice peice of furniture and $4500 left for other projects! The bookcase has found a new life too, functioning as a bookcase in the office, replacing the credenza that had a wider footprint and less storage space.

Of course, this barely scratches the surface of cleaning, decluttering and projects that need doing. We could be on one of those H&G channel shows - either the reno disaster ones or the clean up your home ones!!!! But it is a great way to fill a bitterly cold winter weekend.

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