This is a little hard to photograph, but what you are looking at the linen closet that came with the house. It is a mess, but I blame the shelves, which were about 8 inches deep. Behind this was one of two closets in my office.

We decided to sacrifice one of the closets in my office and remove this linen closet. Then in that space, we would put in a bathroom vanity and a new sink.

But first we needed to purchase a new linen closet to replace the old one. We shopped around and ended up buying a wood closet organizer from Lowes. Here’s a picture from their website:

We modified the organizer by putting in drawers and a cabinet to hold tablecloths, sheets, placemats, soap, etc. On the bottom of the organizer, we screwed three drawers together and I sewed a liner for our new customized laundry hamper. Now, one cabinet holds our linens and acts as a hamper for the dirty clothes.

Next, Kyle began demoing the two closets. He took out the old linen closet and removed the shelves from my closet. Here is a picture right after he did this. As you can see, the doorway from the office closet is still open, allowing you to see into my office:

I kind of liked this, actually. It felt like having a private bathroom in my office. But we are going to put a vanity and sink in that area, so we needed to have a solid wall. Kyle sheetrocked it:

So that’s where we are. Next, Kyle is going to do the plumbing for the bathtub and sink. I think after that, we’re going to put in the vanity and sink. Or maybe the tub next? I can’t keep it straight. Either way, demoing is done, and we are moving on to the next phase.

Two weekends ago, it was very hot around here, so Kyle and I went to the coolest place I could think of: Humboldt County. We decided to go camping.

Kyle was uncomfortable with just setting up a tent in a random park (although I told him people do that all the time in Humboldt, believe me), so we went to Patrick’s Point, near Trinidad, and paid to have an actual campsite. Here it is:

Note, please, the scary looking thicket-like cave near the tent. I couldn’t tell if it were natural or man made. Ambiance?

It was actually a lovely day in Humboldt but foggy around the camp. That was a nice balance, since we spent time in downtown Arcata and Blue Lake where it was sunny, and we hiked the trails in the fog around the ocean. I love how dramatic fog can be.

We hiked down to the beach and up to the very top of this rock:

It was fun. We saw a lot of banana slugs, a chipmunk, and at least five little bunny rabbits. This one was eating a fern.

The only other animals we encountered was some kind of fight that happened while we were in our tent. We had a glimpse of whatever-it-was earlier, some sort of small, light-colored animal about the size of a house cat. (But it wasn’t a cat.) Later we heard crashing in the bushes and a snarl. Animal fight! I said it was a bobcat. Kyle thought it was a possum. My story is more interesting, so let’s go with bobcat.

We also went to Blue Lake, as I mentioned, and sampled the beer at Mad River Brewing. Excellent beer. I can see why they are winning awards.

Here is our sampler after it was done.

Overall, a nice little weekend getaway for us. I was happy to learn that we missed the hottest day of the heatwave, which made me feel very smart.