Remember...

this:

My design board for our master bedroom.

Well, it's finally happening.

I know I wrote about it way back here, but then we worked on a few projects I thought would go after the bedroom. But, the Mr. had other ideas in mind that included ripping out carpet in our study... and putting in recess lighting in the study and removing linoleum in the laundry room... and then putting tile (ourselves) into those very spaces... while we were at it, we thought we'd go ahead move our whole house to the tiled area and refinish all of our hardwood floors and have them installed in our linoleumed kitchen... and then installing bookcases in the study and building my desk. Not to mention ANY work that's been done outside including having FIVE TREES removed (due to poor cutting by the power company and disease) and planting five in their place... and bushes... and flowers... and more.

I'd be lying if I told you there was a part of me that, while I loved all of the great things happening around this place, was becoming increasingly more distressed over the state of our bedroom.

It's supposed to be your retreat. Your safe space. And it was my least favorite place to be in the whole entire house. It had no unifying decor... no connection to the bedroom I envisioned when we picked out Jamestown Blue back in October of 2009 when we bought the house.

But now?

Our second IKEA trip of the year!

Giving up the ghost (our 16-year-old, hand-me-down mattress...) for this AMAZING NEW MATTRESS (on our new bed).

A fuller perspective, including NEW LINENS & SHEETS (and no, that's not paper bag art taped to the wall, it's the guiding template for my frame collage).

Another perspective, this time with the collage added and one set of curtains up (the other were mis-marked on length and have to be returned).

 

We're making our way. You'll have to rely on my trusty iPhone pictures as we continue putting together the pieces, but you can bet it'll be getting a photoshoot of its own.

This is the space I've been dreaming of, and it's all coming together at JUST THE PERFECT TIME. Lord knows I'll want this to be a comfy, cozy haven in less than seven months.

Where the Redbud Grows

After rousing myself from bed (well after Cliff has fought with his 5AM alarm and gone to Crossfit), I make myself a cup of coffee and breakfast. When I'm lucky (which is often), it's an omelet made of farm fresh eggs, spinach, peppers, and onions... and don't forget the cheese. One teaspoon of honey, a dollop of Hatcher Family Dairy half & half and I take my first sip. Gosh I love mornings.

Within a few minutes, I've made my way from the kitchen to the yard. Yesterday, the front-stoop. Today, the back. I breathe in the morning air as I feed my brain and body and heart all of the fuel it needs to welcome the day. I marvel at the calls I recognize from birds littering the trees above me. I look down at my snowflake covered pajama pants and chuckle at the irony. I look out over the yard we have lovingly and frustratingly tended to for the last year and a half and I smile. The breeze lifts my face towards the sun still not yet mounted above one of two original trees on our property. And then my gaze falls on the fresh, cheery personality of one of our new trees, the Redbud. While I love every Spring, this one... well, it is just different.

Once finished with my last bite (but not my last sip, for I make my one cup a day last as long as possible), I take a quick walk around the yard to check on the health and moisture of the soil around our newest plantings. Today will not be nearly as warm as its predecessors, so all is well.

All, is in fact, very well.

I did some shopping yesterday.

My rosemary I planted the end of last summer.

Cherry laurels, newly planted just a few days ago.

My cascade of lovely - lavender, parsley, basil... and still more to go.

The redbud.

Turning forsythia newly transplanted from a precarious middle-of-the-yard spot to the fenceline.

The Weekend Report: 7/52

I married a man who has an obsession with projects.

And thankfully, not just starting them, but finishing them as well. That's got to be a great indicator of character, right?

So give him two days of glorious weather, a few reasons to get his hands dirty, and he'll have us working our fannies off to, shall we say, git 'er done.

On the docket this weekend? Desk building (and prepping the yard for Spring).

Desk Building

Oh the chronicles of what is henceforth referred to as "The Desk." As you could gather from any post written pretty much from November to December, we have been in the process of turning our bonus space - a once garage, now three rooms - Utility, Laundry/Pantry, and Den - into legitimate spaces. From the land of mauve and purple and paneling, bad carpet and linoleum, and bad, bad lighting... we've revived it. Literally brought it back from the dead. From the day we closed, we've repainted, put up molding, patched ceilings, put in new lighting (and lighting in general, in one of the rooms), and tiled. A couple of weeks ago we took a road trip to IKEA and have recently finished outfitting the most wonderful displays of particle-board shelving and cabinetry known to man.

above the washer & dryer

where once stood metal brackets w/ open wood shelves

don't even get me started on this... it's my lifelong dream

and so beautiful, even, at night w/ the lighting we installed

So enter, The Desk. For months and months we've been planning this from start to finish and all along was the character known as Bedford.

Oh Bedford, you rascal.

I have a love affair with Pottery Barn, and had been saving and scheming forever to have this desk. I'd done the measuring, working, etc. to have it and after spending 30 minutes in the store one day, walked out and it was all mine. I brought it home in boxes, took one last measurement before unpacking, and subsequently sat on the floor near the point of tears because IT WOULDN'T FIT. How had this happened?

In walks our little moment of DIY ingenuity. What if we bought similar cabinet pieces (which we found both pretty and less expensive options at JCPenney) and built our own desktop. Our own BEAUTIFUL desktop that we'd stain the color of the floors we'd just had refinished. Du-nu-nu-nuuuuuh (phonetically, I think that's how a trumpet sound is spelled).

So this is what Saturday looked like:

Supplies.

Refreshments.

Plywood layer.

Oak board layer.

STAIN!!

And Sunday:

The Desk.

This was the part where we had let it sit and become prettier with time, another coat of stain, two coats of polyurethane (the first of which it had last night). So out came the lawnmower, giant trash bags, pruning shears, and shovels and we had ourselves a grand ol' time cutting and bagging the Water Oak tree leaves which fell in January, chopping back our dwarf crape myrtles, ridding other bushes and trees of their "suckers".

I think final count on the load we took to the dump was 13 bags, too many landscaping rocks our previous owners had left that we've been dying to get rid of since, a mess-load of limbs, suckers, and pruning leftovers, and our measly attempt at shoveling the wood chips left from the six stump-grindings that have taken place in our yard since January (we're now hiring someone to take care of that).

Off to the dump.

It feels good to get these sorts of things done, but like Cliff said last night, it makes the weekends go by all-too-fast. 

But honestly, we need these kinds of weekends. Not just for our home, but for our marriage. I love sharing that sense of accomplishment together, though everything in me is screaming to not be caked in the old, cruddy leaf dust flying at me from the back of the lawnmower. I love that through project-weekends like this, we become intimated not just with the precious things we are care-takers of - like our land, and all of its imperfections - but with each other, as well.

I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Plus, there's usually a Sonic drink in the deal, somewhere :)

What Crazy People Do

This is what crazy people do the night before one of them is to leave the country for two weeks.

Packing was happening at multiple levels last night... boxes, a suitcase, Christmas tubs.

Kudos to Cliff for clearing the remaining rooms without me tonight - and to Aaron for his brawn last week with some of the bigger furniture and boxes. Anyone wanna help Cliff move this stuff back in? ;)

I can't even IMAGINE how awesome our floors are going to be when I get home from...

ITALY!!! (holy cow, holy cow, holy cow)

TILE IS DONE

Yessir. Been done for a week. We've been sort of relishing in the completion.

We still haven't put the sink back in. And to think, there was no ceiling light OR flooring of any kind in here.

Then we decided to commit sanity suicide by deciding Monday that we are definitely going to be laying hardwood in the kitchen and refinishing the rest of our hardwood floors beginning two weeks from today - which to be honest, two weeks from today I will be standing in Rome with my best friend (as she so kindly reminded me by text just now.)

Errrrrrrr. Mixed emotions for both of us on the refinishing - mainly regarding the removal of EVERYTHING that's not in Tileland (in Oldardwoodfloorland and Linoleumland) into Tileland. And we mean everything. Clothes in the closet, furniture, you name it, we're moving it. It's like moving out, almost. And then moving back in.

BUT. No more bubbles or random hairs polyurethaned in the floor, a darker more modern stain, and finally flooring in our kitchen that doesn't make you wonder who decided tealish blackish greyish spotted linoleum was a good choice.

After this it's ALL DECOR, ALL THE TIME. No fudging.

And by February, we'll have some spaces we're excited to people into, again.

But until then, don't expect an invite over anytime soon :)

Holes, Holes, Holes

In the ceiling...

I don't know what the creepy fuzzy animal is in the corner, and neither does my father in law, who found it in the attic.  Let's just say, I hesitated touching it with my bare hands. Wendell is responsible for the perching.

Let's see what was up there before? Yep, I think we made the right decision.

And in the ground...

Yeah, we use gutter ramps and blocks as markers around this place. Notice the layer of ice on top of the hole? This will be home to a Ginkgo tree in about a week.

Look at those roots from the old maple we had cut down. This is the half-dug hole my super-hero husband began in the wee hours of the night and morning a couple of days ago. We've since hired the nursery we purchased the trees from to plant the trees :) This will be home to an Eastern Redbud tree in about a week!

In other news, we've also managed to get the linoleum up out of the laundry room:

I'm telling you, a bright and happy laundry room is the only kind of laundry room for me.

Moving Along

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture before we actually even started moving everything, because no, this:

is not what it originally looked like.

Imagine a red loveseat in the far right corner. The rusted orange seat in the corner just right of center. The black desk in the corner to the left. Yet another bookcase, this one black, stacked right about where the black one is - the brown one moved then to your left - both OVERFLOWING with books. And... just stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff. The black metal shelving and dehumidifier and vacuum, well, those were all the last of the laundry room that I was moving as well this week. Study, laundry, and utility... all now housed in various other locations throughout our home because we're doing this:

Well, for starters at least.

I'll keep you updated as we move along.

When Life Hands You Dying Trees

You just (plan to) make wood chips.

Yep. Thanks to the electric company topping out our trees at the expense of their powerlines a year ago when we first moved in, we are now experiencing fast-moving tree death. We had a local tree guy come by and assess the damage and found that some of these were rotten up to 40% of the way through the trunk. Not cool, not cool.

And so, because trees aren't supposed to be topped out when pruned for power purposes, MTE will be taking care of the expense of cutting them down, grinding out the stumps, and planting four new trees where there once stood three silver maples and a magnolia. You can bet the new trees won't get that kind of height.

I hate losing these, but in the end, this is the best way they could go... that's for sure.

At this old guy (our personal favorite) is alive and kicking, as are the other two silver maples in the back yard (well, one's health is debatable but we're holding out hope.)

Oh boy, oh boy!

I've finished (for now) my design board for the master bedroom (next stop on the Decor Snowball!) This time I went a little less collagey, and a little more - modely? Took way longer, but I'm so pleased with the results, I can't help but think it was worth it.



You know, I know I could pay someone to do this for me. I do.

But then, I wouldn't enjoy this half as much I don't think - or lose nearly enough sleep. (I designed this entirely from scratch on Photoshop, thankyouverymuch.)

Where would my badge of "Oh! I'm so tired!" be without that?

It's interesting to think how much this will change and adapt as we work on the space. And considering all we have really now for the space that we want later is the space itself (and the wall color!) we've got a ways to go... and I know it'll change so I'm less apt to talk about the details now as I will later when it's pulling together. It's a bit more contemporary than the brown guest room, but still has enough rustic (we're looking to get black distressed furniture) and comfy and vintage to keep me happy. I love the play of the contrast and punches of color... A THOUSAND POINTS to anyone who knows where the inspiration for the color themes in our room came from (hint: above the bed).

Speaking of beds, a new mattress, after sleeping in a bed for three years that we inherited from Cliff's sister and brother-in-law that they got as a gift when they got married (I WON'T tell you how long ago THAT was) will be heaven... pure, pure heaven.