week one.

We’ve officially been living in the new house for a week now and things are slowly finding their place.  We have most of our essentials unpacked and organized but the garage is still full of bags and miscellaneous boxes - which clearly aren’t filled with anything important considering I have no idea what’s in them.  I should probably do myself a favor and just move all of that stuff to the top of the driveway for the trash men to take but let’s get real – I’ll probably unpack that stuff in a few years, wonder how I lived without it, and clutter my closets with it all

Aside from closet doors, proper window treatments, and some wall art, James’ room is a project no longer on our to-do list.  All of the furniture is from his old room and we just replaced the red shag rug from C&B outlet with a larger, cheaper, navy blue rug from Ikea. Area rugs are generally pretty expensive – especially if you’re looking for one of decent quality.  This cheapo from Ikea seems fairly sturdy and doesn’t shed – and I won’t freak out about any stains (i.e. puke/poop/pee).  If we had a bottomless bank account, I probably would have paid more for a larger rug but this one works.  We were surprised at how large his room really is – especially compared to his old room.  We chuckled when we saw that the larger rug still left a lot of bare floor, but, whatevs. 

The previous owners turned this bedrooms’ closet into a mini-office/desk area so the bi-fold doors were removed and stored in the basement.  Since the old doors are ugly and would require me carrying them up from the basement, and because we don’t store knives and poison in James’ closet, I’m fine with keeping it open for now.  As for window treatments – I was initially planning on making my own but then, for several reasons (one being that I don’t know how to make window treatments) I decided to search for navy blue roman shades.  Those can get fairly pricey too.  I found these cheapies on JCPenney.com but since I can’t see the true color/quality, I might hold off until I find some that I can actually see before purchasing.  (No matter how simple the process, I hate returning stuff.)

Our new bed was delivered last week and it is friggin’ amazing.  Since our new bedroom has a lot more space, we upgraded to a king sized bed.  If you don’t already have one, I urge you to go get one right now.  I have never been a good sleeper but this past week has been an absolute snooze-fest - the non-boring, awesome, restful kind.  Despite the previous mattress was one I bought for like 100bucks when I lived in California 8 years ago, I never really felt like it was all that bad – and hopefully any future guests that will have the pleasure of sleeping on it won’t either.  BUT, within minutes of lying in our new bed, I knew I had been depriving myself years of restful sleep.  Anyways…as you can see from the wooden shutters, fugly plastic blinds, tacky bi-fold doors, and random furniture, we haven’t done anything to our bedroom yet.  It’s sufficient for now so we’ll tackle once we have some loot saved up.  I want to make a wall of drapes to hide the off-centered, too-small window behind the bed.  We also have plans to build our own headboard.  A new dresser(s) is on the wish list too.  Oh, and James’ old rug is temporarily at the foot of our bed until we can find/afford a neutral rug to take its place.

Our old bed is now in one of the upstairs bedrooms and, like I said above, it really isn’t that bad so feel free to come visit and spend the night!  (Please note that the entry fee to our lovely home is a bag of groceries.  Cash is also welcomed.)  Unless we have guests, we don’t have a need to even go upstairs and, therefore, have no need to make any improvements just yet.  Eventually, our plan is to bump out the roof and add a full dormer to the back of the house – maintain the front lines of the house while still adding tons of more space to the two upstairs bedrooms and bathroom.  For now, an already owned bed plus and already owned chair and ottoman equals a free guest room.  There are few pics in this entry that emphasize the fact that I don't iron - this being one:

Back downstairs, I just hung some curtains and Joe replaced the light in the dining area – both were improvements that cost less than $20 but made a huge difference. 

There are still roller shades on the windows but I’ll probably remove those once we confirm how much sunlight that room gets at all times during the day.  There are plenty of trees and shrubs around the house and because we’re set back from the road, I’m not concerned about privacy.  If we need to keep those for light-blocking purposes, I’ll probably just get the most inexpensive white roman shades to cover them.  While the curtains were super cheap, they surprisingly have a decent weight to them and can also keep out some light and peeping Toms if necessary.  The curtains are also loveable because they are clean, crisp, and can be easily thrown in the laundry with some bleach whenever they need to be freshened up. OK, to those with superior attention to detail, all curtains are the same length.  I hemmed them all myself (ahem, with hem tape) but got lazy and didn’t iron the pair in the middle.  I’m hoping gravity removes the wrinkles and brings them all to the same length for me.  For now, the gorgeous yellow chair I snagged from Marshalls will attempt to mask my laziness. 

We’re still waiting for our sofa and ottoman to be delivered so our old love seat is here in the interim.  The only other thing we purchased for this room was the corner TV stand from Mill Stores.  I love that place.  I’m still trying to decide which I love more - the smell of the store or the sweet old men that work there. Maybe it’s the sweet smell of the old men?  Anyways, the stand is still waiting to be stained dark but because an entire bottle of polyurethane spilled in the back of my Jeep, I’m still mad at that project and will tackle at a later date. 

Scroll on and off the pics below to see the previous owners' space transform into ours:

That’s about it for now.  The pool is gone and we've managed to take apart most of the deck - so we have some major yard work/torture sessions coming up.  We originally decided that Joe was in charge of the outside of the house and I was in charge of the inside BUT after discovering poison ivy around the property, he’s trying to weasel his way out of that agreement.  Stay tuned to see who wins that war.