Demolition Man

You should see my husband wield a crowbar. Nails, 2×4’s, cement, and plywood quake at the sight of him. The previous owner of this house built (or more correctly, over-built) some kind of weird gun cabinet in the basement along with a funky work bench, attached to the cement wall. The cabinet was really, really over and badly engineered (although I’m sure the ammo was safe). John suspected it was for guns as it had a long flat cabinet that looked like it could hold rifles or shotguns. Then there were two smaller cabinets, one with a lock, and in that one we found the metal tip of a rather large bullet. It took way longer than it should have to pull it apart. Seriously, it was hideously ugly and useless for any other purpose.

John went and bought a tool called a “Wonder Bar.” It definitely works wonders. Today he had to buy a regular crowbar. Colored bright yellow! Apparently it’s good to be able to see it if it swings your way. We now have an entire corner of our basement freed up, which we’ve been kind of using as ugly storage. But in the spirit of taking back our basement, it’s gone. Well, hopefully it will be when the trash truck comes. The guy used so many nails that a lot of the wood is worthless.

The plan so far is to replace the ugly, ugly stuff with nice black metal shelves we got from Target. We’ve already got two assembled in the basement with some of my stuff on them (canning jars and family memorabilia). We’ve got four more to go, for storing John’s beer stuff and who knows what else he has accumulated over the years. Actually, I do. I’ve seen it. It almost made me cry, the things we keep. The fact that we just accumulate so! much! stuff! all! the! time! But a lot of it he either recycled, donated, or threw out. Still not sure what to do with the ancient computer and recently busted printer. I’d like to recycle them, and I’d even pay a small fee, but what a pain.

Once we get shelves up, or maybe before, we’d like to put in another circuit in the basement so we can put a freezer down there. Right now there is only one outlet, and many extension cords and at least one power strip. Not good.

Then we want to take the big piece of 3/4 in. plywood that was the top of the work bench and turn it into a craft and games table. Woo-hoo! There are only two legs on it, only one of which was bearing weight. This guy must have been 7 feet tall because the bench was about 4 and a half feet high.

Silly us, didn’t take before and after pictures. But 20 years of cobwebs are gone from behind the bench. Yuck. And while it was awful to look at before, it’s still not up for an article in Good Housekeeping. It’s definitely moving in the right direction.

Probably the most exciting thing today is that John rescued a bunch of Legos from languishing in their basement dungeon. He has pretty much all of his childhood Legos, and now our children have some more. I’m certain that William had a few square inches of floor space in his room that weren’t covered with Legos. Crying shame, that. Now he can fill the voids.

The good news is that they won’t be sitting still long enough to accumulate spider webs under them.