I have closet envy

Despite the fact that I'm a fairly techie person, I still greatly prefer paper and pen for my to-do lists. My very favorite is the back of an envelope. My purse is full of crumpled, discolored sticky notes that say things like "paint trim!" and "harissa?" They are like tiny time capsules of what I was cooking and what I was working on in the house at that moment in time.

Last winter, when I was so burned out on home repair, my to-do list said only "One Tree Hill" and "cookies." It was glorious.

I recently found one of my to-do lists from that first summer in the house. On that list was "paint front hall closet." I never did get around to that and I figure I should do it before the boy moves in (he actually owns things like raincoats and umbrellas). I painted it a crisp white because it's a dark closet and white would look good, right?

Then I saw what Sara over at Russet Street Reno did with her closet:

HOT DAMN. I went white swan when I should have gone black. And now I sort of want to paint the closet again. How beautiful is that?

The closet hatch

This was in the floor of my closet.  It was taped over.  I studiously ignored it.

I wanted to set up my air conditioning unit in my bedroom but I didn't have any windows.  When I bought my house there were no roof vents, so during the summer my house was HOT.  Really really hot.  I eventually got the roof vents installed (thanks, Al!) but in the meantime I needed a way to cool my bedroom while I slept.  So I bought a portable air conditioning unit and figured I could maybe vent it out this hole and into the basement.  I got brave and took the tape off the hole.  I cautiously opened the hatch and found some sort of homemade lockbox. 

I slammed the lid shut and called Z.

Me:  "Hey, what are you doing? You want to come over and have lunch?"

Z:  "Actually, I'm not feeling well so I'm heading home."

Me:  "Okay, you HAVE to come over and help me excavate this weird box in my closet floor.  There could be spiders (OH MY GOD, SPIDERS) or severed fingers or guns or cursed doubloons in there."

He came over.  I have great friends.

There wasn't anything in the box, luckily, and Z helped me dismantle the thing.  Now I had a straight shot into the basement.

I used the duct in the basement from the old stove downdraft that I mentioned earlier to vent the AC unit out of the house. Thank you, former house owners, for not leaving anything scary in that box.  I'm not even going to think about what you might have stored in there.