Before and After: Basement sorting and a radiator move

We have finally started to get things moving at our house in preparation for, you know, having another baby. We still have a lot to do, but a couple weekends ago we finally went down to the basement to organize Ashton's clothes. Even though we don't know if we are having a girl or a boy, and the last time we had a newborn we were in the exact opposite season (August), I wanted to see what we had for stuff. We dumped out all the bins we had been haphazardly shoving things into as Ashton grew and the pile looked like this.

We wrote out some labels and started sorting. Most of the things we picked out to wash and put away for this baby were, not surprisingly, plain white.

I do admit the extreme littleness of these onesies (and daydreaming about when Ashton wore them) slowed me down considerably as I "awwww"-ed and "oooo"-ed and "oh honey remember this one??"-ed. Ahhh memory lane. So much better looking back on it than traveling it, at least when it comes to newborns ;)

We made pretty short work of the pile and in no time, ta-da!

Of course if we have a girl this whole exercise will have been a bit pointless. But for now, it was a major thing to get checked off the list and should at least serve some hand-me-down purposes :) There's a ton of gear down in the basement as well and we took stock of where the carseat was, what needed to be washed, etc etc.

Next! Upstairs. We have three bedrooms and an office on our second floor. We decided, since babies are so little, to keep the guest room and turn the office into the nursery. Since we moved in a year ago, the office has been home to our computer desk (imagine! a computer in an office) and two racks for my clothes since the closet space in our bedroom is grotesquely minimal. So, in order to make a nursery, my clothes needed to come out. And in order for my clothes to come out, they needed a closet to go into. And in order to have a closet to go into, Jason needed to build one. And in order to build one, we needed our bedroom radiator moved. There are a few poor people that have listened to me drone on and on about this damn radiator for months. Let me introduce you:

This radiator is sitting in the corner of our bedroom. In order for me to get the closet of my dreams, it needed to be moved roughly 18 inches to the left because the closet was going to run the entire length of the wall (where the dresser currently is). Without boring you with the details as to what took so long and why, finally (FINALLY!!) it was moved last Friday, leaving behind this lovely scene.

Up close, there were a couple different wallpapers under there and the condition of the wall in general was bad enough that Jason murmured a few expletives. We're talking almost 100 years of heat against that spot though so it's not surprising. But it's a better scenario than we expected; we thought they were going to swing the radiator around 180 degrees vs. just moving the whole thing over. This would have been extra ugly because the back side is definitely not painted. At least that was something we didn't have to deal with. So Jason went and got a patch kit:

And then painted over the patch and in no time, we had a nice wall again.

This took us to this past Saturday morning. Jason's brother Chris had come up to visit for the weekend and the two of them worked tirelessly for three days. My job was to keep Ashton away from the tools and out of the house (um, no small feat). Anyway, the closet is not 100% done but I should be able to post the full before and after in the next few days - THAT will be one you don't want to miss!! For the time being, I'll leave you with a little sneak preview of what that same corner looks like now... :)