Home Improvement Weekend (Part 1)

It's March! While that usually means it's about to be the season for spring cleaning around the house, the Mai household has been upgrading here and there.

Laundry Pedestals
When Jessica and I bought our washer and dryer units for that great deal back in November, we passed on getting the corresponding pedestals. I wanted to get them because my parents got them when they bought their laundry machines in 2002, and I appreciated the hidden storage space and extra height afforded to the units themselves. At $200 each, though, we couldn't justify the cost.

With my recent birthday and Jessica's coming up tomorrow (yay!), Jessica's parents (read: mom) offered us the choice of: a) games for the Wii or b) pedestals for the laundry units. Jessica wanted the Wii games but would yield to me if I really wanted the pedestals, which I definitely did. What a gift!

The plan was for Jessica's mom to get a slight discount on Lowe's gift cards from this Discover program and to purchase the pedestals when Jessica's parents came into town this past weekend for her birthday. We double-checked the local availability on Wednesday and they were still $199 each, but when we triple-checked on the day her parents were coming in, they had gone down to $99 each! Wow! It seems like they're on clearance sale now, and it just continues our streak of awesome deals when it comes to laundry machines.

So here are some before/after pictures:

Before: Note the height of the units and the stuff on the shelves.

After: these units are now 15" higher with a few inches to spare above them.

After: Voila! Stuff on shelves now appears as stuff in drawers.

After: The remaining items on the shelves are paper towels, tools, and dryer accessories.

We haven't done any laundry since the pedestals were installed (note: furniture moving pads are very helpful for this!) since I did all of the laundry Friday night. We're very happy with the washer and dryer thus far, and we hope they'll be with us for many, many years to come.