I forgot to post pictures of my living room.  I finished it awhile ago - but never posted them.  Here they are. 

It seems very unimportant today to post them.  A long-time friend just found out his wife was divorcing him - he is devastated.  A close friend of mine refuses to help himself, and his losses will be great.  They already have been.  Just as people “left” me to deal with my messes, I have to leave some of my friends to deal with theirs if their behavior makes me unhealthy.  The other end of the spectrum also makes it unimportant:  my good friends have been out in force, buying half price wine, sitting on warm patios with me, giving me incredible and priceless advice.  They run with me, eat with me, and occasionally let me help them too.  My family shows up, buys bread when I forget it until the kids are in bed.  Sometimes I’m 100% on with the motherhood stuff - other times I’m less than 75%.  I’ve gotten better at asking for help, and not raking myself over the coals when I do ask for it. 

So yeah, the living room is done - my whole house is, really - and it feels good to post things that had a finite start and a finite end.  Tomorrow marks the start of something new as well.  I’m finding that scaring myself just a little bit, or pushing my comfort zone, is actually quite liberating. 

Before:

Now:

(Thora loves the room - big windows and a chair she shouldn’t be on to watch from)

I’ve been dreading posting pictures of the kitchen because there’s only so much you can do with a kitchen that really, really needs a sledgehammer as opposed to a can of paint.  I didn’t even bother to paint it - just didn’t seem like anything would help.  Looking at the pictures I took, it doesn’t look that bad.  You can’t see the stained weird beige countertops or the kitchen sink that is permanently stained and chipped.  The oven, affectionally called “EZ Bake” because of its diminutive size, works great but looks like something from the Jetsons.  The stovetop is cool in a retro way but takes up tons of space.  Whoever decided to add cabinetry to the side of the kitchen had the right idea but not enough money to buy matching ones, so it looks like a Pinto you see driving down the road, farting smoke from the tailpipe, one red door and one primed trunk.  My kitchen is a Pinto.  Yep, I said it. 

Before:

After.  Not a fan of clutter.  At all.  Though it’s hard not to have a very small kitchen look uncluttered.  I did the best I could, and succeeded to some extent due to Nicole’s awesome suggestion to move this bizarre bar thingy stored in the family room into the kitchen. It doubles as a bookshelf, margarita glass holder, coffee maker and microwave stand.  In honor of Nicole’s great idea, I have their framed housewarming gift (a picture of Nicole and Dan) on top of the microwave. 

I had a hard time with the family room.  Most of it was mental, because that is the room the camel crickets loved.  When I first moved in, I couldn’t walk in there without having them spring out of the corners.  I spent at least 30 minutes a day sucking them up trying to not simultaneously shriek/barf with the Dyson.  Because I had a creepy feeling every time I went in there, it took me awhile to clean it out and decorate. I finally pulled down the pheasant curtains and hardware, cleaned up the walls, hung pictures and draperies, and made sure all the cricket bodies had been removed. 

Before:

Once we moved the bar thingy (seen in the second picture) into the kitchen, the room really opened up. I decided to split it in half, and dedicated half the room to the girls and all of their stuff, and the other half to me.  I’ve been using it as a place to read and occasionally stare off into space.  The couch is also excellent for conversations and tears if you need to do a little crying. 

The laundry room was nothing special and still isn’t, but I did use the huge closet thingy as a pantry.  Not convenient in the slightest, but still allows me to buy in bulk.

Before:

And now:

I repurposed a clothing rack from a trade show into a drying rack:

That is all.  I am tired!  I’m also home. 

I’ve got some finishing touches to put on the last three rooms (kitchen, family room and living room) to finish before I’m completely done (not that there is really such a thing).  In the meantime, here’s set 2.  There’s something really cathartic about posting these - it’s been so much hard work and it’s nice to have physical proof of it.  At the end of this post is a link to the Flickr set with all pictures included. 

Screened porch before: 

And now:

Note the shed in the background - my landlords fixed it.  Much better

The bathroom the girls use was a huge mess before.  Someone had painted it poorly and it was peeling like crazy.  Dingy was about the nicest adjective I could think to use. 

Since the tile was white and black, I stuck with that theme.  Unfortunately, the linoleum is yellow/beige, so I’ve done what I can to cover it until I take the time (and money) to do more peel and stick tiles.  I found some fun accessories on clearance through Amazon.com and the shower curtain at Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

The dining room required the least amount of work, but this is where I stored everything because I had no place else to put it.  I really hadn’t seen the floor in quite a while. 

Before:

After:

It’s been a ton of work, but it’s finally starting to feel like - dare I say it - home. 

www.flickr.com

This is my first set of before and after pics.  I’m only posting them in sections because, well, I have only finished a couple areas of the house. 

Lots of people have said they “couldn’t do it” - meaning downsizing to the extent that I have.  Losing 2200 square feet is quite a bit and required every ounce of organizational ability I stole from years of knowing Sara.  I’m fairly proud of my work and sometimes I would go so far as to say I’m pleased as well.  My life has been simplified to an extreme degree - I can probably clean the entire house (haven’t tried yet, because I’m still unpacking) in 45 minutes.  It will take me much longer to mow the front and back yard than it will to clean the entire house. 

I’ve posted a flickr badge at the end of this post if you want to see the whole set; some people asked me where I got things, and a lot of the pictures have the specifics in the “info” section if you click on it as you are viewing the slideshow. 

So up first:  Lily and Arden’s room.  My brother, my dad and some friends helped get the painting done before the bunkbeds were assembled. I wanted their room completely done before they moved in to cut down on any sort of additional stress for them, and we got 98% of the way there. 

Before:

After:

The girls’ room presented a number of challenges, not the least of which being the closet space (basically none).  I used a stackable shoe rack, purged a bunch of their clothes, rearranged and stored things in places I hadn’t though of (like repurposing Lily’s shelf baskets as storage for under the bunkbeds) and secretly sneaking out with armfuls of stuffed animals to donate when they weren’t looking.  I love the paint colors; I took the linens from Target and picked a very pale pink and a very Granny Smith green for alternating walls.  The louvered closet doors were not only ugly as all get out but hard to open and close.  I ripped them off and hung a beaded curtain.  I’d like to say it was intentional, but I didn’t realize until the beads were up that it really didn’t give any coverage for the mess in the closet, so I added a curtain road and a sheer dotted curtain from Target over it. The result was super cute and the girls love their “sparkly” closet. 

And the picture of Thora?  Really nothing spectacular about it but she’s so cute.  And she looks so well-behaved in this picture. 

Next up:  the office.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of things for my home office that had to come with me.  I had to keep my sewing table (it’s my old, tile topped table from 1996), I had to drag my inventory, and I needed a desk.  Fitting those three things into one smallish room with a tiny little closet was challenging to say the least.  Here’s what the office looked like before:

Tiny office closet:

And now:

Closet:

My wall of inventory:

My “master” bedroom was definitely a challenge.  It had nasty carpet that smelled like a nursing home to me.  The wall color was a sickly beige contrasted against a slightly less sickly white for the louvered doors.  The blinds were cream, and plastic, and mostly broken.  It clashed horribly with the very very blue bathroom.  Someone got a peel and stick bug up their butt and decided to “improve” the blue bathroom by adding hideous tiles in completely the wrong shade of blue.  The result was as follows.

Bedroom Before:

With a lot of carpet pulling and staple removing, a bunch of paint, new blinds, curtains, and a hard look at what I really needed to keep, the end result is this:

And finally, my last set for the night. . . the dreaded master bathroom.  With one tiny light, hideous blue on white tile, decaying grout, a blue toilet with a white lid, and some bizarre looking blue sink, I cried my ass off the first night I showered in there.  It was grungy, depressing, and made me feel like I was staying in a flophouse somewhere.  Dramatic, yes, but seriously gross:

View from inside the shower - note huge door not able to really open . . .

And the afters, with tons of help from Nicole on the curtains and the overall color scheme.  Did I mention Steve ripped out the blue sink and toilet, and replaced both in the span of about 2 hours?  Yeah, he rocks.  He’s my brother, and no, you can’t have him. 

New flooring:

and the world’s best invention - a suction cup thingy to hold a hairdryer and brush!!!!

I just finished the girl’s bathroom tonight and am also done with the family room.  The screen porch has become my holding area, even though Robey and Co. made fun of me when I had them hang up my “festive” garden lights. They say it now looks like a mexican restaurant’s bar, and that’s okay with me.  More to come later - as I get finished. 

www.flickr.com

I’ve been fairly absent from the blogging/twitter/facebook world lately, but that’s only because I’ve been consumed by both client work and getting the house to a presentable level.  My kids apparently take after me - they don’t like chaos all up in their face, especially in their home.  Things are definitely better and I’ve been managing to accomplish quite a few tasks every day.

Robey was entirely awesome and surprised me Friday by showing up with both food and boys to help put things away and get my family room to the point where you could sit in it.  I plied them with Bourbon and we unpacked a bunch of boxes, and I got some much needed downtime on the screen porch when I probably should have been working.  One of the helpers didn’t even know me - I am glad I got to meet Alisa, and she’s really the bomb for showing up at a strange woman’s house to string lights and break down boxes. And Chad - sorry I spewed pink champagne on your shirt.  I’m not used to drinking from a glass I guess.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve put down new peel and stick tile in my bathroom, watched my brother rip out the bathroom sink and add a cabinet/vanity and a new toilet, ripped out a shower stall door, painted the bedroom, girls’ room and office, unpacked and organized the garage and gardening shed, hung some pictures, unpacked 95% of the boxes, and gone to the grocery store one time.  Last night my dad mowed the front lawn with the new self-propelled mower - that thing is awesome - and I did the back.  Today I spent some time dripping sweat everywhere as I blasted the mack daddy of camel crickets out of the garage with the leaf blower, as well as dust and leaves from who knows how long ago.  I’ve swept and touched more cobwebs and icky spiders than ever, and if this doesn’t cure my massive arachnophobia, nothing ever will.  The girls “decorated” the gardening shed playhouse with lights and pictures of sparkly princesses in ball gowns.  It makes me smile to think that while I’m potting some new flowers, I’ll have little pictures to remind me of their boundless joy and energy.  It doesn’t take much to make them happy.

We all took a much needed break today and headed to Southside to visit our new pool. I joined last night online; it’s affordable and I loved the pool.  It’s very, very “normal”.  None of the Wyndham pretensions, none of the battle of the mom-suits.  The majority were not anorexic with breast implants, and not everyone wore expensive designer suits that aren’t meant to get wet.  Some kids were *gasp* not white.  Some women were poorly dressed or chunkier than I.  The lifeguards were laid back and encouraged Arden to go down the very fast waterslide on her stomach (she did), and they all cheered loudly for her when she popped up victorious.  It takes me 15 minutes to get there, but it’s a road to another world.  There is nothing about it to remind me of past summers in the Wyndham pool, and instead of making me sad, it liberates me. 

I never hated this house I inhabit, but I will be honest.  The first few days here were, well, humbling.  Making ice cubes is a pain in the ass, and something I haven’t done in at least 14 years.  Everything is quirky with this house.  Some might say that’s “charming”, but at first it was just really annoying.  Taking a shower in the bathroom made me shudder.  Everything was coated in either grime or camel crickets or worse yet, random bugs I couldn’t name or spiders I could. The house smelled - that bad combination of old people who aren’t all that clean, uncontrolled and unchecked Virginia humidity, and dog (not mine, either).  I miss the landscaping at the old house and a few luxuries, like my bathtub.  My first nights were spent curled up feeling incredibly alone - not lonely - but alone.  Sometimes I’d cry or think I wasn’t going to make it, but I still never questioned my decision. 

A few weeks out, I’m feeling much better.  The house still has a funk to it, but it’s a diminished funk.  An exterminator has been called; there is a mass exodus of sick, moaning camel crickets from the crawl space and family room.  I haven’t seen any disgusting spiders inside the house, nor has another cockroach appeared in Lily and Arden’s room.  My bathroom has new, very clean, very inexpensive tile.  Nicole’s beautiful curtain designs completely changed my dreary bathroom and my very 1960’s kitchen into something that really looks quirky and charming instead of just really effing ugly.  My bedroom is tiny, but it smells good, has new linens and is completely and utterly mine.  A neighbor showed up with a bowl full of home-grown vegetables - it made me want to cry because it reminded me of the housewarming visits neighbors in Michigan would pay.  My experience in the last neighborhood was that visits were made, but mostly to see what car you drove and fact-finding questions that would be reported back to the minions of Prada-wearing mothers.  I was lucky; both my immediate neighbors were nothing like that - but there was nothing pretentious or nosy about a bowl full of weirdly-shaped zucchini and cucumbers. 

I had some very needed alone time this weekend as well.  I’m still working through a number of issues - decisions are looming, and I’m spending a lot of time thinking through both the “why” of my situation as well as the “what do I want” part.  I still work on gratitude lists and am amazed how many good people have helped me through what can only be described as a disaster of a year.  I wish certain things were different - better - easier - but I’m also through what I’d like to think of as the worst bits.  I’m looking forward to a new, less complicated, less energy-draining and soul-destroying rest of the summer.