Setting Up A Guest Room & Our Laundry

Brr. Let’s not do that again.

Yesterday morning was less than pleasant. It’s the coldest it’s been since we moved into the house, and our heating guys – despite being the first subcontractors in our house – still aren’t done. No working furnace meant a pretty chilly night. I got up and wandered down to the kitchen to discover a pretty chilly thermometer, too. At least they came over and managed to get it fired up today. You know, just in time for 80-degree temps again.

Despite the heating guys and the plumber still being on my hit list (him especially – he’s the Ricardo Montalbán to my William Shatner), we managed to get a lot done on our own over the long weekend. My mother-in-law came over on Sunday and Monday to help us get a guest room and bath set up. We might have also managed to get our washer and dryer set up. Behold!

We’ve got them in the larger bathroom on the second floor. It seems to be the only full bathroom that was originally built into the house. It’s pretty good sized, and it was the most natural place for laundry hook-ups. Not my favorite, but it’ll do for the next couple of years. Anyway, getting our laundry stuff set up turned out to be a good idea – we did a bunch of laundry the night it got cold, and vented the dryer straight into the house (complete with a classy pantyhose filter) to add a little extra heat.

Oh yeah, and that whole second floor thing… very convenient and all, but that meant we had to haul the washer and dryer up our narrow, hardwood staircase. Once we got it figured out it wasn’t so bad, but there was a fair amount of huffing and puffing. Eh, a little labor on Labor Day weekend seems nice and symmetrical.

We also cleaned the bathroom in the process. The toilet is brand new, but the sink and the tub aren’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure the sink is original to the house, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the tub was, too. It’s certainly in worse shape. Lots of stains – and someone decided it would be fun to dump some paint in it at some point. The wife attacked it with some Zud, and it definitely improved… but we’ll probably need to get it refinished at some point.

We also set up a guest bedroom. We think it’s the old housekeeper’s bedroom – it’s a little smaller than the other bedrooms (but still good-sized), and it’s at the top of the back staircase that leads straight down to the kitchen. Pretty homey-looking, no? All right, the side of the room with the bed is kind of boring. How about the other side? It’s amazing what a plant will do.

This corner of the guest bedroom looks homey - papasan chair, bookcase, and a plant. Voila.