Saturday, we got up and got to work on a few home projects we had in mind for a while. One was to finally add a row of shelves to the top of the bookcases we put in my office several weeks back. We had been waiting for the shelf extenders to come off of back order from IKEA, and at long last the home office in Sweden deemed to have them available at our location.
While Erin was off teaching her Saturday morning dog training class, I set to work assembling the shelf extenders. There were four, and though I have a wealth of experience assembling IKEA furniture, as is usually the case, it took me the first two to get the hang of it. Thankfully, Amelia and Asta were there to help.
It worked out pretty well, and now we finally have that upper shelf. The plan is to eventually finish it off with some molding to take it up the ceiling.
We also had an idea to put in some new shelves above the TV in our living room. The TV is in this weird little built in alcove. We had some shelves made from old barn wood in there, but we saw DIY thing online to build your own floating shelves. It looked pretty cool and doable, and thought it would add something to the space.
So I picked up the lumber and such, had it cut to size and we got to work.
Early stages went pretty well, but when it got time to try to hang the shelves, we hit a few snags. For one, the walls are pretty uneven, so the front of the little alcove is a couple inches narrower than the back, creating a bit of a trapezoid. We managed to get one of the two shelves up, but realized the placement wasn’t great and the space was a little more cramped than we anticipated.
By this point, it was getting into the late afternoon and Erin’s parents were coming over for dinner, so we decided to let the project wait and we pivoted to dinner and meal prep. The kids were excited to see Grandma and Pop-Pop, and for some reason expressed their excitement by wearing buckets on their heads.
It was a comfortable fall evening, so we sat outside and I made some salmon and risotto. We had a nice dinner, and Erin’s parents invited the kids over for a sleepover, so they got super excited, got their jammies on, packed their suitcase and headed off with Grandma and Pop Pop.
After a long day of home projects, it was nice for Erin and I to enjoy a quiet evening together. We sat outside and had a drink, and had some nice grown up time together without constant interruptions and Spongebob songs in the background.
Erin went to bed and I hung out on the couch thinking I’d stay up and watch a movie. Of course, I wound up knocking out on the sofa and woke up around 2am to the sound of our Roomba starting up. I’m not the keen night owl I once was, that’s for sure.
