Hey, look! Organization!

Since it's looking like the bulk of the blogging about fixing up the new house duties are going to fall to me, I've created a page (Home Improvement) where I'll be indexing my entries about it in a semi-organized, categorized manner. Speaking of new entries, I should have several up next week. I've been working hard and taking tons of pictures, as have Matt and his friends. For now, I'll tide you over with a picture of my finished bookcase:

I have cleaned both the walls and the shelves thoroughly, first with Murphy's Wood Oil Soap, then with some WATCO rejuvenating oil. I used almost an entire 750 count box of generic q-tips from Target to get the insides of the grooves clean.

The good news is that it's really quite clean, and knowing that it's no longer completely grimy is very satisfying. The bad news, unfortunately, is that the WATCO didn't do much, if anything, to even out all the sun fading and nothing to remove the Mystery Stains (more on those later, once I get the pictures off my digital camera).

If I want the walls to look even, I'm going to have to sand them down and refinish them entirely. I'd kind of wanted to do that anyway, since I'd like them to be a lighter color. They're beautiful during the day thanks to the gigantic picture window on the outside-facing wall, but it's very dark and cave-like in there at night. I'd also like to offset the dark bricks in the fireplace.  That's a project for next summer, though. I don't have time to finish it before school starts, and I don't want that room to be a construction zone when I'll need to be working.

All together, I'm currently about 20% finished with the walls in that room. They're taking way longer than I thought they would. I originally thought they'd only take an hour or two, and that has morphed into eight discs from Bill Bryson's At Home and counting. I am very thankful that the Asheville library system has a good number of books on tape-- looks like I'll be needing them for sure.