Under-Stair Storage

We were pretty lucky to purchase a house with a fully-finished basement.  Not many in our neighbourhood are.  While our tastes don't match those of the previous owners (full wet bar, pool table taking up entire main open area), I have to admit that they did excellent work. 

There is a smaller open area at the bottom of the stairs that they used for a playroom.  They had an old schoolhouse chalkboard and storage cubes along the walls.  We'd like to take the storage one step further and have built-in shelving under the stairs. 

Currently the area looks like this:

A pretty good blank slate to start with.  I didn't take a picture of the closet under the stairs but it looks something like this (though full of paint cans, luggage, and rolled up area rugs).

source unknown

I'm picturing doing something like this. 

via pinterest

 Unfortunately, I think Tom is picturing something more like this.  

Woodworkers Workshop

I'm hoping for fewer coolers and sleeping bags,

and more knick-knacks and pretty wicker baskets.

Like this:

Supra Remodeling

And this:

House to Design

And this:

SAS Interiors

And this:

Better Homes & Gardens

Do you think that if I post enough pictures I'll convince him? :-)

Eggs Benedict

There is a little diner we go to almost every Saturday morning called Tom's Restaurant.  It's a tiny little place in an industrial area of town, but the food is good, the prices aren't bad, and the staff members are always friendly.

Tom (my Tom) tried the Eggs Benedict one week and got hooked.  It's all he'll order now.  And he talks about it a lot.  So yesterday he decided that he was going to make Eggs Benedict for dinner.  This makes me laugh because neither one of us really likes eggs.  I can handle scrambled, but poached eggs?  The thought kind of gives me the shivers. 

But I came home last night and he had all 4 burners going and english muffins in the toaster.  Having never made it before, I think the hardest part for him was estimating the timing for each part.  And he's not exactly used to someone hovering over him with a camera while he cooks.  We ended up having everything ready (yes, I lent a hand) and were still waiting for the hollandaise sauce.

He fried up some sliced potatoes,

Got the peameal bacon going,

He even put each egg into a big spoon so that he could slide it into the boiling water.  Can you tell he did some research?

I realized that you can't take an appetizing picture of an egg poaching.  This is as soon as it went into the water.  You don't want to to see later.

He didn't want to make hollandaise from scratch (or let me make it), so he just bought a package that you add butter to.  Unfortunately he missed the part about bringing it to a boil, so that's why there was a delay. 

He layered a toasted english muffin with a slice of peameal bacon, a poached egg, and then the hollandaise sauce.  Homefries on the side.  The diner serves orange slices with theirs - where are my orange slices?

Tell me your arteries aren't hardening just looking at the butter in that sauce.

The eggs ended up being a bit overcooked, but otherwise it was okay. 

I'd give it a solid six out of ten.

Not bad for a first try.

I'm even willing to let him make them again.

We have Curtains (almost)

We didn't do a lot this weekend.  We made some more meals for Tom's mom so she wouldn't have to cook after her surgery, I dragged Tom to the mall so I could get a new pair of jeans (but I did let him take me out for lunch afterwards as a reward) and we bought curtains for the living room/dining room windows. I am working on a project but it's taking longer than I thought it would.  Okay, that's a lie, I started working on it too late and ran out of time.

So how about we talk about the curtains? They are from Sears, and are a faux-silk with an embroidered pattern that runs vertically. 

Swatch from website:

source: Sears

They only had two panels in stock so we took them home and figured if we liked them we could order 4 more.  Well we do like them, but they aren't long enough so they'll have to go back and I'll order 6 online instead.

I don't have very good pictures as I couldn't iron them (since I'm returning them) and it was dark when I got around to hanging them up.

I don't think I've ever purchased back-tab curtains before but I love them.  They hang really nicely and slide back and forth easily.

A happy coincidence is that the detail on the curtain, though silver/grey, looks like it matches the wall colour exactly.  It's going to look like we custom-ordered them.

We also picked out a new stove at Home Depot and hope to buy it on Wednesday.  Tom won $2500 in gift cards at a skills competition last year and we have over half still unused so the stove will be absolutely free. Maybe that needs exclamation points. Free!!!!

Here's a sneak peek:

source: Home Depot

I think we've also narrowed down the choices for a new refrigerator.  We just need to save for it.  Or Tom could win the competition again this year.  Momma needs a new fridge!