Yeah! Sleeping in the hallway is awesome! Oh, wait… no it’s not. It’s weird and awkward!
Sorry for the unmade bed, but seriously… why bother? We’re putting in our floors this weekend, so we will soon have a nice bedroom.
Also, you may remember that I had posted about wanting the above bed (“Dreaming of a new bedroom”). We love it! Our old mattress suddenly feels better, and reading in bed is much more comfortable (the headboard is slanted). Yay!
For the last three days, I’ve looked pretty much like this:
Painting, painting, painting. But I finally chose a color for the ceiling! It’s “flowering herbs”, or as Brandon’s family calls it, “Cooney green”. I don’t know the whole story, but Brandon’s Grandma Cooney used that color (a lot?), and subsequently everyone else in his family has used it in one of their rooms. We were thinking of using it for the guest room, but I thought it would be a beautiful ceiling color for the library (and it is).
We still need to paint the trim white, but the ceiling and the walls are done! Two coats of paint each. Whew. I’m tired.
I know the smart thing to do would be to leave the area clear, because we’re going to put all of our bedroom furniture out there while we put in our new floors this weekend. I just couldn’t though. It seems so anti-climactic to spend three days painting, and then just leave it. So… I brought up some furniture and set up the alcove.
The black table was my first purchase from IKEA. I think I was 16! The lamp was in my office, so it will probably go back (unless I buy a new lamp for my desk, which I certainly wouldn’t mind doing). The chair is part of a set of four that I grabbed from an alley – I think they were from a waiting room. Two of them have arms and two don’t. I may bring the other armless one up for the other side of the table (in front of the window). The curtain and the pillow are from Pier 1. I’m not totally crazy about them, but I do like them. Really, we needed some curtains and we needed them quickly, so those seemed fine.
The rest of the space is still crazy and messy, but at least one corner looks nice!
I’m still trying to figure out what to do for the lighting in the kitchen. There will be two halogen bulbs in the range hood over the stove, and we’ll have a light over the sink. There are also two windows and a door, so we get lots of natural light during the day, but at night it’s a little dark. Right now, there is one fixture, smack-dab in the middle of the ceiling, and it has three compact flourescent bulbs in it.
I love the Clemson pendant from Restoration Hardware (left), and I also like the Jefferson schoolhouse fixture from Rejuvenation (right), but in polished nickel.
I’m also quite fond of the Milk-glass spotlight track lighting from Pottery Barn. Normally, I’m not a track lighting fan, but it could be a great solution for our kitchen because we have a somewhat awkward layout and we’d be able shine the light towards different areas.
I wonder if those little spotlights will be bright enough though. They don’t take regular bulbs, but instead bulbs that are “40-watt maximum, type G-9, 120 volts”. Will that be bright enough to light the kitchen?
*update*
OK. I think the Clemson pendant will hang down too far in our kitchen – we need a flush mount or semi-flush mount. The Jefferson light only has 1 socket, and I want at least two light bulbs in the fixture. The PB track light? I don’t know if the lighting will be adequate. Help?!
Ugh. Our flooring came in, so Brandon and I went to Lowes to pick it up. Twas the wrong type of floor.
When we ordered it, we asked plenty of questions about installation (noting that we were going to do it ourselves), and we knew that we wanted to do a floating installation. I don’t think a nail-down or glue-down floor is within our skills, and that’s exactly what was ordered.
Well, it turns out that the floating, click-together type of floor was more expensive (+ $600!). We ended up getting it for the same price as the other stuff though, since it wasn’t our mistake. So thanks, Lowes. You both frustrate and calm us.
Now our floors won’t arrive for another 10 days.
When I started my business (Pink Loves Brown), I used a second bedroom in the apartment we were renting as my studio. Soon work spilled out into the rest of our home, and areas like the dining room table became the shipping center. After two years, I had finally rented a separate studio space! Hooray! 600 square feet of space!
Then we decided to buy a house, and I gave up the studio. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining, because it is a trade-off I was more than happy to make. Brandon and I both wanted a house so badly, and there is room here for me to make a studio… in a spare bedroom. Just like when I started. ;)
So now the space has gone from 600 square feet down to about 150. It’s tight, but manageable.
A lot of work has been done already. I’ve painted the dragon (YAY), turned the closet into storage for crafty supplies, and setup my shipping center (not on the dining room table, thankyouverymuch). Still to do: rip up the carpet and lay the solid bamboo floors, paint the wood trim white, and change the window treatments.
Plus it feels a little bland in there. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten rid of the dragon!
A decision has been made about the bedroom floor! Brandon and I went to Lowes last night and we chose solid bamboo in a very dark brown (Jacobean). Hooray! We ordered enough for the bedroom and for the studio, so no more yucky carpet for us!
