file under progress

yes, progress.  we're 90% of the way there on the new guest room.  and, excepting the photos that are on their way that may grace the walls, this is where we may stay on this room for a little while.  we got the walls painted, the floor patched and painted, the new area rug in, the bed moved in, and a new chair and ottoman purchased and set down.

jenny installing carpet pad - equipment:  comfy yellow socks, extremely sharp knife, plumber's crack

new carpet trial runs

new carpet happy dancing

here are some extraordinarily satisfying befores and afters:

before corner as you enter

after corner as you enter (yeah, lamp needs a table, relax)

before back corner

after back corner, boy checking out functionality of ottoman

ahhhh.  now the boy has a place to "put his babies to sleep" in the ottoman that opens up for storage.

obviously, we're going to need some curtains, a table for the lamp, cool shit on the walls, and some bedside lighting of some sort.  all in good time...

for now, a sigh of relief.  now, if we could only unload the mammoth couch from the living room to make room for the chairs that we got to replace it, the we could de-clutter the media room enough to actually use that room.  and the shell game continues.

omg! omg! omg!

i have been waiting for this moment since about 3 seconds after moving into this house.  the ugly, brown, matted, scratchy, pooped on (yes, our cat) carpet is gone.  major sigh of relief.  my loathing of this carpet has been palpable.  i wouldn't even let our baby boy lie on it.  it gave me the major heebs.  but now that i've ripped it all up, i can see...ugly plywood.  but that's okay.  i'm hoping to sand and paint it this weekend and then get an area rug in there.  we'll do something more permanent with the next upgrade.  [snicker]

the equipment:  headphones, sippy cup, blankie, christmas kitty cat

my equipment, complete with construction yoga pants

it was actually pretty easy.  possibly because my body was hyped on the thought of having it out.  but the key was that red carpet ripping knife.  very, very sharp.  as he was leaving the house knowing that i was potentially going to have at it, hubs said to me, "don't like hurt yourself with that knife.  you're the only adult home, okay?"  have i mentioned that i love demo?  hooray!  i was determined to have it done with by trash day, and hubs just hauled it to the curb.  good, freekin riddance.

and i also got the walls painted.  i spent so much time hemming and hawing about what direction to go.  at first i was thinking camels, taupes, tans.  then i think i was influenced by all the grays i've been seeing in the interior dec blogs i've been crawling lately for inspiration.  in my mind i was seeing a warm gray.  something with brown and purpley undertones.  my gut went with "barefoot bay" 197-1 from mythic paint.  at first blush (?), i'm thinking it's too purpley, but hubs keeps insisting that it's great.  what he actually said when the first coat went on was, "wow, it's like a grown up color!".  hmmm.  i think it will look really good when the cherry wood bed is in there, along with a possible new dark brown chair.

hey, looky - no effin cow!

painting also made us notice how crappy the trim looks.  the previous owner (the second to own the house) decided that slapping a coat of white oil-based paint over all the exposed wood in the house made it look better.  yeah, no primer.  and really, just SLAPPED the paint on.  so you can see all the knots, and streaks of the wood underneath.  sigh.  we'll fix the window trim when we install new windows sometime in the very near future.  the baseboards may have to just get another half-asser coat of white glossy.  hey, rome wasn't built in a day.

creating a guest room

our current guest room is the same room in which we have our working desk and our computers.  it also is currently stowing my (as of yet unused) sewing machine, a cedar chest with what i can't remember in it, and the drying rack.  while it's a nice enough room, it's on the road side of the house, so it's noisier and gets more direct sun (not a good thing at 7 am) and headlights at night.

we have another bedroom on the first floor that is currently a catch-all and a great room for the boy to romp.  our vision (my vision?) is that the romper room be turned into the guest bedroom (with minimal cosmetic changes), and the current guest room be reinvented as a computer/craft/media/music room for the mostly-adult set.  i want my sewing machine set up with table space for fabric and other crafty notions, and i would love to see a cool drafting area for the hubs so he can work out all his architectural ideas.

as everything in house renovation, it's a shell game.  gotta work the guest room first so the behemoth bed can be moved so that the craftyfun room can be realized.

first step, demo!  i love the demo portion of any project.  this is minor stuff.  just have to rip off some old silly wallpaper borders.  the room used to be a kid's room, and the mural is nicely done, just not our style.  so down it must come.

it was actually quite easy.  took two parts hot water, one part white vinegar.  use a sponge to soak the paper, wait a few minutes (or as long as you can - i generally am impatient to rip paper off - oooooh, the satisfaction!), then use a nice wide spackle knife to pull up the paper.  don't push too hard, as you don't want to ding up the drywall.  and if it tears, just resoak, rewait, restrip.  i was going back and forth between two sides which worked nicely, so i didn't have to wait to do something.

before with borders

the equipment

yes, it's better without.

and voila - a wall i can work with!  i will probably have to lightly sand the wall because the mural paint is heavy in places.  then prime and paint.

felt good to make some progress on something today.

quick photo project

we have a large living room that needs a ton of design/redecorating tlc.  in the meantime between now and when we're ready to do a large renovation, we decided that one of the large, white walls had to go.  so i gathered up a collection of quasi-abstract photos i've taken, framed them up, and voila, we have a better looking wall!

i am, by no means a hardcore photographer.  i have a point-and-shoot that i love for its small size and ease of use.  eventually i'd love to have the time, money and patience to use a better camera.  but for now, an inexpensive camera that i take everywhere works great for me.

i fiddle with the original photos a teeny bit in photoshop elements.  i crop, convert to black and white, fuzz things out a bit.  then i upload all of my photos to snapfish.com for developing.  these are all 8X10 size.  i like how some of them are matted and some aren't.

the hardest part of this project was the measuring.  because they are not all the same frame, and the spacing is more what looked good to my eye than any sort of round number, it was hard to know where to pound in the nail.  make sure that you have lots of coffee humming in your system before attempting the measuring and math.  or have as your helper, a kind, patient, willing husband who is superfreekinhandy.  that's what i did.

ahh, that's better.

later this year (???) there will hopefully be paint on the walls, a fireplace in the room, and a piano.  yeah.