Rainy Day Project (Bonus: TC Farmhouse I Spy)

This past Saturday, my parents came up to the cities to help us out. My dad has been working on refinishing our kitchen floor, and my mom was going to help me paint some soffit boards.  Unfortunately,  Saturday morning rolled around a wet, drizzling mess.  Since we don’t currently have anywhere indoors that has both the space and the ventilation for painting, I had to come up with a plan B.  Luckily, there has been one project that has been on my “rainy day” list for over a year: clean out the previous homeowner’s stuff from the second floor of the carriage house.

There are two reasons why this task has stayed on the to-do list for so long without completion: 1) there are some holes in the floor, and so for safety’s sake two people need to be there at all times, and 2) it is a freaking mess.  Now comes the part where I show you the “before” photos, but as I look at them, I think I’d like to make a game out of it.  Readers, I present to you: Previous Owner’s Clutter I Spy!

How many can you find?

Six mismatched tires, complete with rims,
A fluorescent light fixture, to keep it from being dim.
Two yard sale signs, a rear windshield,
A hole in the floor that should make you yield.
A dryer vent piece that has been forsaken,
a box of tile; to the ReStore it will be taken.
Two ATV helmets; one red and one blue
Aren’t you glad the person cleaning this up wasn’t you?

So, how’d you do? Let’s try one more; there was more junk than could fit in one camera shot.

Yay, this is a fun game!

The oldest radio known to man,
a box from Cub Foods and a coffee can.
A white and yellow bucket for fishing with minnows,
a square metal frame, from what? No one knows.
A chair, probably stolen from a pizza restaurant,
Overall, just a bunch of stuff nobody wants!

 So yes, this was the task my mother generously agreed to help me with (a round of applause, everyone).  I’d say that, including breaks, it took about 5 hours to sort, bag and sweep the whole upstairs.  This was really the last stronghold of the previous owner’s clutter; the junk inside the house and 1st floor of the carriage house was all dealt with early last year.  This is what it looked like after we’d finished:

Can't really do I Spy for these photos... which is a good thing.

I was able to move all my gardening and lawn stuff up here and store it under the work table. Much more out of the way!

We filled about seven trash bags, and a bunch of the larger stuff got placed in one corner to be thrown away next time we rent a roll-off dumpster.  My mom ended up filling her car up with boxes and buckets of miscellaneous scrap metal to take to a scrap place near Rochester.  Mid-afternoon, the sun came out, so we were able to do some work outside before my parents decided to hit the road back home.  It’s so exciting to have reclaimed this space, and am so grateful to my mom for helping me get it done!