The Scary-Scary Room

In our house we have what we call "The Scary-Scary Room". The Scary-Scary Room is located in our basement and is really just the utility room. When we moved in the room was AWFUL, hence the "Scary-Scary" moniker.

We (obviously) have problems with bats in the house and I'm pretty sure there are some mice as well. Apparently the utility room was a big hub of animal activity. The floor and all the surfaces were covered in animal droppings. A week ago, I went down and started cleaning it out down there. It then looked like this:

This is only the half of the room that doesn't house the water heater and boiler (we have hot water heat), but don't worry. The other half of the room is also a crisis.

While cleaning out the Scary-Scary Room, I found all (or at least most of) the original doors and windows from the house. The hinges and door knobs are gorgeous but the doors themselves are garbage. I'm not sure why the previous owner(s?) would even keep them, they're not good enough to use for anything. Later this week I'm going to take off the fixtures and get rid of the doors, it'll open up a HUGE area in the basement and hopefully I'll be able to use some of the old knobs on the current doors and bring back a little retro class!

The windows down there are a totally different story. There is NOTHING salvageable about them. I suppose I could use them for some sort of art project but that's really all they might be able to be used for. Again, why would the previous owner even keep them around??

I also found, what I find to be, a hideous Oriental rug. It doesn't seem to ever have been used, which is kind of weird. Just another question as to why it's still in there.

Next I found a miniature life jacket and two butterfly nets. These might be useful later when the mice start coming into the house in the winter... Actually, no, that life jacket will probably not ever be useful. 

We also have, as I mentioned in the last post, an additional toilet down there. Yes, a THIRD toilet chilling out down in the basement, but, no, we cannot be so lucky as to actually have it be hooked up in a secret third bathroom down there. So we just have another ugly, uncomfortable toilet (plus a fairly okay looking sink) taking up room in our house.

But finally, I will share the piece de resistance from the Scary-Scary Room. A paper bag entirely filled with buckeyes. Old, shriveled, some moldy, buckeyes. What would somebody DO with a bag of buckeyes?? I thought maybe they were saving them to eat them but AV says they are poisonous. Maybe some sort of ... craft project?? But they're all moldy so that wouldn't work..

So I decided to chuck them. I didn't want to hold them too close to my chest because of them being all nasty in there... Which was apparently not the best plan, because one corner I was holding tore. And then THIS happened:

So there were like a million molding buckeyes rolling around on the basement stairs. If it hadn't been for our buddies, the buckeyes would have just stayed in that little pile on that one stair. But alas, SOME PEOPLE thought that these little buggers were fabulous and spent the afternoon kicking them down the stairs.

It's a good thing there's no attic in this house, who knows what we'd find if we had one of those!!!

Cheers,

Red