"Expedit"ed Storage

Our old Ikea Expedit has served us quite well, but the sad truth was that with only two standard square storage areas, it was mostly a place for dust collectors. And we needed more storage in our entryway. So when it came time to place the giant nursery order for delivery, we decided to throw in a new Expedit as well.

As always, we had our kitty assistant help us with the construction. Since the whole thing is constructed  almost entirely with little wooden pegs, we used a lot of wood glue for added stability (not on the kitty, on the Expedit).

The new pieces is 4 by 4, all standard squares, so we could mix and match Ikea's boxes and baskets inside. We ordered what we thought was the same color, but it turned out the color of our original piece doesn't exist anymore. This finish, "black-brown" is much darker than our old Expedit. The lighter color matched better, but this one still looks nice.

Standard sized kitties also fit in the cubbies:

Since the new Expedit was almost twice as long as the previous one, it threw off the balance in the room and caused the cedar trunk to hang out from the sofa by a couple feet - more than enough to cause bruised shins and make the living room seem cramped. We liked the idea of having something there to sit on to put shoes on, so we focused our search efforts on a storage bench. Nothing good came up on Craigslist or our standard stores, and we'd just about given up when I coincidentally discovered a storage bench sold at an online store I'd never heard of, Wayfair, in a home decor magazine while visiting my parents. We came home to find the measurements were perfect and put in the order - isn't it pretty?

See how much more storage we have in the Expedit now? The glossy doors and drawers on the Expedit are now permanent once we decided which cubes to nail them into. The baskets are obviously movable. We wanted to keep the left upper edge open to avoid closing the living room off too much, but we have the flexibility to change our minds later. Right now a lot of our household clutter is landing in the empty cubes, but somehow just having them in the cubes instead of lying around on other surfaces makes them seem less cluttered.

The next challenge - figuring out a good way to baby-proof and stabilize a piece of furniture that is not flush with any walls. We have ideas - they involve metal rods and/ or rope. Fortunately we have a little while  to figure it out during our sleep deprived state somewhere between infant and climbing toddler...

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today marks 4 years in our house - and it's certainly come a long way since 2009. From when we bought to one year later in September of 2010, we focused on major painting and decorating, plus new windows. 2011 involved energy-efficient upgrades and some pretty significant work to our chimney. 2012 saw some pricy and exhausting changes, like the complete bathroom remodel, and the removal of almost all the liriope from our yard. 2013 was mostly about upkeep, and of course transforming our last un-decorated room into a nursery.

This next year will, for obvious reasons, keep us from doing any significant home improvement projects but we still have a few goals, both do-it-yourself and professional. I thought I'd make a quick list to see how far we get:

• Finish the nursery (duh)
• Get the light fixed at the end of our walkway and maybe get a new motion sensor for the back
• Continue to transform some of the wild area in the backyard to lawn
• Get a new basement door and some nice doors for the rooms off the main floor hallway

Thanks again to everyone for your help and opinions (and for continuing to read this blog long after its launch back in 2009)!

Rug time

We have a bit of a conundrum over rugs for the nursery, mostly because our room is basically square shaped. Rugs don't usually come in squares, at least not at the stores where we are looking. After years of cheap rugs in most rooms of the house - rugs that are now shredding and shedding - we want to get something that won't fall apart quickly. So we're willing to splurge a little bit and get something nice. But "nice" also apparently comes in a few standard sizes - 5'x8' and 8'x10' seem to be the two we are considering. Our current furniture placement has the crib in the middle of the room (we didn't want it against a window or a baseboard heater, leaving us few other options), so it will basically sit on the rug.

The problem is, the smaller size rug is mostly lost under the crib. This coffee table at my parents' house is a decent approximation of what I'm talking about. This rug is 5'x8'. The coffee table is a little smaller than the crib. So imagine something that goes a couple more inches closer to the edge on every dimension. This arrangement leaves us with a lot of extra exposed floor space and makes the rug seem almost pointless.

The 8'x10' configuration has the other problem. No matter which direction we orient it in the room, the 10' side extends almost to the very edge of the furniture legs or the baseboard heaters, with just an inch or two to spear, giving the impression of almost wall-to-wall carpeting.

Apparently, 8'x8' is perfect. And doesn't seem to exist.

On to the models we're considering.

If we go with 5'x8', this is an adorable, if busy, option by Crate and Barrel's children's subsidiary, Land of Nod:

Over the River and Through the Rug

Our thinking is that some of the business would be buried under the crib for now. Then when we graduate to toddler bed, we could push the bed against the wall and have the rug exposed for fun play time. Or maybe it would just look horrible and busy and clash with the mural...at least the blues and greens match the room decor.

A more safe design, available in either size, is courtesy of Pottery Barn Kids:

Lux Trellis Rug

Any ideas? Should we go with the smaller or the bigger size? If we go with the smaller size, which rug is a better choice, considering our already busy decor? No poll this time, but I could really use your opinions, so please leave a comment - especially if you have any other ideas, like places to buy quality kids rugs (which translates mostly into soft, pretty colors) in non-standard sizes (that won't break the bank)!

The Big Mural Reveal

Tah-dah! Say hello to my new jungle friends:

They are all plagiarized borrowed from various internet art sights that have been repeated so many times that I don't have a clue of the original source (if you search for "cartoon monkey" "cartoon parrot" etc. these are some of the top hits). And of course I added a few personal touches.

Here's a pictures from farther away, so you can see it more in the context of the rest of the room (see the grass down at the level of the wood trim?).

Let me briefly tell you about these two pieces of furniture too, since you can see them. We followed our normal process for furniture shopping: 1) check Ikea first and find some things we like, but decide we should branch out; 2) look around at other furniture stores and discover that we hate most other styles and the few that we do like are incredibly expensive (i.e we did not like the cribs sold at Buy Buy Baby and Babies R Us but we did like the ones at Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn for, literally 6 times more); 3) check Craigslist and other used sites for used versions of the expensive furniture that we like; 4) eventually give up and buy at Ikea.

So the crib is Gulliver, in birch. The dresser - because we could not find a changing table we liked - is Mandal. It's actually the same furniture line as our bed, which we thought would give us some nice flexibility when we inevitably rearrange what goes where. Our bedroom and the nursery now share the same birch and white (and, for that matter, blue and green - though in very different intensities).

And our last reveal for the night - fishies! I extended the mural into a small underwater scene inside the window cubby:

Mural tease

Pictures of the nursery are still under lock and key until I can surprise my parents with it in person next week but I just have to say:

THE MURAL IS FINISHED!!!!!

The mural took almost two months and was a lot of work and may end up being the first thing to get painted over when our little baby is old enough to have opinions, but you know what? I don't care. It makes me smile when I look at it and makes the room feel special. And oh yeah,

IT'S DONE!!!!!!

Yes, I'm excited. I obviously wouldn't have done it if I didn't enjoy painting, but I'm really not much of a "process" person. I enjoy painting, cooking, baking, knitting, etc. because I enjoy the final product. So as much fun as it was to paint animals on the wall, it's must more fun being done and getting to look at it and not hate it (because that was a distinct possibility).

And it's not a moment too soon, because I learned yesterday after a particularly busy day out and about on my feet that I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I grow cankles if I'm not careful about sitting down and elevating my feet. No more climbing up ladders and painting for hours for me. Because as of today, (one more time):

THE MURAL IS DONE!!!!!