the one where they built a wall...

As expected, the past month has been pretty hectic and we haven't got much done around the house.  We're getting closer to finalizing plans for the kitchen so now it's just a matter of saving a few extra bucks and scheduling each step of the remodeling process so that we are without a functioning kitchen for as little time as possible.  I'm already dreading the stress and patient discussions (a.k.a. arguments) in our near future.

In the meantime, I decided to close off one of the doors that is in James' bedroom.  The previous owners of our house used this room as a den/office space but, now that we've switched it into a bedroom, the extra wall space means more to us than an extra door.  Besides, I prefer James not have such easy access to the front door - if he's going to sneak out to meet friends at night, we aren't going to make it that easy for him.

Oh, and we still haven't gotten around to putting doors on James' closet.  We're planning on building a large barn door-type door on a track that will slide to the left when open - another reason I wanted to close off this doorway.

The other side of this door leads right to our front door and living room.  We've never used this door since moving in so I don't foresee us missing it.

We took the door off it's hinges and removed all of the trim and frame from the doorway - taking all of 5 minutes and a crowbar.

Next, we built a frame to fit the new hole with another stud centered in the middle for support.  This was then nailed into place.

We cut two pieces of drywall to fit either side of the doorway, taped, and mudded the seams. Voila...

We still have a little sanding to do and then will paint both sides - and hopefully there will be no indication that there was ever a door here!

In other news, I also bought two new rugs.  While I love the black and white rug that I originally bought for the living room, the high traffic caused it to shed more than we'd like - so we'll move this to one of the upstairs bedrooms.  I also wanted to get coordinating rugs for the living and dining rooms to tie everything together since it's basically one big room.  Warming things up would help too.  I found two rugs on overstock that I had to have.  I bought an 8x10 for the living room and a 5x8 to go under the dining table.  They arrived in less than a week and I love them!  I almost wish I bought another one for our bedroom but I'll rethink that once we're ready to fix up that room.

Now I want to make some new throw pillows and new curtains to go with the new look of the room...

This winter has been strangely mild so we've been trying to get out of the house as much as possible.  In between all of the running around the past couple weeks required, we managed to fit in a quick trip to the beach where James loved throwing rocks into the water and watching the surfers... 

We were also able to get away for a weekend and head up to New Hampshire for some R&R - well, as much R&R as one can get with a 14 month old running around.

We hope everyone had a great holiday season and will have an even better 2012!