During the week, I have the distinct pleasure of spending every morning with my daughter. She likes to get up early, usually about 6am. I'm not much of a morning person, but I always get to bed by 10pm so that I can be fresh and happy when she wakes us up oh so very early.
We pack a lot of great things into our morning routine, before I have to "go" to work. There's the normal stuff -- food for both of us, a shower for me, and a few diaper changes. We also like to play and read a book together, and I get some basic things done around the house (cleaning, laundry, putting things away, chopping up ingredients for dinner, etc.). Around 9am the baby goes down for a nap and I have some quiet time to read and do other, quiet little things. After naptime we like to go for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. Then I eat lunch, baby "eats lunch" and I start working.
This week I decided to use some of our morning time to do a little bit of demolition. When we moved into our house three years ago we started tearing apart the hallway and utility room in our daylight basement. This time last year, we got things stripped down to the studs. Recently Nate put in some new framing in the storage space underneath the staircase. Before we can continue with the new framing, the rest of the studs need to come out. So that was my goal for the week -- to tear things down.
Every morning this week, I wrapped the baby in a down throw blanket and set her in a large wicker basket with toys:
We pack a lot of great things into our morning routine, before I have to "go" to work. There's the normal stuff -- food for both of us, a shower for me, and a few diaper changes. We also like to play and read a book together, and I get some basic things done around the house (cleaning, laundry, putting things away, chopping up ingredients for dinner, etc.). Around 9am the baby goes down for a nap and I have some quiet time to read and do other, quiet little things. After naptime we like to go for a brisk walk around the neighborhood. Then I eat lunch, baby "eats lunch" and I start working.
This week I decided to use some of our morning time to do a little bit of demolition. When we moved into our house three years ago we started tearing apart the hallway and utility room in our daylight basement. This time last year, we got things stripped down to the studs. Recently Nate put in some new framing in the storage space underneath the staircase. Before we can continue with the new framing, the rest of the studs need to come out. So that was my goal for the week -- to tear things down.
Every morning this week, I wrapped the baby in a down throw blanket and set her in a large wicker basket with toys:
And I worked on tearing down the studs. The baby was content in her basket, playing and watching me work, for about 20 minutes at a time. So I worked around her schedule. It turns out that 20-30 minutes is plenty of time to get some work done without totally wearing myself out.
After five mornings of work, I created the following pile of wood:
And here's the before-and-after of the space:
Our plan is to re-frame this space, but do things a little different. There will be a wall in exactly the same place as the old studs, but the doorway will be shifted over about two feet. This will allow me to make better use of both the hallway space and the utility room. For instance, if the door moves toward the middle, I can build cabinets against the right wall in the above picture. (Previously, since the doorway was basically against this wall, you couldn't build anything, and this made for a lot of wasted space.)
This is a terrible rendering (made via MS Paint, ha!) but here's an idea of what I'm talking about:
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