Welcome to 2013

ok, its 2013.  I am going to try and get back on this blogging bandwagon.  Spent the winter break doing house projects.  LOTS of house projects.  First, we had most of the downstairs painted.  That meant moving lots of junk and clearing spaces..with 48 hours notice.  It was a little nuts, but looks great!!!!  Love my new gray dining room and sage kitchen. 

Next we began the great kid bedroom switcheroo.  Big Man's bedroom was first.  We sold his awesome car bed on Craigslist.  We also sold his dresser.  We removed all the stickers from the walls (more on that later), and brought in an awesome loft tent bed with a SLIDE!  I know.  He loves it.  We moved another dresser into his closet, so all that is in the room is the bed and his train table.  We added Superman and Spiderman wall stickers, and he was good to go.  One down, not too bad.

Next we started in on K's room - a much bigger project.  We had to paint all the walls (in her choice of lime, tangerine and sky blue), and remove lots of stuff.  This had been their baby room, but for the last three years was a guest room/storage room.  Full of holiday decorations and a giant queen bed.  We moved the bed down to the other guest room (still need to get rid of the bed that was in there!), moved all the holiday stuff, removed the treadmill (to the basement), and started painting.  The small tangerine wall was pretty easy.  the lime was tricky as we needed 3 coats in some places to cover the characters I had painted on the walls when they were babies.  Weirdly, the blue was awesome! I got that paint that has the primer in it, and it covered all the paintings in one coat! SCORE!  Then we moved her furniture in, and added her accessories (LOTS Of pillows).  This picture is before drapes, that are now in.

 B's room is up next.  We moved all the furniture around and got her room staged on New Years' day, but we still have to paint it.  That will be a challenge.  the walls are currently a dark blue with paintings of princesses on two walls.  She wants light purple and bubblegum pink.  Praying the primer-colored paint will work wonders again, but imagine we will need MANY coats.  Bought the regular primer too, just in case.  Hope to get to that this weekend.

So, that is the project update from here. 

Big Bedroom Reveal!!!

So back here (!!!) I started talking about what I was going to do to the girls room. We had finally convinced them to move out of their smaller bedroom into our old bedroom - with two closets. They wanted princess decor. They wanted pink and Ariel and Cinderella. And...without further ado...we gave it to them!




Yes, I did the paintings on the walls - but I used a $10 projector I bought at Michaels ten years ago. I have no drawing ability - this was just tracing and coloring in. But I am really happy with it. I wish I had a before, but I can assure you it looked NOTHING like this. The walls were blue, there was a big queen bed and LOTS more furniture. It looks so much bigger. The canopy's I got on Amazon for like $15 each. I love the star lights on the wall - $10 at Ikea. The two desks were Craigslist each about $20. We painted them to match the room and decoupaged Princess stuff on them. The chairs were free off a neighbor's curb. So really, this was just about the painting. Amazing what a difference it makes. And really, I am no artist - this is just tracing and coloring (DH helped with the Princess' hands - I could not get a good enough trace to do those!)

The girls LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Their brother does too. Now if we can just get Big Man to sleep back in his own room!

For more DIYs - visit - http://asoftplace.net/2010/01/diy-day-10/
And for more painting projects, click here.

Modern and Funky (and even functional!)

I am in the process of working on the new bedroom for the girls. We are moving them from their cramped bedroom to our old bedroom which is nearly 2x the size and has 2 closets. So, in working on planning ideas, I have been watching Craigslist to see if I can find any cheap desks or finds for their new room (much more to come on the room soon!). I have used Craigslist successfully two times in the last 8 months - first to buy this great piece, and then to sell concert tickets a week ago. It really is great. Anyway.

While I was there I saw an ad for a Frank Ghery chair. Frank Ghery is an architect who is known for modern, funky buildings including this cool hotel, and the cool Disney Concert Hall in LA.


Anyway, someone on Craigslist was selling a Ghery chair for $100. I checked and the cheapest I could find it was $790 online. hmm.. Now I do not need this chair. At all. I wasn't even looking for an outdoor chair. But man, it is cool looking.

So last night I finally went to see it. and LOVED it. So..here it is in my yard. Probably not its final home, but at least its there. Cool, huh?

We have a Yard!

Following our renovation last year, our yard looked like a mud pit. Especially the back - it was just abysmal - very little grass, LOTS of weeds, scattered debris. It was awful. Last year some local handymen had done some tree work for us - they weren't great, but they were VERY CHEAP. So we called them for an estimate to clean up our yard. There was so much stuff - kill weeds ALL around the house. Sod the backyard. Edge and weedguard and mulch ALL around the house. Seed the front yard. Clean up all the bushes and plants. Again - LUDICROUSLY cheap bid. We took it on the spot. They came relatively quickly and did the sod in the back yard. Then it was weeks and weeks (and threats) before we saw them again. But now it is done - we have a yard again! I am so happy!! Now I can plant some stuff - not just in pots! And my wonderful MIL gave me a gift card to a local greenhouse - so I can't wait!

Big Man's Big Boy Room

Here are the pics. The walls look white but they are light blue.


I kind of feel like it looks like a 7 year-olds room, instead of a 2-year old. But I really like it.




Here is his old room - note the crib, and horrible mirrored (somewhat covered) closet doors.

Cleaning Frenzy

Every once in a while I get a cleaning/organizing bug. I had finally had it with my pantry. Unfortunately I don't have any "before" pictures, but I promise you - it was a disaster. The doors did not close all the way, and when you opened it, stuff would fall out. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It was impossible to find things, and people we scared to open it.

Last Friday I went to nirvana the Container Store and got some great bins for less than $3 each!!! I know!!! Anyway, they fit my pantry perfectly. So we went home and the kids' activity was helping me empty the pantry and sort all the crap into piles by type - sauces, canned fruit/veggies, soups, snacks, etc. Fun for the whole family (actually the liked it). We put it back into the storage bins, and back in the pantry - tada - an organized pantry with doors that actually close!!!


After that success in the kitchen - I moved into other rooms. I started to deal with the hazardous waste site disaster we call our old bedroom, the closet in Big Man's room (which held all my too small clothes that I have now moved into my own spare closet), and the dvd's in our living room. I am still feeling the bug, so who knows what might be next!

Verizon SUCKS ROCKS

So we needed to have phone jacks wired in our new spaces. Our contractors did some of it, but we needed the phone company to come and hook them up. This was first requested in early December. It is now mid-January and no phone jacks. So far DH has taken 3 days off from work, plus one Sunday spent waiting around all day. The first time or so they sent the wrong tech - "I'm here to fix your line" - "no, install" - "oh, I don't do that". At least 2 other times they just completely didn't show up. When DH has called he gets no resolution other than for them to write another ticket and then just not show up. It is truly ridiculous.

I looked into other local phone services - but it looks like they can't do the jack hook up - only switch existing service. Monopolies SUCK.

If anyone has a snailmail or email addess for the Board of Directors, we would LOVE it.

House Updates

So we are mostly moved into the new space. Here are some pictures of the great room. I have to say we LOVE it. We used it for Christmas and it was perfect. Very versatile! On Christmas morning we turned one of the sofas around so it was facing the tree. Perfect for Nana and Grampa watching all the opening madness! We even put our big expandable dining table in here and ate Christmas and New Years dinners. The last picture is of my scrapbook area. Yayy! Now I can scrapbook in the big room with everyone.

Here is one of our porch. I will post some of the bedroom/bathroom in the next week or so.

Home Sweet Filthy Home

So we are in that part of the renovation that is making me CRAZY. I don't have a clean house normally -- there is lots of clutter. But it is not actually dirty. Now every surface is covered in some combination of drywall dust or plaster dust. Yuck. For a while there we were losing rooms by the minute. They needed to get into this space or that space to try and put duct work for the central air. It was hard to remember we were actually going to end up with more space when it was all done!

On the good side, we got to pick out paint colors and fixtures and stuff. They are using C2 paint, which from what I've read, is really nice. The big room will be taupe, the bedroom is blue and the bathroom is kind of sea green. I can't wait to see what they will look like. For now here are some recent pics:

Renovation Yuck

So we love how our house is coming along. We really do. But there is currently a film of dust and dirt covering pretty much EVERY INCH of our house. We Swiffer constantly to no avail. It is really gross. And for me to say that it has to be pretty bad. Its not like I live in a pristine home. Our house is full of stuff. Lots of piles of clutter around. But it is rarely DIRTY. It is now. Walking with your bare feet (as I almost always do at home) is disgusting. I am trying hard not to think about how much lead paint dust the kids are consuming. I am very glad to be going out of town again next week. Yayyy beach vacation. Bye Bye dusty dirty house.

Movin' on up!

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Originally uploaded by MBooth_98

So see the previous post for where we were about a month ago. Demolition complete, but just a big pile of dirt out back. Then we had a foundation. By the end of this week we have this! Wow! We are getting very excited, as things are really coming along! Our contractors signed a deal for another big job they hope to start at the end of Sept..so they are motivated to move quickly. yayy! They say we will have a second floor and roofing by the end of next week. The weather has been great, so that has surely helped. Looking good!

Renovation Week One - ahead of schedule - AHHH

So our renovation was to start this week. The contractors were supposed to do "site preparation" Mon-Thurs, and demolition was slated to start on Friday. That seemed silly -- why do demolition on a Friday only to leave for two days. We figured they would start on Monday, so we would have an additional weekend to clear out our existing living room (which will be removed to make way for the big great room). We figured wrong. They tell us this morning (Tuesday) that demolition will start on Wednesday. Ha ha. The room is about 1/2 cleared out. Apparently we won't be sleeping tonight. We will be going back and forth to the storage space. Such fun. Also, Direct TV is coming tomorrow between 9am-noon to reconfigure the satellite. Hope its on the earlier side, or their wiring might be gone!! Oops.

On the plus side, I will not complain about contractors that are ahead of schedule.

Home Renovation (part 1 of MANY)

So in about a week we are beginning our home addition project. Well, we aren't -- our contractors are. While we were adept at completing our deck and our basement finishing, a two story addition with deck and porch were quite a bit out of our realm. Anyway, next week the contractors will demolish our existing Great Room. Nevermind that we bought the house largely on the basis of that room; its a goner. In its place should be a Great Room twice the size, and a master bedroom/bathroom above it.

Our existing upstairs has three bedrooms and one bathroom. With three kids, the one bathroom upstairs is just a killer. And while the girls LOVE sharing a room right now, I'm thinking that may not last forever. But the bathroom was definitely the primary motivation.

Anyway, we've been packing up and putting in storage much of what is in our Great Room to prepare to live without one for the next many months. We have also thrown out, freecycled, or donated LOTS of stuff. I would say at least 10 of the large green lawn trash bags worth. Its been very liberating.

I'm am sure the next many posts on this subject will be rants about the hell of renovations. But for now I am relieved to have gotten rid of so much junk, and excited that the work is about to start.