Day Two-seventy-nine: keeping up the momentum

We've continued to plug away at various projects and even crossed a few off our massive "to do" list, including touching up the paint throughout the main level and installing a new living room light because three 100 watt bulbs beat four 50 watt bulbs any day. So without further ado...

We're moved onto a project to create some storage and counter space in the basement. We rescued the table from the breakfast booth that we removed from the kitchen. It wasn't original to the house because a previous owner bought it on 7 December 1991 (we know because there was a sticker on it with this info). Here's a refresher of how things used to look:

After some power sanding we turned it into this:

And one coat of stain already has darkened it up a bit.

It should be lovely once we marry it up with this (and yes, we'll have to make them level first):

Meanwhile back at the shoe cubby...it's got trim, molding, and a couple coats of clear stain now. A few more coats of stain and some white paint and voila! we'll be able to make our shoes disappear!

Aside from creating new things we're still unkluging some items from the original owner (the engineer who installed the wood breakfast table). There was a makeshift AC vent in the basement that he had made by cutting a hole in the duct. The irregular cut and some other homemade features made this not work very well. So we continued our recent adventures in ductwork to turn this:

Into this:

And we'll have a brand spanking new vent cover to seal the deal.