I mentioned in my last post that I've hit a nice nesting phase. I didn't get pictures of everything, unfortunately, but work we have been doing--I assure you.
While I may be the mind and imagination behind the projects (and the maid for preparing and cleaning up), the real credit is due to Sam, who is very willing to put together, move around, paint, etc., etc. How grateful I am for him.
In addition to a bunch of yard work (thanks, also to my brother Brian for his help getting the 2 truckloads of dirt!) and installing of a few doors that we never had downstairs (for under the stairs and a spare room; thanks to Sam's brother Isaac for help framing one of those doors), here's some of what we've been up to the last couple of weeks.
In our house, we have four bedrooms. Sam and I sleep in one, Winston in another. The "blue" room was basically a dump place for home office materials, craft stuff, and odds and ends. The "orange" room in the basement is kind of an exercise room, a place where Sam teaches his trombone lessons, and also a smaller sort of dump place (
sigh). Taking some of the principles from the
Joy of Less book, we did some rearranging and throwing out.
The blue room's main contents went from this (ew, it was messy!):
to this fabulous little cabinet in the living room:
We now have much easier access to printer, shredder, office supplies, etc., since we always have our laptops in the kitchen, anyway. Other items we chucked, are selling on KSL, or moved downstairs to the orange room (which has also had some rearranging/dejunking, but needs more).
And now, the blue room is Winston's room. He loves it.
It hasn't been
that long since we re-did Winston's old room, but we still weren't completely in love with it. We decided we liked the blue much more than his green, so the green room gets the makeover for the coming baby. Winston's old room used to look like this:
And changed into this:
I can't wait to show you more once we get the baby furniture, curtains, etc., all put together. I was inspired by all the pins on my pinboard. Still hunting for ideas for wall decor to minimize echoing and add cuteness. Here's a sneak-peak of fabrics I bought for a quilt and curtains:
I love the trend of using vinyl lettering for quotes on walls, however I will be more careful next time I
go to put it directly on the wall. (Will it stay there indefinitely? Or will I be re-decorating?) The Pinocchio quote on Winston's green wall had to come off, but it's the same color as his new room, so I had to do some thinking about how badly I wanted to keep it. In the end, I carefully peeled it off, and placed on a board to hang in his new room. It was maybe not worth the effort...the letters are big for a small board; I preferred it directly on the wall (see white board in is new room photos above).
This was the last part of the quote before I removed it. It made me laugh.
But, wait, that isn't the end (I told you we've been busy!).
As nice and bright as these glass shower doors were, they were in the way, and not tall enough to keep water from spraying out when Sam showered.
We changed it to this:
And LOVE the added room provided by the curved shower curtain rod. I didn't realize how much those doors really were in the way!
And lastly, we added a little addition to our living room decor. My brother and Sam found a big painting while driving by a garage sale and bought it to add to my nephew's bedroom on his blessing day as a big joke to my brother and sister-in-law. But I actually liked it. The frame was a nasty black brown and gold with major painting chipping off, but the colors of the painting go really well in my living room. So I wouldn't let them give it away and kept it for myself (much to their dismay). I didn't grab a photo of what it looked like, but little bit of spray paint on the frame and a few sheets from the lint roller on the print made a big difference.
Our living room went from this:
To this:
See--the painting is kind of cool. Especially for $2.
It's fun to see how all these projects came together. I worried a cabinet-type desk would be too bulky, but it's nice to condense everything into it instead of taking up more than half of a bedroom.
I can't wait to see how the baby's room comes together. More projects related to that coming soon.
