Cleaning House: Library! (Cross-posted from LJ)

Murdock: locked and loaded, ready to go sprinting off after his sister...

The kitties are so excited that they now have more room ro run around!

The weather forecast said it would be 30+ inches of snow by the end of this weekend! Uh, well, considering that we've already got 6 inches down on the ground, I'm guessing it'll be more like 40+ inches. We're right on Lake Ontario, so we get the lake effect in a major way. I've had single days where we'll get 2 feet on the ground, no problem. It's pretty crazy. I can imagine Mr. Plowman will be super busy plowing our driveways - he's supposed to come by twice a day, but I don't know if he'll be able to get to us. If the roads aren't plowed, he's going to have a heck of a time.

Hubby and I made a huge dent in cleaning up the arcade/library today. He stayed home, because he's come down with a cold that was going around the office and didn't feel up to it. I'm also sick, but I can't sit still for long when I don't feel well, or else I obsess over how horrible I feel. Same goes for when I'm in pain, which is mostly all the time, so I try to distract myself. It's been worse the past week, because of the bi-polar weather changes. My arthritis and broken toes especially disliked the change from warm and humid to cold and dry. Yesterday, my hip simply refused to pop, and I lurched around awkwardly for hours. It was almost unbearable to stand or put any weight on it. I've also been getting weird numbing shocks through my arm to the shoulder if I bend my wrist funny. Whee....

Before I go off on a tangent... While Hubby's not home, I clean, simple as that. SO.....when he saw me cleaning today, he decided he would help, too. We got a lot of boxes and things moved into various rooms, cleaned up and threw stuff we didn't need/want out, and I vacuumed several times. We also laid the brown area rug down in the center of the room and pinned the edges down with boxes to flatten it out. I can't believe how much room we made, it's awesome.

Next, we're going to screw the bookshelves into the walls so they don't fall over. The floors in our 200 year old house slope in various places, mostly down towards the middle of the room. Originally, we were going to have the library upstairs in the yellow room, but we decided to make the arcade into the library, instead. I just don't trust the floor upstairs to hold that much weight. I'd rather have the downstairs floor cave in, you know? We can put supports under the floor, at any rate, without much trouble, which is something we couldn't do for the upstairs room. (And when I say we have a library...I mean we have enough books to completely fill up 7-9 seven-foot bookshelves of books. That's A LOT of weight...)

Eventually I'll have the arcade/library remodeled to have the arcade (which used to be the in-law kitchen) cabinets turned into open-faced shelving and counterspace instead. The floor also needs to be redone, because the refrigerator that used to be there got moisture into the wooden flooring and caused it to rot and mold. It's pretty gross. I'll probably have pergo put in instead of more wood. Another good thing about the library: no baseboard heating. This means that we have wallspace to push bookshelves up against without worry for over-heating anything. I really don't care for all the baseboard heating in our house, because there are some rooms that I would prefer not to be heated. The room I want to keep as our closet and my kimono storage room is one of the rooms I'd like to be a little cooler. Garr...

Tomorrow...err, later today? I want to get my room cleaned up a bit more. I can't really do too much more in here until I buy another dresser, though. It's so frustrating having two dozen boxes with things in them that I can't put away, just because I have no storage. Argh... On second thought, maybe I'll work on cleaning the formal dining room instead. We bought two pretty folding screens from Pier One the other weekend to separate the dining room from the parlour. It looks really nice, and it keeps the kitties out of there, which is great, because they keep crapping and peeing in the potted tree. Then dogface comes along and eats the poop. Greaaaaat. I should've had Hubby toss the tree out today, because it's trashday, but I can't imagine he'd fare well trudging through the snow.

There's always later...I should sleep now, more cleaning tomorrow...yey.