No better place to throw your anger at a internet fabric company than into cleaning, right? 😀
Remember Logan’s basement chaos?
This is what it looked like as of tonight!
This is “my” side of the basement, as Logan calls it…even though it now houses all of the home improvement supplies on those two big, metal shelves and his treadmill. His scrap metal and wood collection are behind me in that storage thing I slapped together a few weeks ago. The bookshelf will be added when it’s done. The chest freezer and canned good shelf is hidden in a cubby to the right and you can see a fair share of sewing goodies.
My quilting frame was unearthed!!! I could’ve done a happy dance with that one. I also have my precious Two Spool treadle set up and uncovered the sewing machine I was given that had belonged to Logan’s grandmother (both on the left).
The machines and cabinets on the left are for rehab. The green one is empty, with a storage bench. I’m stripping the paint off and refinishing it to replace the cabinet my 401a is currently in — the cabinet it has now is old and rickety and on it’s last leg. This one has much more space and a tip out drawer, which I like. Plus, it has the stool! Logan’s collection of old magazines to sift through are on it right now because somebody (not naming names) put heavy stuff on it while I was stripping the interior paint off earlier this year and warped it a bit. Since it’s a bit of a puzzle table and folds together neatly, it needs to be convinced to go back together smoothly before I carry on. The other two machines were given to me and will be rehomed when they’re spiffed up — one is a treadle and just needs beautification and some love. I may practice repainting sewing machine heads with it, or at least perfect a French polish; the clear coat is gone as are most of the decals, so no real loss if it takes a few tries. The other is motorized but the motor was shot, so Logan wanted to play with learning to rewind one without consequences.
It was a long and messy process, with a bit of organization and break-down of larger components still left to do on the actual laboratory side, but Logan is really excited about it and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. He had to dance around with his light saber in the dark when we called it a night. Floor space is awesome. 😛
Mitzi, however, remained unimpressed with everything we had to sort through. She insisted on staying with us, though.
Sorting boxes and cans of parts that one of our neighbors gave us into our own storage system. Mitzi literally couldn’t care.
Logan has been determining whether or not parts are still viable and worth keeping and then I get to break down, organize, and put away what he wants to save. I’ll share a photo of his laboratory at some point when it’s a little less chaotic. It was in just as bad of shape as the other side, maybe worse. Now, at least, it’s a functional processing center. It, too, has only been improving every day. The last of the mystery boxes from our neighbor is in the photo, so after this, we just have to finish disassembling things and harvesting parts from bigger projects — some projects aren’t worth saving, but the components are.
While we were sorting and cleaning tonight, we kept hearing a sad meow.
Sagan wanted to say hello but couldn’t quite get to us from upstairs. Sagan is not a vocal cat, at all, so it surprised us both to hear him meowing. He’s also not the brightest cat around — he definitely doesn’t live up to his namesake — so we’re always a bit surprised when he can find us. He’s the type of cat that gets lost if you leave the room while he’s asleep. His only motivations in life are food and snuggles.
The pipes from our heating system run along the basement ceiling, through a hole in the block wall. The hole connects to the boiler room where the cats love to hang out — so much that we put their litter boxes there. I figure he was making a pit stop and saw the light and heard us, so finally put two and two together…plus, it was almost his dinner time. 😛
If you look super close, you can see cat hair stuck to the blocks and some black smears on the wall. Those are from another of our cats, Joule. She’s a wily little brat and loves nothing more than to give Logan a run for his money.
He thought he had his basement sealed off from the cats, but she comes and goes as she pleases through that hole and generally keeps the basement mouse free (yay!). There are cute little paw prints on the wall to prove it — one of our friends thought we painted them on. He finally caught her down there a few months ago and sure enough, she parkoured her way almost straight up the wall like Spiderman and vanished through the hole back into the house.
He once waged war on her as a kitten and tried locking her downstairs (our house is a multi-split level, so he was just trying to keep her in the bottom half) — he triumphantly told me there was no way she could get upstairs. She’d beaten him upstairs by the time he’d gotten up there to tell me. She’s my favorite of the cats and definitely my little sidekick. >_>;
She even helps me when I’m on the phone or computer most nights. ;P
Stitched Roots 