Happy New Year!

So it’s 2010.  (I’ve decided to say “twenty-ten” and stop this “two thousand and ten” nonsense.)  The party (which was very fun) is over and everyone has gone home.  We cleaned a little (although the house really wasn’t a mess) and then decided to revisit the idea of rearranging the whole first floor.  I think we’re gonna do it.  Like, this weekend.  🙂  We have a three-day weekend, and once John’s semester starts, he won’t really have this kind of time.  The furniture moving really won’t be that hard.  The hardest part (or at least most complicated part, even though it’s not really hard.  According to John.  I think it’s hard.) is wiring the living room (which will become the family room) for the TV.  There’s no cable outlet there right now.  So we’re going to take the opportunity to run the TV cables behind the wall, hiding them from sight.  Means cutting holes in the wall (one behind where the TV will go and one near the floor) and running wires up from the basement.  A trip to Home Depot or Lowe’s is in our immediate future.

But right now, John is in the basement fixing the dryer.  The other dryer.  It’s the one we moved with, the one we bought when we moved to VA in 2003.  It started squealing shortly after we moved to this house, so we switched to the dryer the previous owners left behind.  Anyway, he’s fixing it, and once that’s done, we can move the extra washer and dryer to the garage and put them on craigslist.  I’m pretty sure none of our friends are in the market for a washer and dryer at the moment.  If you’re reading this and you need a free washer and dryer (they work great, we just don’t need two sets), let me know.

The fun part about rearranging the house will be discovering what new furniture we need and/or want.  Obviously, this will work great for our new dining room table (that we still haven’t bought yet).  I want a little bistro table and two chairs for the bay window in the dining room that is turning to the living room because I like having breakfast in that room.  It gets lots of sunlight.  I want a little armchair and a very small table and lamp so I can have a little reading nook in the dining room, next to the fireplace.  We’ll need a little loveseat and chair or something to go in the middle of the new living room (that used to be the dining room).  We’ll need to go find the entertainment center we’ve been discussing for years to go under the TV in the new family room, and, of course, we’ll need lots more bookshelves.  A big reason for doing this whole rearrangement thing is to free up wall space in the family room (new dining room) for bookshelves.  At least four big bookshelves will fit in the new living room, with room for some narrow shelves or a corner shelf in a couple of places.  The new family room will have at least two big bookshelves flanking the TV, and there should be room for three or four bookshelves (at LEAST) in the new dining room.  That’s at least three or four more big bookshelves than we have right now, plus the smaller ones.  And we desperately need them.  My poor books are doubling up on the shelves so you can’t even see half of them.  Poor, sad books.

Okay, change of plans.  We’re still going to rearrange the house, just not this weekend.  There are other things John wants to do, and I can use this last bit of extended free time to try to finish my filing project.  I’ve got six boxes, plus a few things in random plastic filing cabinets.  I want to knock out at least three of those boxes.  Hopefully more.

John fixed the dryer.  He’s very handy.  🙂  Now we just need to make sure it still, you know, dries.

Happy New Year!