Re-Inspired

In spite of my mutinous thoughts earlier this month about hating the house and being sick of working on it, I've fallen in love with it all over again. I've already posted our plans for the living room color scheme, but a few more great ideas have surfaced this week and, combined with the great weather, have inspired me to get my butt in gear. Last night, I was soaking in our pathetic bathtub, when I came across this picture in Pottery Barn Bedrooms: I couldn't tell you why, but it immediately brought to mind our little front bedroom. With dimensions of 7'2 by 10'4", it's really not practical to use it as a true bedroom. No bed larger than a twin will fit, so it wouldn't even really suffice as a guest room. I can just imagine having a couple stay the night... "Oh, you guys want to sleep together?? The futon in the basement is absoloutely marvelous!" I can't claim to be a wonderful hostess, but I hate putting people on a futon in our family room. Especially since it's in our basement. But if I use the little bedroom as an office, that will leave the back bedroom (currently the office/trash heap) free to use as a guest room.

The plan for the front bedroom is to make a built-in bed (twin) that incorporates bookshelves and storage. This way, we can still use it as a guest room if necessary, but its primary function will be my office/library/retreat. Right now, we can't fit more than the twin bed and an ironing board in there, but building the bed into the short wall will free up lots of floor space.

So after jumping out of the bath and frantically measuring the front bedroom, I noticed that there seemed to be lots of dust kittens under the bed. this led to removing all of thefurniture in that room and our bedroom and mopping the floor. Keep in mind that the bath was supposed to be in preparation for bed, but by the time I finished planning, measuring, rearranging furniture, and mopping, it was about 3 am. But the floor looks nice!

This morning, I took all the woodwork outside and worked on stripping it in front of the garage. It seemed like a waste of a great day to stay inside, and even though the garden needs work, the molding is my priority right now. I really think that we could be done with the living room in about a month, and, after being inspired by that picture, I'm anxious to get it done as soon as possible.

Another inspiration is the built-in cupboard we bought this week. It's taken up residence in our garage for now, but it'll be moving to the dining room as soon as there's space. We're going to drywall around it and use it to store dishes and linens.

The other item on our agenda this weekend was getting a bathtub. Remember the tub I cleaned up from our rental house about 8 months ago?? When we moved, we were dumb enough to leave it behind. I've been kicking myself ever since, in spite of some good deals I found on ebay. A few weeks ago, I checked the listings at Realtor.com, and found that our old rental was still for sale. It's been on the market for about 18 months now, so I was pretty surprised. Shayne called the landlord and found that the tub was still in the backyard. Needless to say, we went back and got it. We crammed it in the back of my CR-V, then brought it into the backyard for a cleaning. It's no worse for having spent a winter outdoors (not the first one!), and I'm ecstatic. :) Our garage is starting to look a bit like a salvage yard, but it's exciting to actually be aquiring things that will fit into our home.I'm sure everyone will think I'm crazy, but I had to jump in and see how it fit. 12" to the overflow, and MUCH better than our current fiberglass imposter. I can't wait!