BIRTHDAYS AND SHELVES!!!

Tuesday the 14th was Autumn's birthday (my niece). We only took video of the occasion, so you'll have to check out Emily's (her mom) blog at www.hoodedcow.blogspot.com. And just to let you know, Autumn was SO CUTE! She and her friends dressed up in cute princess outfits and had a great time. Emily made Autumn the cutest cake...I think it was a monkey! Amazing! Emily also made Autumn a wedding dress her size, and it was exactly like Emily's wedding dress. Just so you all know, Emily is so amazing!!! (To the left is a shot of Brian leveling shelves in the basement during construction).

On Wednesday it was Vic Petersen's birthday. He is the man we rent our home from. He is the nicest guy, and I wish I had taken a photo of him as well! He is about 88 or 89 years old now, and he still does work like a teenager! We had a really nice time visiting with him. Vaughn decided to really make Vic's day by running to him three times and begging to be held. And wouldn't you know that Vic picked him up every time?!?!
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Just to illustrate how youthful this man is....This summer one of the horses in the pasture out back had some wire wrapped around it's foot. I called Vic about it, and he came over to check it out. He climbed over the fence just like a teenager would, "caught" the horse, took care of the wire problem, and climbed back over the fence. I was totally amazed! He is just the greatest! I'll try to get a picture of him up on the blog soon. (To the right is a shot of Jared, Vaughn and Brian. Poor little Vaughn had to sit in his stroller for most of the day while we worked on the shelves!)
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On Thursday we went to Brian's parents' house in Springville for his Mother's birthday. And wouldn't you know we didn't take any pictures of that either?! I feel so bad! I guess we've gotten in the habit of video-taping a lot of these events. Anyway...we brought over dinner for her, and then later on we celebrated with one of her favorite desserts, lemon bars! Then we had presents. We really enjoyed being over there.

On Friday, Brian's father came over to help me re-measure the downstairs cellar area for some shelving. We have been waiting for quite a while to try to build some shelves down there, but too many things came up! But we did get it measured in preparation for putting some shelves in.

And then.....today we actually started in on building the shelving!!! Can you believe it?!?! I have been dreaming of this for such a long time, and today my dreams finally came true! We got up somewhat early for a Saturday and began unloading the basement around 8:30am. Brian's dad and brother Jared came over then to help. While we unloaded the basement, Brian's dad went to purchase the building materials. (To give you an idea of how bad the basement was, look at these pictures!) We got the entire basement unloaded and swept out by the time his dad got back.

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Once dad got back, we set in on measuring everything to put up the first "layer." We had to attach 2 x 3s to the wall, but it was impossible because the wall was too crumbly. So we actually wound up attaching them to the floor joists above. Then we had to add three horizontal layers of 2 x 3s to support the shelves. This was extra tricky because there was a water pipe in the way. Just getting this first side of the shelving finished took until 2:00 in the afternoon! It was crazy! I never realized how important it is to have a finished, level basement! But having walls that aren't finished and smooth basically makes building shelves almost impossible! Luckily Brian's dad has done this type of thing enough that he was able to work through these problems!

After a very quick lunch and a small rest, we were back at it again! This next part was a lot easier because we didn't have to work against an unfinished wall. (In this picture we are just starting the second side). We actually built the entire side on the floor, and then lifted it up into place. That sounds way easier than it actually was! It still took quite a while to finish the second half of the shelving, but it went a lot faster! By 4:00 we had finished the second half, and then we had to put in the wafer board for the actual shelves. We had to cut notches out of some of the shelves because of the water pipe.

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I think right now I'll tell you that when we unloaded that basement, we covered our entire back yard in junk! It looked terrible! We just couldn't believe we had fit all of that stuff into that tiny cellar area! Brian's dad said if we didn't want to have a huge headache over it, we could just put a sign out in the front yard saying FREE STUFF IN BACK! I almost put up that sign too! Here's a little something to show you how much junk there was! The only thing though is that this doesn't show even half of what we unloaded! YIKES!!! We could have filled the local D.I. with all of our junk!


Okay. Back to building. So after we had finished the second layer, we added in the wafer board, which was the actual shelf part. In this shot, Brian is drilling a few screws in each wafer board to hold it down. He was having a difficult time doing this because of how tall it was, so I tried to brace him a little bit. It actually worked out really well! The shelves wobbled just a little before Brian screwed down the wafer boards. But once he did that, the entire shelving unit didn't wobble at all....it was as solid as a rock. I even got into the shelves and lied down. And surprisingly it was very comfortable. I told Brian that if an earthquake or a tornado came through and leveled the top of the house, we could always come downstairs and use the shelving for bunkbeds. We could fit twelve to sixteen people in there if we needed to! Once this last step was complete, we cut a few 2 x 3s into shorter pieces, and put them inbetween some of the shelves for extra bracing.

And here is a picture of the finished product!


I AM SO HAPPY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After finishing the shelves we loaded everything from the backyard back into the basement. We had to load it as fast as we could because it was almost dark. So of course the shelves aren't organized like I would like. But now I have a very big project to last me many rainy days!...or should I saw snowy days!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HELPED WITH THIS ENORMOUS PROJECT!!!!

Love, Lisa