After about a month of looking at the large monstrosity of a desk in the den, Laurie finally decided it was too big for the room. So we disassembled the desk (for the second time in three months). We are not sure it will be a sellable item in Payson due to its size, and Mike was hoping just to take it to be donated, but Laurie likes a challenge and so into the garage sale storage unit it went. After we removed the desk, we both thought the Ikea bookshelf should be relocated to the wall where the desk had been. So we moved it to the new location and the room looks much better now. The one issue is that, due to the length of the unit, the fan and light switches now have to be accessed through one of the cubbies.
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| The room still has some clutter, but the shelving works good in this space |
If you have never used them, we strongly recommend getting a set (or more) of furniture sliders. They are round plastic disks, with padding on the top side, that you place under furniture or other heavy items to make it possible to slide them around the floor. They work great on both tile and carpet and even bare wood. We have used them in every stage of our renovation on every flooring we've had. We put about eight of those sliders under this bookshelf (due to its length) and easily moved it across the room. We have used them on the washer, dryer, sofa and even our pellet stove (which is a REALLY heavy item). The only drawback to using these sliders is they sometimes get stuck going over transitions or door frames, but they have proven to be indispensable and have saved our having to ask friends/neighbors for help on more than one occasion.
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| These little devices have saved our backs more than once in the last few years |
After moving all our Gilbert items to Payson, we now have an abundance of yard equipment. We did not want to store these items in the workshop since it is, well, a workshop, not a storage unit, and the small wood shed is in its last days, so we decided to get a new garden shed to house the lawn mower, weedeater, rakes, shovels and other outside tools. As usual, we spent many, many hours looking at different sheds online at Home Depot (our favorite source) and, after reading many reviews, found one we thought would work. To our dismay, the Payson store did not have one in stock. But we found a Home Depot in Chandler which had the unit on display. Some of the negative reviews that we thought would not be an issue, turned out to be a problem when we saw it all put together. Scratch that one off the list - back to square one. The other sheds were either too small or too big (mostly in height as we did not want it to show over the fence). We decided to call it a night at that point, but, as we left Home Depot, we remembered there was a Lowes right next door. They had a Rubbermaid shed that Home Depot did not carry and it was perfect in size and cost (kept us from getting two smaller sheds). The box fit in the back of the truck and up to Payson it went. We bought some pavers to set a foundation for the shed in the side yard next to the block fence. We spent a lot of time getting the foundation level, then just a couple of hours matching slot A to slot B and connecting all the parts and the shed was up. We picked up some extra hanger hardware at Home Depot, filled it with stuff, and now the shed is complete.
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| This was the perfect spot for our new shed and it fit so well |
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| All our lawn and outside tools in one spot |
Stats: 3 Home Depot trips; 2 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 7/21/15-8/03/15: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $51,493
