Room for Change

Last weekend my oldest son, who'd been home from college for summer vacation, moved into an apartment.

Since he's a junior this year, on the face of things it isn't much different from the last two times he moved out, cramming laundry baskets full of socks and t-shirts and boxes of textbooks in the back of his car. But this time, he also borrowed my van and loaded up his mattress. And headed not to the dorm, but a shared two-bedroom apartment, with a tiny closet of a kitchen and a living room with just enough space for a small futon sofa.

It's not really that different. But it is. I'm pretty sure it means he won't be living with us, full-time, ever again. That's a healthy thing. He's 20, spreading his wings, finding his adult life. That's all as it should be. I also realize he's close by, and I don't have to face the hardship other parents deal with, of him going to school several hours or even several states away.

But.

While he's seeing the beginning, I'm also, just as much, seeing the ending. And I'm having emotional reactions that are not the norm for me. My good intentions (being proud of a young adult going out on his own) are colliding with my fears and losses (I'd had no idea how much a dependable and reassuring presence he's been to me).

Take that torn-up conflicted mess of my emotional insides and add a big pile of the usual back-to-school stress for the other boys, and.....well.  It's made me bossy. It's made me a scold. It's made me not unlike Kitty Forman from That 70s Show. I have been reminding myself of this episode a lot lately.

Yep. While for my oldest child life is moving on at a rapid and wonderful pace, I feel like I'm left behind with the metaphorical equivalent of a fucking car show in Kenosha. I wish I could be more graceful about it, but right now I'm just not.

His more-permanent departure has left the door open for other big changes, too.

Since birth, my twin sons Ben and Joe have shared a womb, a swaddling blanket, a crib, and always, always, a bedroom.

While at the subterranean level of the heart, their relationship is like this:

On the day-to-day level it's more often like this:

They're twins with vast differences in their personalities, and I'll admit there are times when the entire family would benefit from a break in the cycle of open conflict and armed detente in the twin identity/sibling rivalry wars. While that sounds pretty dysfunctional, I understand it's normal for same-sex twins.

Normal can be pretty exhausting for the bystanders, though. At 11 years old, the twins are starting middle school this year. They feel grown up. They want grown up things. They're each wanting the same thing their oldest brother wanted: a space to call his own.

Grant's bedroom up until this last weekend looked (when clean and uncluttered, which I'll admit wasn't often) like this:

The twins' bedroom looked like this:

This weekend, we moved Ben's bed into his big brother's old room. We'll be working this fall to gradually morph the twins' old room into Joe's personal space, and Ben's new room into his very own.

Unlike television shows and some other blogs, this won't be a total renovation of both spaces in just a few weekends. Real-world budgets and schedules don't really allow for that. But we'll see how far we can get on use-what-you-have decorating.

We'll also see if I go all Kitty Forman on this change too. The rooms in my house are still all full, but so is my heart. In both cases, rearranging is a messy process.

Bedroom and Bathroom Update, Part III

When I last left readers, I promised I'd have a third and last update on the bedroom and bathroom.

While it looks a bit spare in the bedroom yet, I've been enjoying the awesome feeling of having finished walls in the majority of it.

But I've got this one wall left to tackle, that had to be completely demolished due to a slow leak left to spread when the previous owners improperly winterized the plumbing pipes in the bathroom.

That's the common thread between the bedroom and bathroom. They share this wall. On the other side, my looking-much-better sink and vanity: 

But also an ugly medicine cabinet mirror:

That lighter material in the inner frame is fabric. It catches dust and grime, toothpaste and makeup, and is pretty unspeakably gross most of the time. It also has no design relation to the awesome chrome sconces.

I have a better one that I picked up at a flea market for $20. I love the etching at the top, it fits the era of the house (late '30s) much better, and it's going to go great with the sconces.

The interior medicine cabinet part is a bit bigger than the old mirror, but without the frame, the replacement mirror is narrower on the wall. Which will make the sconces look less crowded than they do now.

And what better time to replace the medicine cabinet when you've got the entire wall behind it missing?

The top two arrows show the back and interior framing of the medicine cabinet.

The bottom left arrow shows where the leak was, and the plumbing repair. And the bottom right arrow shows an awkwardly sawed-off ventilation duct.

This is where I call in the troops. Or in this case, the handyman. I've decided I'm hiring it done. I've got three main reasons why.

1. Lugging sheets of drywall single-handedly up my narrow and contorted stairwell seems like a good way to injure myself, cuss myself all the way to damnation, and dent/crack said drywall. Mostly likely all three.

2. I don't know wth is going on here, I don't know how to fix it, I don't have sheet metal tools to fix it, and I don't want to know how to fix it.

3. It frees me up for more pressing work, exterior painting and landscaping, that I should be doing right now and am capable of making good headway on immediately.

There's also a sense of just wanting to be able to make some great progress in both rooms by simply signing a check. I've been a bit overwhelmed lately, both with house projects and stuff going on in my family life. I know when assistance, even if I have to pay for it, is going to make a big difference in my mental well-being. This is one of those times.

I'll be back next month with some progress reports for both rooms; in the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the start of summer break with my boys for awhile.  Time for books and popsicles!

Bedroom and Bathroom Update, Part I: the Bedroom

I've been slowly making progress in my bedroom over the winter and spring. It's been slow because it's plaster work, which seems like an endless round of plaster-dry-sand-plaster-dry-sand-plaster-dry-sand. Okay, it doesn't seem like. It IS. You do it until you begin to shake drywall dust off your underpants when you pick them up off the floor, and then you start to carry beers up to your bedroom to drink while you work. And then maybe you decide that perfection is kind of a bitch and "good enough" is easier to live with. I live in an older home, so imperfect walls make it "quaint and cottage-like," right?

Sure.

Again for those who are just joining us, this is what the space looked like in 2011:

That view above in more recent months became this:

And then we continued on around the corner:

It's also been tedious because I've been doing a section at a time, by hand, and cleaning up after each step to keep the dust way down. I don't have the room to move all the way out of my bedroom while this is going on, so it's been a lot of months of making little messes, cleaning them up, scooting furniture this way and that, and doing it again. It's been a little crazy making. But progress has been ongoing.

The color is Valspar Bay Waves. It's actually a bit darker than it shows in the photos, but it's still a very soft, dove-like gray. I like how soothing it is. The brown-painted window is now white, after about eleventy-billion coats of primer and paint.

I've primed the floor, and moved the dressers into position for the next stage.

The color on the walls is actually the same, though it appears darker in the nook. I love comparing these photos to the very first one! And if you're alarmed by the difference of floor color in the nook versus the rest of the room, don't be. That's just a primer coat, and they got it as dark as they could to make for easier coverage when the paint goes down, but it isn't as dark as the actual floor paint. That'll go down last, when I'm completely finished with wall work.

You can just see, on the bottom left edge of the photo above, the unframed doorway to my closet. That is a whole other can of....well, not worms. More like a pile of shoes on the floor and tangles of bras on hooks. But definitely a whole other can of project.

Now I'm done with all of the walls except this one, the Wall of Tragedy:

It used to be a wall of shelves made (badly) out of particle board and faux wood vinyl panelling, that got pulled apart when a plumbing leak was discovered in the wall when we moved in. There are some other issues with this wall, which I'll discuss in Part III. Stay tuned for that. That's my floor stencil hanging up there. It seems like as good of a place as any. To the left is the nook again (we've come full circle around the room). And to the right is the door out into the hallway. My bedroom door opens out into the hallway rather than in, due to crazy roof lines.

There's a ton of small things left to do. I need to clean up the window panes from the painting job, and there's also still a broken pane here, which I will get to next summer when I reglaze from the outside. There is a missing sash lift and I need to clean up the lock. I need to touch up paint dings and drips here and there. I need to find the plate covers for the outlets (they're around here somewhere....).  And of course there's still trim work. I feel closer to done, though. It's a good feeling.

As the post implies, there's two other renovation updates coming soon, next time on the upstairs bathroom. Stay tuned!

The Sweet Serenity Of Nooks

I have to apologize to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The quotation actually reads "the love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books." It's from the poem Morituri Salutamus, and one of my favorite lines.

Nooks can be serene, too. Especially when your bed is in it:

It's been there for a few months, practically speaking to get it out of the way of the rest of the bedroom wall and floor work.

Aesthetically speaking, it's because having your bed in a nook is like sleeping in a tent.....if that tent happened to have temperature control, down comforters, lots of fluffy pillows, and a little lamp to read by.

It's sequestered. It's also serene. This is just what I need in a life that doesn't have much of either.

I started off with a pretty grubby space:

Which included some awesome but unsalvageable cowboy wallpaper:

With help from my sister and my son it gradually became a more finished space:

With a low-cost painted and stenciled plywood floor:

And just before Christmas I scored some great midcentury dressers: 

But now the time has come to start making progress on the area the bed vacated, and the rest of the room, mostly with drywall plastering.

In other words, playing with mud indoors. It sounds so much more fun when you say it that way, doesn't it? I also like how this photo looks like a before and after montage. Only it isn't. That is actually what the room looks like, right now. Serene Nook meets Plaster of Disaster. 

I'm not really close to done right now, but I am feeling like I could see it by the end of this year. In the meantime, it's nice to have the nook. 

Mid-century Modern Dressers Poorly Timed (but still awesome)

I had it all in my head how it was going to work out. And then these dressers happened.

In 2014, my bedroom was supposed to be one of my remodeling goals for this house. But it's ended up being the unloved step-child of the entire year, with work in this room ending up last on the list of everything else going on.

Not because I don't want a nice grown-up lady refuge from the rest of the world, and there HAS been some progress I haven't blogged about yet. But that's where I need to sleep, there are often socks and running pants piled on the floor, and the lighting is bad for pictures.....

How it looked at the beginning of the year:

And the alcove now stenciled: 

In the meantime, I'd been living out of these two dressers, one from my mother's childhood bedroom, and the small one a curb find from a few years ago:

This was not ideal, and in real not-pretty non-blog life I was frequently piling stacks of folded clothing on top of both of them, or in laundry baskets strewn about the room. To say it tended to exacerbate my already slob-like tendencies about laundry is an understatement. 

But I had an order-of-work plan that didn't include buying new dressers until the room itself was further along-- that last wall drywalled, the plaster work finished, the rest of the floor painted and stenciled. That was the point at which it would seem the right time to get new and better furniture up there. 

I even had some picked out. On the budget plan, I'd decided to get some combination of Ikea Malm dressers: 

Ikea Malm Dresser (Source)

It seemed perfect for the dark woods and reds/grays/metallics I'd been using or plan to use in this room, and with good looks for a reasonable price. But I was waiting to purchase them when the room was ready, and when I'd have the time to not only make the trip to Ikea (there isn't a store in Iowa, which means driving to Kansas City or Minneapolis), but also to put them together once I got them home. 

Then I saw something in a furniture consignment store in the complete and opposite direction, and it changed everything. Including my so-called order-of-work plan. 

It was a second-hand dresser and chest of drawers, blonde wood, mid-century modern, and not what I was thinking of at all. It was exactly what I didn't know I was looking for. AND less expensive than the Ikea option. And better quality. And completely at the wrong time. Not only for the fact that I wasn't where I wanted to be on the room, but also because it was Thanksgiving week, and I had a house full of guests. 

I bought them anyway. Because duh. 

The chest of drawers features a shallow "handkerchief" drawer at the top, and the next one down is a divided drawer in three parts. My undies, hosiery, and bras have never felt so...orderly. 

The dresser has six gloriously just-the-right size drawers. 

The hardware, though a little worn, is still original. I had to vacuum glitter out of the bottom drawers, and eradicate some "old lady smell" with Murphy's Oil Soap. But that. was. all. That's been the glory of this situation in many ways-- not having to do an extensive rehab on an inexpensive but neglected second-hand piece, or getting the Ikea-induced migraine of assemble-it-yourself new furniture. 

I didn't realize how badly I needed more clothing storage until these two babes came into my life. Now I've moved on from my shuffling parade of laundry baskets. The largest of the two old dressers went into my twins' closet as off-season clothing storage, another badly needed improvement. The smaller chest may be re-purposed for another use, but I haven't decided yet. 

Of course, the the two new dressers will have to slum in their new environment for awhile, but their appearance motivates me to put the bedroom back at the top of the list in priorities for the new year. Sometimes poor timing is actually the shake-up one needs, and I'm going to take these pieces of furniture as just that. 

I've Got the (Bedroom) Floor

I have only two things to say, up front:

I have no idea what happened to the last three weeks. None. 

On my nightstand there is a hammer, a chalk line, a multi-pack of pantyhose, a self-help book, and a pair of broken sunglasses. And if there's an off-color joke in there somewhere, I'm far too tired to look for it. Be my guest. 

Those two things together might give readers an idea the state of chaos my bedroom has deteriorated to, around the edges of the photos I'm about to show. I'm not courageous enough to reveal those edges, just the dead center where some stuff got done. You can catch my previous discussions about renovating my bedroom here and here. 

When last I left off I was working on the window, getting it from brown to white:

A week after I got the window finished up, I was able to work on the floor, which in a sort of reverse direction, was going from bare plywood to....brown. 

Just to review, I decided that lacking a budget for a floor in this room, I was going to paint the plywood subfloor and be done with it. 

First, the base coat, which went on a couple of weeks ago. This is Valspar's floor and porch paint, in Brown Velvet: 

Just getting this done helped make the room suddenly look more calm and put together, and that's with something as bare bones as painted subfloor. 

However, it was far from perfect, as this closeup below reveals. That's a lot of construction adhesive and wear: 

I decided that would look even less noticeable with a stencil. I'd been plotting this idea for awhile. Now, over on the blog This Sorta Old Life, blogger Rita suggested in a comment thread here that I take a look at the website Young House Love, because the homeowners there had recently stenciled a master closet and vanity area subfloor as a temporary fix between larger renovation projects. 

I had noticed their project and thought it looked great. But I also have a bad habit of daydreaming and hoarding away ideas and supplies way ahead of when I get to the actual project. Not that it's at all an idea original to me (I've seen it elsewhere too) but I just want to show proof: 

I've been sitting on this idea a long time! But Rita was already guessing exactly the direction I was heading. Great minds, as they say!

I chose Royal Design Studio's large Hollywood Squares. Though I bought this back in 2011, the stencil is still available here. It's a biggie, 18.5 inches wide by 31.5 inches long. That means you can paint big sections of stencil without having to lift and reposition all the time. 

I wanted this to be a subtle, washy, barely there, tone-on-tone stencil, since it was an all-over pattern. I also wanted a little hint of contrast. To get both, I went with a dark gun-metal gray metallic acrylic craft paint. 

Royal Design Studio's website has tons of tutorials and tools, and every stencil they sell comes with thorough directions. However, I have to admit I don't do it with either sponges or stencil brushes because I am as impatient as a toddler and I love my knees too much to spend two days on them. I use a 4-inch wood trim sponge roller (this is the one I use) with barely any paint on the roller. I always do a test run on butcher paper first, but by doing this method, in small areas over each small design motif, and in right angle directions toward the center of each design motif, it moves along so much faster. I knocked a 10X10 foot area out in three hours, including matching those fussy partial stencils around the edges. 

The stencils have registration marks so you can match up the next row of stenciling, but I was having trouble seeing them with the dark tone-on-tone. So I just popped the stencil over on an already existing row (you use so little paint to stencil that it dries very quickly) and used that method to line up the design. 

I didn't really cover any demonstration photos while I was doing this, because, did I mention I'm as impatient as a toddler? 

A few things to keep in mind: 

1. Stenciling a floor in an all-over design requires snapping a chalkline to find the center and square of your floor, just like laying flooring or tile. I was lucky in that my room was pretty close to square, and the design was forgiving enough of the few goofy angles that nothing ended up "off." 

2. Stenciling a floor is actually easier than a wall, because you have gravity working in your favor. I've done complicated wall stencils before where I thought I was going to win some sort of world prize for swearing swears. This was as simple as a few pieces of painter's tape. 

Three hours later, the floor in the bedroom nook was looking like this. I leaned a piece of baseboard molding against the wall to give an idea of the look with trim in place: 

There are a few places that appear to be smears in the photo, but no fear. They are places where dust from the chalk line still need to be cleaned up. They aren't errors. 

And now to go all the way back to our very first "before" photo: 

And now from a slightly closer and different angle: 

The project was in many ways very freeing because....it's subfloor. If I'd absolutely wrecked this? No biggie. Roll another layer of brown and start over. If I'd hated it? Easy enough to just coat over and try something else. Or nothing else. But I like the results, and the balance of a vintage pattern in more modern colors. 

My next step? Baseboard molding. It's something I have to teach myself. So, by the time the next three weeks elapse, there might be an air nail gun on the nightstand. And probably another self-help book. 

First Steps of Progress in the Bedroom: Painting Window Trim

As part of my discussion of goals for 2014, I mentioned this charming space, above, otherwise known as my bedroom. 

Actually, that's what the room looked like a few weeks after we moved in. But with carpet removal, floor sanding, dry-wall sheathing, and painting, we've got it to a basic bare-bones room in this alcove: 

But it still needs lots of help in others: 

Before I can get on with taking care of the rest of the drywall work, I've got to move my bed into the alcove. But before I can move my bed into the alcove, I need to finish the alcove. To finish the alcove I need to: 

1. Paint the window trim. 

2. Paint the floor.

3. Put in baseboard molding.

Working in my new philosophy of "progress is progress," I took my first steps toward finishing the alcove this week: painting the window. Nothing more. 

You'll notice that in all of these photos, the window trim is dark brown. While I'm not against brown, in the case of these windows it seems to trap the light right there, and none seems to get into the room. As low-ceilinged as this room is, I want all the sunshine I can get. I'd also like the window trim to match the rest of the house, which is white. 

It took a while just to get all the years of window treatment hardware and weather stripping off it. It was like taking barnacles off an old ship. 

It was also a bit unnerving to remove the wasp's nest. I had no idea that was there. And um....how did they get in? 

I'm not blogging a how-to on this because everyone knows the drill---yawn. Scrape, sand, tape, prime, paint. Pretty tedious. Extra irritation points on this one for all the weather stripping adhesive residue. I used two coats of stain-blocking primer. 

I used Valspar's Cream Delight in soft gloss. It's not a stark white--it's got a little drop of yellow and a little drop of gray in it--so it seems in keeping with the trim in an older house. The gloss has a bit of sheen to it, but nothing harsh or glaring. And it's not as glossy as it looks in these photos.

I proffer my progress photo with these conditional statements: 

1. I know this photo is terrible. (Anyone with tips for shooting photos of windows and overcoming the backlighting, please let me know. Please.)

2. This is only a first coat, and a second, maybe a third will be necessary. So will touch-ups, because painter's tape is never quite perfect. (And I can see that I missed a spot in the upper left hand corner of the upper sash? Photos never lie.)

3. The fire safety sticker is coming off the glass when the weather warms up (it's on the outside). 

4. I left the holes in the wood so I could stick a few nails in them and clothespin a sheet to the window. I love my neighbors, but I'm not really planning on treating them to a burlesque show every evening until I figure out my shade/curtain choices. I'll go back and touch up with wood filler and paint when I'm ready to rock on those. 

5. I haven't scraped the paint of the glass yet, and I also need to remove and spray paint the window lock and sash lift. 

6. I really, really wish I'd gotten further on this. But.....progress is progress. Right? 

Another half day on this window, tops, will mean I'm onto the next step....painting the floor. I'd like to get started on that next weekend.