#back bedroom

[truckstoptigers]

csa vent under the cut. please proceed with caution

it's nice to know my stepdad thinks that what happened to me (and many others) "doesn't actually happen very often" aka doesn't happen enough to "count" to him so we & our feelings don't matter :) it's nice to know that me being pregnant at 12 didn't matter because it doesn't happen often so who cares :)) it doesn't matter that i was being trafficked by my own biological father and that it was one of his close friends that did that to me, because it doesn't happen often :))) i'm totally not dangerously close to spiraling about this or anything :))))

[americanfoursquare]

Baby habitat.

Lots of our recent projects have been done, or at least expedited, with a future tiny human in mind [see, e.g., the mudroom improvements, the sunroom built-ins, the raised beds, and the office shelves]. 

After we tackled the major baby room stuff back in August, we signed off with a list of a couple things left to be done. We just managed to check those items off before the tiny human showed up a few weeks ago.

The most important improvement was the installation of brand new windows--a project so big it deserves its own post another time. G made those new windows look right at home by custom-building window casing that matches the rest of the house. 

We then hung a new faux pipe curtain rod [I appreciate the irony of paying good money for a curtain rod that merely *looks* like its pieced together out of random building materials] and heavy light-blocking curtains for maximum baby sleepage. 

In the attached sunroom, we installed bottom-up top-down cellular shades that don’t so much block light as give us a little privacy when we need it. 

Finally, we hung a little bit of baby-friendly art and craft: 

First, a couple prints from Brainstorm, which I have long loved. 

Second, an engineering print by Parabo of a photo G took on Runde Island during our epic trip to Norway in August--secured to the wall with maple slats that match the crib and light fixture. 

Third, a pom pom mobile that I DIY ripped off from an absolutely gorgeous mobile I spotted at Trohv [RIP] last year--it was cheap and easy to make although I will bear the scar of a glue gun burn for life.

Baby F showed up a few days before her due date and has settled in nicely [and acquired lots of lovely things] so far.

She has yet to express any opinion about the habitat we created for her... all in good time.

1 year ago: the sunroom transformation begins

2 years ago: the closet transformation begins

3 years ago: our first holiday transformation begins

[americanfoursquare]

Realer all the time.

I think its fair to say that 100% of the current human residents of our house are starting to get a little anxious about the potential future 50% house population increase. 

[100% of the current feline house residents appear to be unaware of changes in the works.]

As usual, that anxiety manifests itself in house projects. G has mainly focused on making our mudroom [previously the most neglected, unloved space in the house] a nice, new entrance for everyday use. We'll tell you about that multi-part project another time.

For now, my project: finishing the future human's room. Yes, with three months left to go maybe its a little early to be working so hard on this. But the whole point is to do this stuff while I CAN still work hard! 

Our series of sunroom projects went a long long way toward checking this room-finishing box. But we still had/have a few things left: 

getting our crap moved out of the bedroom

recovering the sunroom loveseat

new furniture for the bedroom

new light fixture for the bedroom

new curtain rods and maybe curtains for the bedroom

some kind of window treatments for the sunroom

MOVING CRAP OUT 

Last summer, after my flashy paint and trim job, the back bedroom looked like this: 

More recently, it looked like that, but with a bunch more random crap in it.

To prep for future human occupancy, we needed to get the Expedit shelving unit and all the crap out. Two projects helped with this. 

First, the built-in Billies in the office--this is where all the books moved. 

Second, I did a quick rehab of the office closet--where all the rest of the crap will go once we get it a little better organized.

Not much to say about this project, other than the closet was reaaaallly shoddy before, and slightly less shoddy with one additional shelf now. 

We sold the Expedit shelves and put an old coffee table and crappy bookshelf out on the curb, thus closing the crap gap. These cool Army shipping crates would have gone the same way had we not noticed that they’re stamped with a former house resident’s name and info, so we figure they belong in the house. 

Perfect for homebrew gear storage in the basement!

RECOVERING THE SUNROOM LOVESEAT

Next up was recovering this much-loved [by the cats, for sharpening their claws] loveseat. 

[Pro-tip: always make your “before” photos as terrible as possible]

IKEA has stopped selling covers for this 2-seater Karlstad, so we ordered a bunch of fabric samples for two other companies, Comfort Works and Bemz, that make covers for Karl. We happened to like a fabric from Comfort Works best and the price was right; about a month later our custom-made cover arrived in a fancy bag. 

Recovering Karl required partial disassembly, but overall was really easy. 

Nice result, cat approved!

NEW BEDROOM FURNITURE

The bedroom really needed just three pieces of furniture--a chair, a dresser, and a crib. 

Rather than invest in an ugly and/or expensive glider or rocker we decided to repurpose our Eames-style lounge chair that has served us well in our living room but has seen better days [i.e. all the days before I lived with a roommate and her crazy tortoiseshell cat who went apeshit on my poor chair].

So instead of spending money on a fugly new chair for the bedroom, we bought a much more exciting swiveling chair for our living room.

As for the rest of the bedroom furniture, IKEA served us well. We chose the HEMNES 8-drawer dresser in “white stain” [a brighter white than “white”] and the SNIGLAR [worst name ever] crib, which has the advantages of being like $80, convertible to a small kid bed later, unfinished wood [so no paint or other weirdness to end up in kid’s mouth], and good-looking. 

Fun assembly times ensued.

NEW BEDROOM LIGHT FIXTURE

While at IKEA, we also perused the light fixtures and settled on the BÖJA pendant for the bedroom--I liked the idea of the wooden shade, which spoke to the unfinished wood crib and the light wood base of the lounge chair. We also picked up a big dimmable globe LED--we figured there may, just may, be times that we don’t want immediate 100% brightness in that room.

To make that dimming possible, I installed a dimmer switch to replace the basic light switch, and didn’t set anything on fire, NBD. 

And to save myself from what I knew would be inevitable drywall repair and repainting after I removed the old boob fixture, I also got a 16″ ceiling medallion to cover up all manner of sins. I painted it the same dark grey as the lower part of the walls, which also speaks to the new grey ceiling beam in the adjoining sunroom. Yay laziness.

I’d say it looks pretty sweet!

So here’s where we stand on the list:

getting our crap moved out of the bedroom [mostly]

recovering the sunroom loveseat

new furniture for the bedroom

new light fixture for the bedroom

new curtain rods and maybe curtains for the bedroom

some kind of window treatments for the sunroom

Not bad, eh? The bedroom window treatments will wait until after our NEW WINDOWS ARE INSTALLED next month!!!! [So excited.] The sunroom window treatments... I’m just dragging my heels because they’re probably going to have to be custom, and thus expensive. Sigh. 

1 year ago: approaching the start of porch construction

2 years ago: oh just knocking down a wall in the garage [on purpose]

3 years ago: major debrownification times

[americanfoursquare]

Still here doing stuff.

Oops, we just took an accidental month 6-week leave of absence. G and I have both lately been focused on things other than household improvements [though we’ve both worked on one stupid project--my idea--that has turned into a much bigger mess than anticipated... details later once we finally finish it] and while work improving the yard continues, it hasn’t justified a post in a while.

That all changed this past weekend, when we each made headway on our own individual projects. I’ll let G tell you about his [teaser below], so here’s mine. 

You may recall that as part of our closet expansion project, we added a new wall in the back bedroom where a strange little nook used to be. I did some drywall repair, then primed the new drywall and... not much has changed since then. 

The below photo from Saturday morning looks an awful lot like the above one I took way back in January [one major difference would be the random mattress standing along one wall waiting to be donated--we just got a new one from Tuft & Needle, and I can’t stop talking about how great it is to actually sleep]. 

Although we barely use the room, the shabby state of things was really starting to bother me. Finally having an open weekend to tackle a big project, I decided it was time to put some of our leftover paint to use and tidy up our spare room.

The goals were three-fold: 

avoid adding a new color to the house’s palette, 

help the rather drab space feel brighter and bigger, 

do something DIFFERENT. 

Indeed, the room is not huge--just 9.5′ x 12′, and felt pretty sad with that previously-ubiquitous blue-grey. 

In pursuit of these goals, and after evaluation of the paint stored in our basement, I decided to do a two-tone wall with a chair rail effect.

For the upper part of the wall, I wanted a nice, clean white. We were all out of the white paint from the living room, so I picked up a gallon of McCormick’s Super White in eggshell from our local lumberyard. For the lower part, I wanted a deep grey. The Stealth Jet color from the basement was just too dark for this little room, so I went with the Dark Granite paint from the dining room as the base color. 

Three walls got the chair rail treatment, which marked my very first successful use of painters tape. [The technique: [1] Paint upper wall white, let dry thoroughly. [2] Apply tape, and paint thin stripe of white along bottom edge. Let dry long enough to recoat. [3] Paint grey along bottom edge, and remove tape immediately before it dries. This process works because it accepts the fact that painters tape SUCKS and always leaks... indeed, the coat of white leaks a little under the tape and dries, sealing it against the second coat, which was the grey  I actually wanted.

The fourth wall was where the fun stuff happened. Inspired in large part by this:

...which is just amazingly gorgeous, and this: 

...which has a more playful, relaxed vibe [and looked quite a bit more attainable], I took the plunge. But not before sketching things out, of course. 

I transferred my sketch loosely onto the wall by drawing dots where it felt like the tallest peaks should be and then using a framing square to draw clean 45 degree angles all over. I numbered the ridge lines paint-by-number-style, and then got to work, starting with the lightest, farthest away ridge. 

The darkest color is Dark Granite from the dining room, the medium is Anonymous from the guest room and master, and the light is Sparrow from our foyer, stairs and landing [all Behr]--all come from the same paint palette.

Although the tape worked great in the other application, I didn’t have the patience to tape all those edges... so I cut the mountains in by hand. Truly, if i’d tried to do this 2 years ago, my hand would have been shaking all over. But now I've got a handle on painting, no problem. Time to quit my day job?

The walls weren’t the only thing needing attention... as you can see above, oddly, this room had unpainted oak baseboard lacking shoe and basecap. Not having finished base trim saved me from having to cut in at the bottom of the wall, but meant I had a little extra work to do to make the room look finished-ish.

A bazillion cuts later, and some very brave use of the nail gun, and I had some two-tone base trim. 

After two coats of trim paint, the room was looking quite a bit spiffier than before!

One casualty: the biplane light switch cover that it turns out was a decoupage job and got a bit torn up when I removed it from the wall :<

We still have a few things to do, including building new window trim to replace the existing super crappy trim, removing an old doorbell from the wall [and repairing the hole left behind], and painting the ceiling [YES, I know I should have done this first, but I just hate it so much]. But overall this room is just a much nicer place to be--for all that ironing we do, I guess. 

TWO BIG THINGS: 

[1] We are all but RID of the blue-grey that infected the house when we moved here--I’ve cleansed the basement, kitchen, hallway, foyer, stairs, office, and two upstairs bedrooms of it... all that’s left is the little stairway heading down to the basement and then we’ll be done! I can hardly believe it. 

[2] Somehow without even realizing it, I finally finished installing the shoe moulding that was removed when our floors were refinished. Only took 2.25 years!

So proud.

And here's the teaser I promised for one of G’s projects... a new view from the kitchen: 

And finally, because this has been a really long post about painting a room and because Tumblr now makes gif insertion super easy: 

1 year ago: G of little hair breaks rules, builds table.

2 years ago: drywall repairing, raised bed building, vacuum olympics BONUS: look how brown our house was!