A Plan and a Few Random Things

We caved in and called professional help from the Container Store for organizational advice. While we work back and forth with her on some ideas, we realized that our number one plan should be thinning out our own unneeded stuff and giving up that space to the kids. We have so many bookshelves and cabinets already that will work fairly well for hiding toys, but they are full of old binders, magazines, and other things. Between the added attic storage in our garage for things we don't want to throw out but rarely (if ever) need and a new sense of having to throw out things we will truly never need (is there really any reason to keep my notes from my high school AP Calculus class when it all looks like gibberish now? probably not) might give us at least some solution at no cost. Then at least we won't need quite so many additional shelves and drawers. So we will see how that goes.

In the meantime, we have made a few small adjustments to our home decor that I'm excited to share. After looking online for a Turkish lamp, I found this beauty at a local store and knew the price was not too high, so it came home with me immediately. I've wanted one for ages but just did not have a good place for it. Good thing we have a brand new room!

Here's some more eye candy of my lamp. It has a warm LED bulb in it so the glass stays cool to the touch and isn't using much energy. I just want to figure out a way to better hide the switch, which is down about one foot along the power cord. 

Isn't it gorgeous? At least now I have a nightlight for when I need to come downstairs with a screaming baby at 3am...(silver lining?):

We also changed up our hallway. It used to have pictures strung up with yarn to minimize holes in the wall (we don't have the white paint so we wouldn't be able to fill and touch up if necessary). Here's the before picture, from this post - which totally coincidentally was exactly 6 years ago from today.

Unlike what I said in my post about refreshing the pictures on a regular basis, they were the exact same last week as they were 6 years ago. So much for that.

We inherited a beautiful picture that a family member painted (two actually - one is waiting to be framed) and decided the hallway was a perfect place. I think it makes the place feel a little more grown up than the sort of "just out of college" look of the unframed pictures hanging on yarn, don't you?

And not a "decor" update exactly but this Thanksgiving we had a roaring fire in the fire place thanks to our old oak tree. It is aged and dry and we have lots of it for the winter. Gone but not forgotten:

Thanks and Giving

Been doing lots of small upgrades and decorating things around the house but every time I sit down to write, I realize I'm short a picture and the light isn't right (or I have a baby asleep on my lap - that's a pretty common excuse these days). So allow me a post of a slightly different nature and a question for you, my dear reader (as I assume there is just one of you).

I've been blogging as a "new" homeowner now for over 7 years, so I probably should remove the "new" from the moniker. But there is never really a stage where any homeowner feels like they know it all and don't need help or are *done* and don't need to continue to work on things. It just doesn't happen. I think that what starts to remove the newness of the thing (besides having lived somewhere along enough that the things you upgraded or replaced need upgrading or replacing again...) is that you build a team of people you can call when things get rough or when you need a little extra help. The plumber, the electrician, the roofer - these folks come and fix things that we can't, no matter how "experienced" we are. The chimneysweep and the energy company that comes to service our boiler annually - they keep everything running. We are grateful that in many cases, we know who we can call. Or, if we don't, our neighbors do. And don't even get me started on how incredibly grateful we are for our amazing neighbors.

This year we needed a little extra help, with a new baby and a messy toddler that takes up all our free time (because of course we'd much rather spend time with her than spend it cleaning, raking, etc.). So we hired regular help to clean our house and keep our yard looking good (ok, maybe not good, maybe just not embarrassing). And we are grateful they are there and we are grateful that, for the moment anyway, we can afford it.

So what should I do to express my gratitude? I'm always afraid that any extra money will be the wrong amount of money: maybe so little as to seem stingy. "Stuff" or cards or homemade gifts seems like it might be unwanted, just unwelcome junk or calories. Is it better to give something/anything extra that expresses how thankful I am to have their help? How do you put a price tag on "thank you"?

So many leaves - where would we be without help?!

And this is not to mention all the other non-home-related helpers in my life: massage therapists, financial planners, teachers, nurses, etc that sometimes go the extra mile.

So tell us your tipping/giving ideas. What has worked for you and what hasn't? What would you want to receive?

Blind Saga Resolved

We resolved our blinds saga by throwing a lot of money at the problem. By the time we decided the blinds.com blinds weren't working out, we were already fully using the room for baby number 2 (surprise, we have a new human "addition" as well as a new room addition). The bright sunlight needed filtering periodically during the day when it shone into the crib, and the street light needed blocking when one of us brought her down to sleep there in the middle of the night so that at least one parent could catch some precious zzzzzs. Without any willingness to shop around ourselves, we brought in a local decorating store that had recently advertised that they did house calls for window dressing.

And so they came with binders. Lots of little samples that could be un-velcroed and held up to the window to see the way they filtered the sunlight (thank goodness it was sunny that day).

We picked a lovely gray that complemented the wall color in a cellular blind that can be raised and lowered from the top and bottom. We decided not to pay extra to have them installed for us, despite the frustration from installing the set from blinds.com. Fortunately, as we expected and hoped, these were much simpler. D had them both up within 20 minutes or so, with minimal hardware.

I love that we can raise and lower them from both ends, so we can get full sunlight but privacy (bottom half covered only) or as much light filtering as we need. They are magnetic at the top, making it easy even for someone short like me to snap the top edge into place.

We couldn't be happier, though I doubt I would go this route again, given the price. We definitely would have shopped around and done it on our own if the first order hadn't taken so long and we hadn't been in a rush for blinds in there. It is a sign of how much we love the room though - we couldn't wait to be able to use it around the clock.

Happy Halloween!

Well I was going to post about our window blinds but this seemed more appropriate. Happy Halloween!

(One quick addition on a home improvement sort of topic - we learned that a drywall saw is excellent at carving pumpkins!)

A Blind Saga

Our new room overlooks our driveway and feels pretty public, especially at night with the light on, so one of our first priorities was to install blinds. We wanted very simple window dressing, just enough to give us privacy but still allow a lot of light. We opted for blinds on naked windows instead of curtains or other drapery. You may remember we even started planning before the room was actually done. We chose our fabric from blinds.com, sent off the order, and waited.

And waited, and waited. The blinds had an arrival estimate of late August through September 6. They arrived exactly 1 week AFTER the estimated window, on September 13. Strike 1.

The instructions for the blinds were written originally for corded blinds, with installation of cordless blinds a sloppy and inaccurate afterthought. We were so confused that we thought we had been given the wrong hardware and called customer service for help. The person had no idea how the blinds were supposed to be installed or what our hardware kit should look like, so we eventually ended the call in frustration. Strikes 2 and 3.

OK, but perhaps if we could figure it out ourselves then we would be happy with the final product.

First thing to notice - the rolling fabric is very minimal but the cassette that holds it is giant and generic, which looks sloppy given how much we paid for it. In fact, we paid extra because it was supposed to provide a finished look at the top of the window.

Eh, nope - it sticks out from the window (despite having to give them the precise depth when ordering) and sits a little crooked.

The bottom of the blind is pretty  low quality too. Some kind of plastic strip glued inside the (cheap and vinyl/plastic feeling) fabric.

In the end, after over an hour of two people trying to figure out installation without the help of instructions, we were just thoroughly disappointed by the bad quality of the blinds (which were not all that cheap). If we wanted cheap blinds, we figured, we would have run to Lowes or Home Depot and at least gotten them immediately, and not a week late.

Fortunately blinds.com did not try to "fix" their order with suggestions of upgrades or recuts. They asked that we donate the blinds to Habitat for Humanity or other non-profit building organization and scan the receipt in, and then they would reimburse us. We did and they did and that was the end of it.

Except that our room still felt horribly on-display once it got dark out (which, given the advancing calendar, started at about 6:30pm). So it was back to the drawing board with all that time wasted. To be continued....

What is to be done?

I'm trying not to hyperventilate when I look at the toy disaster in the office and trying to find it funny that one of the only times I got no comments on a blog post was my last post when I asked for help on how to organize it. I take this to mean that no one has ever found a good solution to the chaos created by small children (except making one room a "play room" and just ignoring the problem).

We had one or two ideas since then, turning, as usual, to Ikea. We thought about using a Kallax (successor to the ever-poplar Expedit) and baskets, to as least corral the small toys, books, and craft items. Since we also want to make this a usable standing desk space, we are considering getting this unit (plus a few more to each side two or three squares high).

The problem then is that the desk sticks out into the room. D has argued that we could put larger toys underneath, but that doesn't keep them out of sight (my goal) and takes up an awful lot of the floor.

I suggested sticking just to the Kallax, on its side, and then a converting standing desk for a laptop like this:

But D thinks they are ugly (I don't really care how they look, but I appreciate that he does).

So, toy storage plus standing desk. No more ideas. Between that and the linen closet upstairs that is a complete mess, I've been debating paying money for professional help, like this from the Container Store. I'm still not sure how I feel about that though - paying someone else to come up with an idea that I can probably do myself (eventually) with the help of Pinterest and other internet decorating sources. Has anyone ever paid professionals to help them organize? I'd be interested to hear about your experiences. Also still seeking ideas for the problem area itself, if you have any thoughts.

Disaster Zone - suggestions needed

In the spring, if you'd have asked, I would have said our office space was a disaster zone: a mess of random papers and other junk that made the desk unusable (which was fine because no one needed to use it anyway). It wasn't for lack of trying. We have had a decent file cabinet and workable filing system for a while, plus we try to print and save as little as possible. But sentimental knick knacks, a cardboard box of baby photos from our parents, old cables and hard drives that aren't quite trash (or needs to be destroyed/wiped first), well, it takes up space:

With Herculean effort, we cleared the desk in anticipation of giving it to someone else who needed it more. We mostly found homes for everything (or stacked things in the corner) and gave some of it away (seriously how did we have at least 5 packages of lined paper?? do people even take hard copy notes anymore). And we did give the desk away. At least, we tried. It got halfway out the door and then gave up the ghost for good. It was a Craigslist Ikea find that had already moved from our old apartment, so one more move was apparently too much. So we moved it to the curb for trash pick-up then, instead of to its intended recipient.

So did our disaster zone improve? Not one bit. It just transformed. During the work on the breezeway (a room we have now taken to calling the "sun room" since it's beautifully sunny in there), we had to move all of the toddler's toys out of the living room. And so they migrated to the office, where they promptly become "out of sight, out of mind." It's quite nice having no toys (ok, who am I kidding, let's says *fewer* toys) in the living room. But now the office is a mess!

The small things that can be categorized are more or less "away." There's a train box, a puzzle box, a lego box, etc.

We could use perhaps a little more space for boxes like these, but the real problem is there are also tons of big toys. Toys that don't fit into cabinets. Multiple strolls around Ikea have failed to provide inspiration. Pinterest searches haven't helped. And so my question o you is how do we organize the toys so that this room is not a giant mess. We have one almost empty wall and would love to hide these toys in or behind some kind of furniture to pretend like grownups are still making the decorating decisions around here.

So put your ideas in a comment and help us out! And yes, while "throw the toys away/donate them/hide them in her bedroom" might seem like good options, they're not in the plans right now. So let's assume we are keeping them and just need a way to store them more efficiently in the office. Bonus points if whatever organizational system you suggest is also toddler accessible, to avoid having a constant stream of "mommy, can you get me my X?" "daddy, I want Y." and also lets us make *her* put them away.

New beds everywhere

We have some new beds around here! First, in an effort to make the guest bed less of a literal climb to get into at night, we got a 4'' low-profile boxspring. It was build it yourself but we're getting pretty used to that these days (seriously, building that Ikea Friheten sofa was pretty awful). It was straightforward and much cheaper than buying a pre-built one. We actually struggled to find a wood-slat boxspring. Ikea doesn't sell them (yes, we pretty much just start out there by default) because their mattress are all designed for their own beds, which don't need boxsprings. And most mattress stores charge a fortune.

We also bought a new mattress, the medium firm Myrbacka latex (Ikea of course). It was an equally awkward drive home as last time, but fortunately this time we enlisted the help of friends with a bigger vehicle, roof rack, and more skill at tying knots. The new one is much firmer than the one we tried out at the store, which I guess isn't surprising given all the use the in-store one gets. Because of that, and also just to protect it, we bought a plush topper for it.

In the end, the bed is over 6'' lower than it was before, meaning that guests don't need to hop or use a stool to get in or out. And toddler spills from climbing are a bit less dangerous (yup, those have happened).

And speaking of the toddler, this one graduated from a crib with dropped sides to her very own bed! More building...yay...I honestly was willing to consider buying from somewhere other than Ikea, but the little one asked for a blue bed and lo and behold, they actually had one (yes, she is spoiled and usually gets what she wants). And while it was a bit pricy for Ikea, it was still in line with or even cheaper than most other options. And so we got her the Busing extendable bed, which sadly necessitated buying the mattress that goes with it, the Vyssa Vinka, because it's Ikea so of course that means proprietary sizing. At its fullest position, it will be a twin bed. But for now and in its middle of three positions, the size is proprietary. Right now it is actually shorter than her crib bed, though it is wider. She's tiny and keeping it at its smallest setting means less space for her to accidentally roll out or lose her toys. She's pretty pleased with it, though I think her favorite part may have been picking out sheets.

For the first time in a long time, we were missing a piece of hardware from the kit. It wasn't critical to the construction but it was an important component to keeping the side piece near her head stable (the pieces designed to keep her from tumbling out of bed). And of course because of the way it was constructed, it had to be added during the building process and not afterwards. So we followed the (new?) process of requesting the missing piece from Ikea's website. I'm pretty sure that stores used to just stock some extra pieces at the customer service desk, but that does not appear to be the case anymore.

The process was going to take 2-3 weeks. We couldn't wait. Fortunately, it's a common-enough piece and we borrowed one from our bookshelves:

And then, just about when we'd forgotten we'd even ordered a replacement, this arrived in the mail:

Yes, apparently spare Ikea parts travel all the way from Sweden...I find this both delightful and very very strange.

For the Birds

This spring, our toddler decorated a bird house and we set it up on a shepherd's hook outside our picture window. To our surprise and delight, a mama bird took up residence pretty quickly. We saw her flying back and forth with twigs and things and built herself a nest. And then, abruptly, she was gone.

We thought that maybe there was too much foot traffic in the front yard. Otherwise we're not sure why she abandoned her home after about a week. The house was vacant the rest of the season (not surprising).

Then this fall with the new room slowly becoming our favorite place to hang out, we decided to take advantage of the good view of the backyard out the french doors and we hung up a bird feeder (same shepherd's hook, since we removed the house in the front).

Originally this post was going to be a call for help - after several days, we had no visitors. But suddenly yesterday:

The birds seem to have gotten the memo. We've seen blue jays and robins and whatever these little fellows are. We have a bird book by the door now to help identify them and we've put a little bowl of water out as well. The best part is we can enjoy these guys from inside our new room from the comfort of our sofa. Time to buy a better telephoto camera lens I guess.

Speaking of sofa and new room, we finally unfurled our new rug and LOVE IT. This is the ombre teal rug by CB2. We went with the smaller size (5'x8') after realizing the larger one (8'x10') would cover up almost all our new wood floor. And it fits beautifully. I love the way the shading follows the south-facing window, so it's like the sunlight on the floor (we tried it the other way but this direction was the clear winner). It perfectly matches one of our living room throw pillows, so it's more in line with the blues in the other room than I thought it would be.

Love love love.

Breezeway 15: done! and swanky closet

Finished finished finished! Final check is in the mail and the decorating has begun!

We have the rug but can't lay it down for another week or so while the floors totally finish curing. It's held up the rest of the minor purchases because I want to make sure I match the blue tone well. We're sticking mostly to the same reds and turquoises as the living room, but I think this rug will be a bit greener than some of the blues in the next room. The blinds should be arriving today too. I know it will take time to accumulate just the right things to hang on the walls and don't want to rush it. Still, it's frustrating to have empty walls now just begging to be filled.

Another small project we did this summer was adding the ceiling medallion to our swanky closet chandelier. It covers up the orange insulation though it does make us realize how dingy the closet ceiling is. Not that painting the ceiling in the closet is much of a priority.

While totally unnecessary, this fancy addition makes me smile whenever I go in the closet. A fun little update.

Wood to Burn

Continuing with some posts of other things we've been doing the last few months during the breezeway build - a well-organized log rack. Last October, our rotting oak tree gave us one last gift (well, I guess technically the tree removal service did this part for us, but you get the idea):

We moved it to the backyard to age for a while (and to get away from the house - can anyone say "termites"?). D realized that splitting logs is quite a physical challenge, but made great headway, splitting about half of them before we moved them to the back.

And they sat - on the edge of our patio in messy piles since November. We committed a blog faux pas and forgot to take a picture of that mess, but trust me, they were everywhere.

In the meantime, D excavated an old log rack from the back of our yard where the previous owners had left it dented, broken, and half buried in debris, dirt, and leaves. After several unsuccessful guesses at the size bolts needed to repair it, he finally came home with the right hardware and reassembled it a few weeks ago. Then it was a job of careful stacking:

I love it and am so excited to have all this beautiful wood to burn this winter. We got our chimney cleaned too, so we are ready to go.

One odd point of the chimney cleaning - the chimney sweep said that we needed some concrete repairs at the top. We aren't sure we believe him and definitely would want a second option and some pictures, given that we had the top of the chimney totally rebuilt in 2011 after our raccoon visitor. Either way, it didn't sound like something we have to do this year, so we'll file that one away for later.

Breezeway 14: ugh wiring and unrelated stuff

So when I said two posts ago that the Nest thermostat wasn't hooked up yet, turned out that it was, but that the wire was broken. Sigh. So now they have to rerun the electrical which means yet another step back. Off went the thermostat, off went the french door trim (I guess that's where they run the wire?), off went some drywall (I'm just guessing but that's sure what it looks like on the left below the light switches). And now of course there are white patches and crooked busted up door trim (we told them we want new trim now) and more waiting. There's also a super weird problem causing the new motion-sensor light outside to flicker when the inside lights are on (unrelated to ambient light caused by the lights being on).

This project started off strong but now I'm sick of it. The good news is that the floor people came back to re-polyurethane and that looks much better now. But we have reset the clock on furniture and rug while the floors cure.

So with all that annoyance is going on, I thought I'd finally get around to changing the subject. You see while all this are breezeway work has been happening, we've also been busy on other things. One thing that we had to deal with was some very persistent rust on the overflow drain vent in the new tub from our 2012 bathroom remodel. We don't even take baths in this tub, so the overflow was rarely exposed to any significant moisture besides what you'd expect from showering.

At first glance on the internet, this seemed like it could be a critical issue caused by a leaky rotten gasket on the outside of the tub, but fortunately the back was in good shape.

Either way, from my reading of random handyman websites, we had to act fast or the whole tub could rot through.

Fortunately, the contractors honored their 5 year warranty - to my surprise! They came out to take al look and explained that it wasn't actually the tub rusting but a piece of metal hardware fixed to the tub. Either way they agreed it was a material flaw and that they would fix it. Fast forward 3 weeks to July and the new part arrived. It looked like a pretty significant repair, so we're grateful that professionals took care of it.

Now we have rust-free hardware and no more pesky rust stain dripping its way down the tub.

Breezeway 13: waiting and decorating

We hit a bit of a lull on the final "punch list" completion and so the new room has been lingering in a state of almost-doneness. So we have started to plan our decor. One setback - we got picky over some of the bubbles and imperfections on the floor during the polyurethane application, so they are coming back tomorrow to sand lightly and re-coat. This means another week before we can put down any furniture at all and 30 days until we can put down the rug, which just arrived after being backordered for a few weeks and taking up space in another room while the floors are in a suspended state of perpetual curing.

But at least I can tell you our plan.

Step one - cover the windows. After ordering several samples from blinds.com for roller shades (they make so many colors!) and looking at the choices in a variety of lights and at night, we settled on a lightly patterned one that did a decent job of filtering the light and put in an order. We're not planning to put up curtains or cover the french doors at all, so the room is going to be bright, making light filtering shades a better choice than any kind of room darkeners.

Next to the sofa. After having an empty room for about a week and having the toddler enjoy the empty space, we debated whether or not the one we'd chosen (but not yet purchased) would take up too much floor space. We laid out and agreed that it would take up a significant chunk but that there would still be enough room for play.

So once we figure out how to get it home (seriously, this thing is currently only in the store wrapped together as 3 boxes on a palate totaling 250 lbs), we plan to add a Frighten to our collection of funny-sounding Ikea products.

After avoiding it for years, we finally are going to buy upholstered Ikea stuff. It's cheap (and with destructive young children that seems like a good idea) and has room to spread out and has a cool pull-out sleeper. We don't intend to use this as a guest room (see note above on how bright it will be) but having the flexibility of pulling out the sofa to sprawl out on was irresistible. Plus honestly I have always wanted a chaise lounge. No idea why. 

Onwards to the rug - as you might have guessed from the paint color and the gray sofa,  we are sticking to the same color scheme as the living room - gray, teal, and red - to help us blend the two spaces. We fell in love with this rug from CB2 (it's slightly more on the green end of teal than the living room, but we think it will work) and simply couldn't decide for a while if we wanted the 5x8 or the 8x10. Now that the drywall and trim is up, we measured it out and decided on the smaller size (why get expensive beautiful wood floors only to cover them with a rug that would pretty much go wall to wall).

(Our room will not look nearly as nice as either Ikea's or CB2's photos, but whatever.)

We have an ambitious plan for possibly assembling built-in style cabinets underneath the windows and shelving beside them, sort of like we have in the living room surrounding the television, but in white. There are some complications there, notably that Ikea kitchen cabinets are no longer made in the same thin depth that they used to, so they will not fit behind the door to the garage. So we are exploring custom cabinets or doing some Ikea hacks to shrink them. More on that later though. First - get the floor finished and put in the basics.