The Loft

So, the oldest has a lot of stuff in her room. She has her bed of course, and dresser and nightstand. She also has a desk and the barbie dream townhouse. It all fits...but not well. We had to turn her bed so it extends into the room so the desk would fit next to it. It doesn't leave a lot of space for playing or entertaining friends. So..after a search, we found plans for a loft bed by OP Loft Beds and the husband got to work last weekend. It was hard work, but so far..totally worth it.

She LOVES the bed. She can't wait to come home every day from school and take her friends up there to play and read and hang out. She loves to sleep in it too. I love all the floorspace she has now and her desk fits well enough underneath I think we won't bother building more than a shelf or two in front of it to hold some desk items. It's pretty awesome. I still need to talk her into purging some stuffed animals, but, let's just take this one step at a time.

Yes, the ceiling fan is a problem. We'll be replacing it with a regular light fixture and working out some other fan solution. She has a small clip on fan up on the bed for sleeping (and for ambient noise) but she'll need more airflow in the summer up there, we'll work it out. We also have plans to find an awesome bean bag chair and add some peace sign stencils to the white woodwork, to girlify it a bit :)

And no, I did not know that OP = orgy proof. Check the "How We Got Our Name" section of their site to learn more about that.

The family room

I stumbled upon a new clutter/organizational blog last week. Clutterbug.me I found myself watching this video about guilty clutter. And as I was sitting and listening and watching her describe the guilt over her red sweaters...I felt a pang. Something clicked with me. I was sitting in a room full of guilty clutter.



I looked around and found that the room I spend all day in, the room we call the family room or the fireplace room, was full of things. Things. Books and photos and frames and candles and holders and even shelving that made the room seem full and small and super cluttered. Awhile back, when I was trying to decide what to put above the fireplace, I showed a picture to a friend and she suggested NOT doing anything busy because there was a lot going on in the room already. That was her nice way of saying 'HOLY CRAP you have a lot of junk in there'. She was being nice. I totally didn't see all the stuff. Until I watched that video. I went with a large clock above the mantle, not too busy but nice. However, the rest of the room was still full of junk. The picture below gives a good idea of what a mess it was. The stripes are no longer there, I painted the room yellow a few years ago, but wow, those stripes do NOT help the room at all. So imagine this, with yellow walls.

The baby is about 3 months old there (she's now almost 5y) the other is 5yo (almost 10 now) and obviously this was at Christmas time so there's a little bit extra Christmas decor involved. We've swapped out that blue couch for a red one, and the christmas tree spot holds a yellow chair now. Look at all that stuff. Floating shelves filled with frames, bookshelves full of books and avon steins and candles and clocks and wedding photos. So, when I moved the red and yellow furniture in here (we gave away the blue stuff) and painted the room yellow I took down the blue decor pieces. I still can't get over how much STUFF is in there.

So last weekend after I'd watched the video above, and read the post that went with it, and looked around my rooms, I realized that this room needed a fix-up and that large parts of it were here because of my guilt. I kept the photos because OMG you can't NOT show all your cute babies all the time, and HOW DARE you take down family photos even though you aren't speaking to some of the people in them and there have been new additions to the family since. Keep this stuff passed on from deceased family (I am keeping it, just with a better plan for display) and display it even though it doesn't GO with anything and you know the deceased would rather you were happy and comfortable in your home.

I have taken steps so far to clean it up and declutter and it's so awesome. I've donated a bunch of books to the library and I have a pile of frames and candle holders to donate to Goodwill. I took down the floating shelves and all the photos on them. I didn't throw them out, stop panicking, I am storing them in a plastic bin under my bed. So I can still see them and look at them and love them, but without SEEING them everywhere. I pared down the built-in bookshelves to hold books I acutally like or need to read and one photo of each child, one wedding photo and one family photo. I will swap the photos in those frames probably yearly (except our wedding photo of course, that one stays). Once I read the books I want to, I'll probably donate them also, and just keep books that look nice and that I want to keep (Harry Potter, etc) on the shelves. I'm a big fan of the Kindle now and of reading library books.

The room has transformed. I'm not ready to show you yet, I need to patch the holes from the floating shelves and touch up the paint and get the donations where they belong.  I have loved every minute of all of it. From deciding there isn't really any guilt with taking these things down and with donating things other people can use. I gave away the floating shelves to someone on Craigslist yesterday. I love it. I think my second career calling might have been a professional organizer. I think I might love that.

Next time, I'll have pictures of the room all de-cluttered and fixed up. We still have this big desk in the room that we'd like to scale down, but that might take awhile to work out, so for now we're working around it. The rest of the room however is really coming together.

Master Bathroom: The Reveal

Over the past month-ish we've been working on the master bathroom. From now on, when I say "we" I mean the husband. I did help grout and stain some woodwork, but 99% of the work was done by him. He deserves the credit. The end result is a masterpiece.

Let's start with the before. The bathroom is approximately 5 x 8..not a bad size, but not gigantic. The vanity and toilet were fine and usable, but the shower...the shower was not more than 3x3 (if that!) and one person could barely fit in there comfortably. It was also HELL to clean. I mostly gave up truly cleaning it the last few years. It just wasn't possible. Even though we're the first owners of this house, we didn't build this house, or choose the finishes, so we have to assume the builder went with the cheapest selections. The shower was awful, after Christmas we decided to remodel - which is good, because I was ready to stop showering it in, remodel or not.  The builder also decided to build a cabinet to the left of the shower. Super deep, super not useful (other than to hold a crapload of towels) and otherwise wasted space. We are going to take back that space.

Before: Shower and cabinet

Before: Cabinet and sink

Before: Vanity and light

The floor was linoleum, not bad, but not interesting. After ten (plus) years in this house, we decided to make the bathroom over. First...rip out the shower and cabinet. Then rebuild the area with niches between studs for shampoos and soaps.

Goodbye shower

Hello larger shower with fancy niches

  

Next - durock (cement board) the whole thing.

Durock/ Cement board

And then, because we are doing this thing RIGHT. Waterproofing. Vapor barrier is in place here behind the durock. We also used a TileRedi shower base which was really excellent for us. Tiled right on top of that no pouring cement or leveling, TileRedi is awesome.

Hello dark green waterproofer

And now...time to tile! also, see that cute little light he put in the shower too, so awesome.  He started with the floor, and then did the ceiling (which was NOT his favorite part) and the walls and niches. It all took quite a while, but he pushed and pushed and got it done. It looks awesome.

 

Tiled shower with a bit of a grout haze

 Then it was time for the rest of the bathroom. Fixtures, and a new toilet and new base cabinet and vanity top. I stained the medicine cabinet because the options to match the base were not optimal for what we need to store, and it looks good. I'm also working on staining the window in the bathroom and its casing. We took down the mini blind and frosted the bottom half of the window, which brings in light and doesn't leave a blind that just gets caked with dust and shower steam.

Hello Eljer Titan 4 Tall Round toilet

Beautiful Chelsea cabinet by Magickwood

Dark walnut stained medicine cabinet and new light fixture

I turned the light fixture upside down. I didn't want the light shining down on top of the cabinet so pointing it up seemed to work. there is plenty of light in the bathroom, especially with the extra shower light. And the shower light is connected to the fan in the bathroom, so it makes it easy to keep the steam down and therefore the mold potential.

The view from the master bedroom

We just went out to Allied Glass today to look at their doors so we shouldn't have to deal with the lame curtain and rod for much longer. I'll post another picture when the new door is in place. My shower this morning was awesome, I didn't want to get out.

UPDATE: The shower door was installed this morning (Feb 27) and it looks FANTASTIC.