Busy day

After this morning's setback, I spent the morning lining up a lab to do the required lead testing on the house. In order to save about $300 on the testing process, I have decided to collect the samples myself and drop them off at the lab which is about an hour away. It should take me about 4-5 hours to acquire the sampling supplies and tools, take the samples, label them and drop them off. That's quite a savings for a few hours work! When I was talking to the saleswoman and getting prices, she had to keep putting me on hold because she didn't know the pricing for do-it-yourselfers. It was so rare that she hadn't yet learned the process. I was shocked to find out so many people were willing to blow so much money so easily. I mean if it was $10 for 4-5 hours of work I'd go for it, but $300?

In the afternoon, I finally got my car cleaned after many months of it being caked with dirt. I think it may be close to a year since it's been this clean. It feels really good, but it will only last until the next time it is used as a construction vehicle, which is often!

I also finally finished the backlog of filing that built up over the last year. When we first moved in, we were confined to one room to live in, so a functioning office or filing space didn't make the cut. We still have a marginally functional office, so filing is difficult. A few months ago, I bought in the boxes holding our files and began churning through the backlog. It feels so good to be done! A few items still can't be filed because I haven't bought the corresponding place for the item in from the garage. Part of it is lack of time to look for and pull out things and part of it is lack of space to put anything at this point. In the future, we will have a well-equipped office with lots of storage, bookshelves, cabinets, etc but that is a long way off. Filing isn't strictly remodeling related, but this helps illustrate just how we are living these days.

One of my next projects is to revamp our existing filing system. One day, I will do the small closet in the office with elfa, my absolute favorite closet system. Since our house is old, the closets are few and small, so each one needs to be maximized. I researched many closet systems, and choose this one. It is relatively cheap compared to comparable products and the quality is high. The parts are all metal. It is easy to install and very flexible. I'm doing all the storage areas in the house in the same color elfa so that all the parts are interchangeable. A tip - once a year beginning Christmas Eve, they have a huge, month-long, 30% off sale on all elfa at The Container Store. I'll probably do C's closet this year and the office next year. Anyway, I know that one day I will do the office closet in this system, so I plan on buying just the file drawers now and getting our files in better shape. When we moved into our apartment (years prior to buying our fixer), I put together a filing system that worked at the time. Now, we have a lot more paperwork to keep track of due to the remodeling. I am looking forward to not digging through boxes anymore!