New Flooring, New Hallway

Here is our upstairs hallway before and after. Shawn and his brother installed the 98 cent per sq. foot Home Depot laminate floors in one night and it was very easy. Since they lock in place, they put padding in long rolls underneath. I would say this was the easiest thing we've done so far next to painting (which is the cheapest and easiest to change thing you can do to a room.)

Before (note the ugly, super smelly carpeting)

After:

About the linen cabinet in the center here:



Repurposing is something that my grandmother, a woman from the tiny island of Ponza in Italy, always did. Coming from a family of eight, "repurposing" was not green, it was not trendy, and it was not something one did and proudly exclaimed, "Look how I was able to reuse this!" Taking swollen pieces of wood that floated in from the Mediterrenan Sea and scraping it down to long sticks for building stock cages was a quite a find. Using stones gathered from the landscape to make walls to retain water for crops was not the enhancing of a hobby, it was survival of the fruits and vegetables for the family's survival. And more recently, unusable appliances such as freezers and refridgerators did not head to recycling centers, but the next room or outside as storage cabinets. 

My grandmother passed things down to my mother and she passed it down to me. I took a lot of furniture out of her house in order to save money. While it would be nice to have new things that I see in catalogs, I would much rather see her furniture not end up in a landfill, especially when it is still in perfect condition. I am always thinking of making something out of something else or saving something of good quality that no one wants. My mother bought this 1920's china cabinet, which she used as a curio in a living room and set it up slanted in a corner. Upon a move, that cabinet became linen storage for a guest bedroom. Now it happens to be perfect in my 1932 house. It's odd how this cabinet has come full circle. It started out as a "modern" china piece in the 20's or 30's to hold fancy china and glassware, made its way as "old fashioned" and dated somewhere along line, and was probably in a basement for decades, but well taken care of. Then it went to a 1970's house as an interesting piece where the neighbors would have never thought of ressurecting something so old, then to a 2004 house where it was appreciated and stylish and now back in style, about 80 or 90 years later.