3 Steps forward, 2 steps back

(originally written January 17, 2012)

Yep, that time of year…

I managed to catch whatever “ick” is going around. I’m finally coming out of it, on the mend and back at work. Of course, this has set me back a wee bit. I haven’t been able to do much of anything, like prepare the house for the contractors or paint anything – although I’m not sure what the heck I’d paint – regardless, I’ve felt pretty useless over the last week.

We have to meet with our grant coordinator and sign the original paperwork before anything can start. That’s all very well and good. They give us a deadline and say “it needs to be done yesterday” when we’ve been calling them every single non-holiday work day to get the ball rolling for the last… oh… month? I just keep telling myself that it’s worth it for all the work they’re doing.

We did, however, manage to get some quotes back from the general contractors. Unfortunately they were all WAY too high for us to do all of the work that we were originally planning on, but we did realize a few things in the process:

1. We can probably handle insulating the attic ourselves. After looking up a few tutorials online it really isn’t that hard. And as far as tools go – the only thing we’d need to purchase (or even borrow) is a staple gun – which is pretty cheap. We could save quite a bit of money just by doing it ourselves.
2. We may want to have professionals come in and hang the drywall. Drywall = pain in the butt. If it’s not perfectly smooth it looks terrible. I’d rather pay someone to come in and do it perfect than have it be “good enough” and look awful.
3. Most of the projects are ones that can wait a while and aren’t absolutely necessary to have completed right away. As long as we have useable, insulated space in the attic and the basement sealed, we can chip away at everything not included in the grant renovations one project at a time.

Unfortunately, that means the bathroom project will be on hold for a while. This probably isn’t a bad thing considering it’s a major renovation (cutting an entire section of wall to enlargen a space, running electric and plumbing across the room and replacing the vanity and fixtures).

The more I think about it, the more I realize that if I could have my way (this is dangerous territory here folks) We could really do something crazy and make what is the current guest room the master bedroom with a bath.

Hear me out. We would have to completely redo the addition and bring it up to the same level as the bedroom, knock out that wall and lengthen the wall between our current bedroom and the guest room so that it turns into one big room.

THEN we add another door to the bathroom through the “new” master bedroom.

THEN we extend the sunroom across the entire width of the house with a door coming from what is now our bedroom.

Both bedrooms end up being bigger adding more value to the house. Granted probably not as much as the money we’d put into it, but wouldn’t it be cool?

Anyway… while we’re working on getting the grant stuff done, I’m back to doing some interior design projects in the house. I’ve been working on the bedroom for a while now – so far here’s what I have:

Photos found on Pinterest, IKEA.com, lunabazaar.com, Target.com and Walmart.com

Looks pretty cool huh? The background color is the current wall color. The dressers are from the IKEA Edland series and the mirror and flokati rugs (to go on either side of the bed) are also IKEA. The white stag wall sculpture would hang center over our bed with the monograms printed on some sort of rough hewn paper framed with black frames and white mats hung on either side. The chevon thinggy up there would be a quilt I can make (but with white and off-white colors – which I already have to make the quilt top) and the duvet cover is white with greige paisley. The curtains are similar to ones we have in our living room (and love) that is an open weave fabric. Enough to obscure view, but enough to let light in. I’m still not sure if I want to include the paper star lanterns or if I’m going to just get metal stars and hang them… still thinking on that. I also really love the idea of the canvases with song lyrics on them. I thought it could be interesting to do the song we did our first dance to and somehow include a drawing, picture or something of us during the dance on one of the tiles. Not sure how that will work out, but it’s formulating in my head… Still working on what lamps I want and other little elements here and there, but this is the basic idea.

I also want crown molding. That, my friends, is GOING to happen. Along with a more organized closet and new bi-fold doors. I’d like that to happen before spring.