New Kitty Room

Now that we have a bunch of nice new furniture, eating dinner while staring at {and occasionally smelling} cat food was much less appealing. So we decided to move the kitty feeding area to the basement, into one of our two closets by the garage. But they looked like this....

 Actually, I snapped those after I pulled out a few things...you don't want to see what it looked like before. The one on the left was mostly paper products, and the plastic drawers (which act as our medicine cabinet). The one of the right- well it was a mess. It pretty much had a little of everything in it, including a couple of boxes that we never unpacked.

So after so reorganizing and removal of stuff that really just needs to be donated, we had this...

 Yes, those are my high school prom dresses... I have no where else to put them, haha. I should probably just find a charity to donate them to. I did manage to get an extra wear out of them by using them for sorority formal dresses (and trading with other people for formal). Anyways...

So we decided to turn the smaller of the two closets into the kitty room. But being the nice people that we are, we didn't want the kitties to have to eat in the dark, and since they can't use a light switch {at least that we know of... Lion does open cabinets}, we needed a lighting solution. I know, I know... cats have great night vision, but it makes us feel better....

We found that Leviton motion sensing light switch at Home Depot for about $19. It was super easy to install, and it worked! At least it did for us, not so much for the kitties. They are too low to the ground and it senses 180 degrees horizontally. We thought about turning the whole outlet on it's side {so the switch would sense 180 degree vertically}, but that started to be difficult when the electrical box wouldn't easily come out.

Throughout all of this, Nutmeg was extremely helpful.... can you tell? Yes, as a matter of fact, those are the instructions that tell you how to install the switch that Nutmeg is attacking...

So back off to Home Depot to figure out a new solution.... we ended up deciding on these things that you screw into the light bulb socket and then screw the light bulb into. They have lots of varieties, but this one has a motion sensor. It works really well and the kitties are able to activate it! We also picked up the wire hanging shelve at Home Depot for about $10 which has dry food containers and a water jug stored on it. On the actually wire shelve above that, we have kitty toy storage, cat health products (grooming, flea medicine, nail trimmers, etc), and extra dry/wet food storage. We also added that wood shelve from some scrap we had lying around to hold some wet food and their food bowls.

We still have to pick out a cat door to add so that we can keep the door closed. But overall I'd say this was a success! Our cats might be a little spoiled.... But hey, at least we don't have to look at their food anymore while we eat!

The moment we've all been waiting for....

No, not a completed laundry room. We've still gotta pull the washer and dryer back out and put the finishing touches on there. This is our new furniture! Well really it's old furniture, from Greg's parents, but it's new to us! Well at least me, Greg grew up with most of it.

That's my new mixer stand! It's awesome. I've used it soo much already. It's nice to finally have it down where I can easily get to it. Instead of it's previous resting spot- on top of the refrigerator. How did I get it down you might ask.....

Christa: Greg... I want to make pizza dough (or insert other dough, dessert, etc).... I can't reach the mixer....

Greg: Okay... I'll be there in a few minutes.

....wait approximately 30 seconds.....

Christa: Has it been a few minutes yet?

...Greg pulls down mixer....

 Yeah, you get the picture. Mixer stored high where I can't reach it = unhappy Greg, especially if I'm in a baking mood for a few days in a row.

Our new hutch! It has 2 shelves that I hadn't put in yet when I took this picture. I haven't decided exactly what we'll store in the open portion of it. But it has 3 drawers below which are great storage! 

Drawer 1- Placemats, finally a place to put these!

Drawer 2- Tupperware. Now my cabinets under the island can finally be organized!

Drawer 3- Platters.

 Isn't the stained glass pretty? I may have to find a way to install some lights inside so you can see them. Right now you can only appreciate them when the doors are open. Oh, and of course Nutmeg had to inspect the new furniture. Nosey kitty...

 Even though the bench had been sitting there for 3 or so days at this point, Lion of course had to examine it right in the middle of all of my pictures! It's a bench made from an old horse carriage. It's a nice way to add a little additional seating in the living room.

The pie safe! Isn't it pretty? The lamp may or may not end up there, we'll see. We have some decorating ahead of it.
It has tons of storage inside too- see?

And there's still more to come as we move things in from the garage and get them set-up!

Finally! The moudling is done!

 Wahoo! One {long, drawn-out} project that can finally be marked off the list! If you go back and check out this post, you'll see what the kitchen used to look like, and what it looks like without those cabinets obstructing the view! We hung the light fixture back in February with the help of Greg's dad. So now we got around to adding the moulding around the edges and painting! It looks so nice now!

One reason it took so long, was we just didn't have the right tools. So we finally got around to buying an air compressor and brad nail gun. Once we had those, the moulding was up in about 10 minutes! Plus the air compressor will come in handy when we use an air spray gun to paint the cabinets later this year {probably a winter project}.

So what else is new around here? Well Greg's parents brought us down some awesome furniture from their old house in Rochester. The picture below is just the beginnings of the awesome-ness! It's a mixer stand that Greg's grandmother used to have. We've gotten tons of use out of it already! Stay tuned for lots more picture of the great furniture pieces, and a lot of reorganization since we finally have some extra storage!