The Great House Project Of 2013 - Before Photos

If you follow me on Facebook you might have seen me mention that we are going to re-arrange our house this Spring/Summer. I've dubbed it The Great House Project Of 2013. There are a few different reasons for it, the main one being trying to minimize how much our dog has to go up and down the stairs - he's 14 and has arthritis, so while the medication he is on has helped a lot, the stairs can still be tricky for him sometimes.

The other reason is it looks like we won't be moving anytime soon - I'm expecting us to be here at least another 2 years, if not longer. We haven't done anything to the house since we re-arranged it when I started the online business back in 2007. Well, I take that back - Will painted the kitchen last Fall. For my birthday. While I was out of town. Because he is awesome. :)

We live in a half double - one big house that is divided into two townhouse style apartments. The downstairs, which is currently where all the business stuff is (except for my inventory storage in the basement), consists of one big room that is the living room and dining room, and the kitchen. The upstairs has two bedrooms, one large and one small, and the bathroom.

Our current "living room" is the big bedroom upstairs - that is where Will's computer desk, our couch, and our TV are. To say it is cramped is an understatement - in fact our whole house is cramped. I'm hoping this re-arrange will give us at least a bit more breathing room...

I actually have some Before-Before photos of the downstairs - what it looked like before I started the business:

And a few Before-Before photos of the downstairs circa 2008 or so, well into it's life as the business space:

Man, did I have a lot of stuff waiting to be listed then or what? I actually did a pretty big clean out of inventory over the last few months, to try to make the re-arranging a bit easier. Here is the office now - I am counting these as the official Before photos:

As you can see, my inventory shelves are relatively empty right now, in the grand scheme of things! But the packaging area is messy, as usual...

I measured the rooms and my stuff, and I think I've got it worked out so that everything will fit where I want it to go. The downstairs actual living room will hold everything that is currently in the upstairs "living room" - Will's desk, the couch, the TV, etc. Command Central - my desk, filing cabinets, etc. - will fit into the downstairs dining room (which is currently the packaging/photography area).

The upstairs big bedroom will hold the inventory shelves, the packaging area, and the photography area - I think. That will be the trickiest one... That big metal cabinet that we currently use as a photo station and packaging table is way too heavy to move upstairs - so I have to have two different tables in the upstairs room, one for each purpose. I think I can make it work. Maybe.

Besides the re-arranging, the walls also need fixed up (we finally got new windows last year, so we don't have to tape up plastic on them every winter anymore, hooray!) and painted. I got new curtains for the downstairs - $8 for three windows worth at a local thrift shop! - and the room upstairs - $50 for 8 brand new panels from eBay - they turned out to be pretty thin, almost like bed sheet material, so I am glad I found different ones for the downstairs.

I'm looking for a new couch also, because ours is pretty worn out, and I would love to be able to just chop it up into a couple of pieces and haul it out the curb, rather than trying to move it downstairs in one piece. Getting it upstairs was no small feat - and we have the dings on the wall to prove it!

So there you have it - The Great House Project Of 2013. I'm going to try to do some in progress posts, and then finally a big "we're done, thank GOD" reveal - so stay tuned, and wish us luck!!