A few other home updates

During my crazy mid life crisis this past January in which I decided the right side of my brain did exist and even function after all, I got all kinds of creative ideas for the house that energized me so much that I could not sleep at night as the ideas kept buzzing through my head.   We have had paint and glitter staged throughout the house for the painter who offered us a great deal to paint much of the house for two months, but he has not shown up yet.  So I contacted other painters multiple times as well, but no one seems interested in painting, so those projects will not be completed until we can find the time do to the painting ourselves, I guess.

So I'll have to post the final updates after the painting is done, but here is a sneak peak at what we've been doing in addition to decorating the porch.

Bathroom Bling

We have had plans to paint our bathroom a very soothing gray/blue/aqua color with glitter mixed it to give it some extra sparkle, but for whatever reason, that did not seem like enough sparkle for this normally practical, plain and neutral kind of girl. So even though I wanted to replace all our light fixtures in our previous house with recessed lighting, I decided to replace the recessed lighting in our master bathroom with a glitzy waterfall chandelier.  It seemed like a good price when I bought it while my husband was away on business, and he agreed to let me buy it and to assemble it.  But when he returned and realized he had another 6-8 months of healing left on his shoulder following surgery before he could raise his arms that high, I had to wait a LONG time for him to assemble it.  Then when assembly began, a retrofit kit was needed to make it work with a recessed can, and that proved to be an extremely trying process for my husband. When the plate was finally assembled using the retrofit kit, he then had to string each light one by one overhead as that could not be done before mounting the face plate.  All that to say, if you add in my husband's labor, this chandelier would then become one of the most expensive upgrades in our house. :-)  I love it, though, and the entire family enjoys watching the rainbow sparkles dance across the ceiling and walls.

Once the chandelier was in, however, the rest of the bathroom looked too plain, so I added new bathmats, towels, curtain rod, storage cabinet (to hide more counter clutter) and curtains to clean and spice the room up a bit.  Now I just need add some colorful paint and glitter to the walls.

Often guys will wrap their gal in bling for Valentine's Day, but wearing glitz is not my style. So my guy wrapped our window in bling instead because silly rainbow sparkles soothe me and make me smile.

My Office Makeover

Now that I have resumed my contract work in engineering and am still doing tons of lesson planning for the STEM classes I teach and tutoring prep each week, I desperately needed to start using my office instead of the kitchen counter.  Our kitchen island is 5' x 8' white/gray granite and makes a fabulous work space, but it is not ergonomically sound, nor is it quiet enough for me for me to get serious work done, especially with kids raiding the fridge every half hour.  Plus, it's just plain junky looking to have my work spread out all over the counters all the time.  My office was outdated and not very attractive, so I hoped dressing it up a little would inspire me to climb the stairs to do my work instead of continuing to use the kitchen counter.

I thought an executive desk would make me feel more professional, but solid wood desks are expensive and seem to stuffy and stiff for my home office.  So I bought a solid desk (the thing weighs over 400 pounds and I'm still amazed that my husband with his bad shoulders and me with my bad back and knees managed to get that beast up the staircase and around the landing) out of an abandoned storage unit and took it to my favorite furniture finisher for her artistic magic.  I will say picking out a desk she could work with was the hardest part.  A much prettier and deeper piece of furniture at the same price by Hon had much prettier lines and a much more desirable dimensions.  It looks to be solid wood and was a color that would not need a lot of work, but upon closer examination, I found that it was covered in laminate and not suitable at all.  I decided to go with nautical colors in the office which are probably apropos given that I have sappy, romantic pictures of my former navy officer husband and I on display throughout the room.  I didn't give her a lot of unique lines to work with on this plain desk, but I'm pleased with the result.

 

I even put together a color and design palette for this room.  The background color of the collage is the paint color we selected for this room.

There is a funny story behind those curtains.  First, the curtains were purchased for a different room, but my husband did not like the way they looked in that room, so when I tried to return them, the vendor told me to keep them.  Then when I ordered a curtain rod with mirrored finials to match the mirrored bookcase, the rod arrived broken into bits.  The vendor took that rod back and sent another one, but it arrived with one end shattered. I gave up and requested a refund.  They told me to trash the broken rod, but I decided to use some unwanted clearance Christmas ornaments instead.  So that has the be the cheapest curtain rod ever.  The giggles I get from my merger of left brained, frugal, practical, waste nothing engineer and a right brained attempt to be creative and completely redecorate a room all by myself is too valuable to me to replace the curtain rod with something nicer.

Original finial vs. Christmas ornaments

I knew I wanted to replace all the plastic storage bins with solid wood shelving or cabinets. So I sold all my scrapbook supplies and some of the plastic bins to a retired army veteran (a big strong guy who now draws his military retirement and supplements that income tremendously by selling handmade cards for Valentine's and Christmas - I kid you not!).  

Then we asked our refinisher to repaint the scuffed and beat up Pier 1 bookcase we got as a wedding gift from my rocket scientist turned patent attorney who was my Caldwell/Scholars/Fellows Program big brother in college which we had previously painted black to match our son's room (he recently got a larger one to store all his Lego creations). She painted it white underneath so the distressed areas would look white and then navy on top to match the rug, but the result was a bookcase that looks lighter blue than the rug.  Oh well...it does it the job.

The I bought a white organizer cabinet/shelf system that was advertised as solid wood.  We're only into solid wood now that I like refinishing furniture so much.  But the unit was not solid as described, so they told us to keep it and refunded our money.  When you shop on line, you deal with broken shipments or rugs that don't match or furniture that may not be quite what you expected, but you also get a lot of free stuff!

Remaining To Do List for the Office:

• Paint walls
• Replace printer stand with refinished solid table
• Replace or repaint collage frame over white bookcase
• Move pictures around for better proportions and sizing on the walls.
• Replace ergonomic chair with white refinished chair on hold for me and recover seat.

Kids' Study Nook

The kids liked my new desk much better when they realized they would be getting my old desk.  We refinished the chair that was in there in there previously in a soft gray color and replaced the old maps with new ones in nicer framed maps.  I sold the school desk and moved the old desk out to the garage for golf ball storage.  We moved some of my organizational bins to the nook and added a turquoise chair (and a rug is on order).  A little rearranging and the area is much more functional now with Then we moved their old table into the bonus room game area after a fresh coat of paint and some stain to update it.

To Do List:

• Hang the blinds we bought for that window two years ago!
• Lower the maps as I think they are too high.

Bonus Room
The bonus room has been an interesting adventure.  I've spent a crazy number of hours trying to figure out how to store all the kids' toys and games in there without it looking so messy all the time. My OCD gave me heart palpitations whenever I looked at that clutter, so I have avoided this room completely until I could figure out a way to neatly store (or secretly dispose of) all the kids' junk.

I knew we needed cabinets with doors and considered the built-in cabinets my husband built in our last home's bonus room, but he doesn't have time for that kind of labor anymore and custom carpentry exceeds the budget for this year. Plus, I have become obsessed with remaking solid furniture (see devotional summary below), so I had been looking everywhere for a sideboard with closed doors.  On a whim I found this one in my favorite new colors.

The storage is all drawers inside, so it isn't as versatile as I would like, but I suppose I could always pull out the drawers and make it open cabinets if I so choose.  The sideboard is 74" long and heavy, so we chipped some of the paint off getting it upstairs.  But the lady who painted it gave me the paint color (or so I thought ...it took multiple trips to Sherwin Williams to get touch up paint only to discover she used a Lowe's product) to touch it up as needed.  She did not seal it the way my favorite lady does. Now my plan is to use the same paint (Cloverdale) to refinish another cabinet we have in there with doors and finish out the bonus room storage makeover.  I also hope to move the kids' childish toy chests out to the garage for storage there and replace them with solid cedar hope chests they can keep forever while continuing the old made new theme in that room.  We have picked out a great paint color for the pack wall and a sentimental collage wall assortment for the wall over the sideboard, but first we must paint the wall.

I found the highly distressed bamboo chairs at a great deal when the lady who refinished them sold the table that went with them without the chairs.  I tried to be bold with the highly distressed markings all over them, but the old lady in me won out in the end.  I repainted them myself with a gray/blue glaze I used on the island over a year ago.  I ruined my clothes in the process, but I completed a paint project myself.  Wonders never cease.

Bamboo chairs before (distressed) and after I painted them

I love the unique look of the bamboo and the pattern on the seat covers.  All four chairs seem too big for the table (I suspected as much before I refinished the table), so I'm using them in other areas about the room for now). 

The same afternoon I bought the bamboo chairs, I just happened to see this little refinished piece advertised online.  The lady who refinished it had the same first and last name as my maiden name, and she lived only a mile or two out of my way during my commute home.  It had my name written all over it, so I had to have it.  Furthermore, the price was exactly equal to my unplanned Craigslist sales for the week, so I had the exact cash in my pocket.

 

After this picture was taken, I polished the handles in a coat of warm silver paint to better match the room, but I am so pleased with the way this piece just fell into my hands.  The detail work is just lovely.

I have looked all over for a rug to match them and bring together the colors in the room. I keep finding possibilities online, but shipping rugs back to the vendor if they don't match is a costly risk, so I'm still hunting for something I know will work and tie the game/craft area of our bonus room together and set it apart.

Mudroom
As OCD as I am about clutter, the open entryway shelving we were using the in the mudroom was driving me crazy. The kids and I battled daily about their shoes being left in the middle of the floor instead of inside the bins and their coats and books being tossed haphazardly into the lockers instead of neatly hung on hooks and place in an orderly arrangement.

I also wanted something solid wood given that what we currently had was wrapped in laminate that could not hold up to the wear and tear of entryway abuse.  I tried the modge podge technique to cover the worst areas, but it looked tacky when I finished.

So, we bought a double armoire constructed out of solid Brazilian wood.  It was affordable because it had to be assembled, and I had to do quite a bit of stain touch up work inside, but it offered a simple, clean solution to the entryway clutter with room for shoes, backpacks and coats.  I later added a wire basket mail holder with key hooks on the adjacent wall and a matching corner shelf unit as a catch all for things that do not make it into the armoire. So far, the non traditional approach to entryway storage is working out nicely for both the kids' convenience and my need for clean lines and uncluttered corners.

Before - Those cabinets never looked that neat in real life.

Still in my bling mode from the bathroom makeover, I ordered glass knobs to dress up the armoire.  Which looks better, wooden knobs or glass?

Wooden knobs vs. glass knobs

Remaining action items for the mudroom

• Adjust right door so it doesn't hang crooked
• Paint last two wall sections blue.
• Hang supplemental coat rack. 
• Paint shelves in corner rack to match wood floor, armoire or rug.

Boy's Room
We have also been in the process of transforming our son's room from a cute nautical theme I loved to a cheesy Star Wars theme I detest.  It's been hard to buy things my son likes from the new bed to the new curtains, lights, and wall decor, but I suppose a loving moms should let her son decorate his room the way he wants it.  I will post pics when that makeover is complete.

Spiritual Application Within the Physical Home Decor Transformations

There is something therapeutic about taking something plain, neglected, old, damaged, or unwanted and transforming it into something unique, beautiful, valuable, meaningful, and useful. As we go about transforming stuff in our house or the composition of our bodies, I'm reminded of the only One who can remake us from the inside out into someone beautiful, complete, lacking nothing, created for His perfect plans and purposes. Just as I cannot refinish hollow core, sawdust/glue composite, laminated furniture, God will not transform us as long as we insist on remaining hollow (consuming the empty idols of this world which never satisfy) inside. He wants to fill us with the strong substance of His presence and make us into who we were intended to be, but we must let Him into our hearts alone. Christ is the only one who satisfies completely, and He will not compete with any of the world's idols. If we wrap up our emptiness with paper or plastic laminate, we may withstand a few scratches and dents, but we will not last when repeatedly moved, shaken or burdened. When we are firmly planted on the solid rock however, nothing can shake us. Whether I am refinishing furniture or rebuilding my body, transformation cannot occur without being broken down and begun anew. May we continually invite the Loving Creator to transform us from the inside out. That is the only transformation that really matters.