Love and Spice: House Update and Pictures of the Boys

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

House Update and Pictures of the Boys

The update on the house is that there haven't really been any updates, except maybe in the living room. I've been waiting for my spring break, which starts this Friday afternoon at 3:45, to do a lot of stuff around the house. Of course, I pretend that the house will look totally different after I'm off from work for two weeks, but it won't. I will likely end up working quite a bit from home and planning projects instead of actually executing them. We still have to go to my Nana's and get the rest of our stuff, too...

I do hope to paint at least one room, though. I would also like to do some major organization projects in the basement. For example, the laundry/cedar closet and garage. Then I can finish unpacking the rest of the boxes, too. My problem is I'm not exactly sure what to do first because it's like a giant puzzle. To do one task, I have to make space, which means doing a different task first. On the other hand, I haven't wanted to paint yet because I'm not sure of the colors. I think I want to keep things very neutral because I like to switch out accessories pretty often. Oh well. I hope things will look a bit more organized after my break.

All that stuff still needs to be put away. And that ugly area rug has to go.

This area is a disaster. The boys like to roam around and touch everything. If I can get this stuff organized and put away, it will make our job with the boys so much easier!

This area is usually much neater (except for when the boys are in it playing). They had just gone to bed and we hadn't straightened yet. Those toy bins are the best thing ever for "cleaning up."

The huge mess from another angle!

I hate this kitchen floor, but the boys are so messy when they eat, that I'm actually grateful for it for now. Once they aren't such messy eaters (and we have a budget to remodel the kitchen), we can replace the floor too. For now, I don't feel too badly about them messing up the linoleum "stone" floor.

This room will look great with crown molding. I want to replace the curtain rods, too, which are perfectly fine, but they don't extend beyond the windows. She had stuff draped over the rods, like swags. If I want drapes/curtains that hang, it will look funny with these rods.

I had hoped to strip the wall paper and paint before I unpack all the boxes of stuff. A lot of it is stuff for our bar that will be in the living room. But the bar set up involves shelves hung on the wall, and I don't really want to hang shelves until the walls are painted. But it's going to be quite a task to strip the paper and paint a room of this size. I don't think I'd finish over the break. So I may leave it until summer. But if if we leave it, we're going to have to hang shelves and unpack boxes now. I can't stand the mess anymore. The starburst thingy will be hung over the fireplace.

So we bought the couch and arm chair and ottoman thanks to my mother-in-law. We used the remaining money she gave us to buy the accessories: pillows, lamp shades, lamp bases, an end table, and the fire place decoration thing. The movers broke one of the shelves to the hutch when they were bringing stuff into the house, so we have to have a piece of glass cut for that before we can unpack a lot of the boxes. The bar I referred to above is on the right. Eventually, we hope to have TWO (count 'em!) bars in the house: one here and a huge kick-ass bar in the basement. I firmly believe you should never have to walk to far to find a drink in your house! ;)

Boys' room. I don't think I want to decorate any further right now. There are still shelves and pictures to hang. But, they will be in big-boy bed relatively soon, so I might wait to paint etc. until they move into their beds. I'm thinking Milton colors: blue with orange accessories. We bought cool 1960s beds at a thrift store a few weekends ago. Can't wait to refurbish them for the boys!!!

If you look closely, you'll see the boys were asleep when I took this picture! I snuck in in the dark and used the flash...

We saw a cool project on the blog Young House Love where they put board and batten on the walls in their hall. It looked great and seemed pretty simple to do. Eventually I think we'd like to do that in our hall.