Us : 0 // Office Furniture : 1

You may be witnessing the last time in my life that I will tackle painting unfinished furniture. The office furniture is a BEAST!

To recap the plan for this past weekend: file nail holes, sand furniture, prime furniture and get the first coat of paint on said furniture. Then I thought I could paint the second coat next weekend and by 4th of July we would be moving our new office furniture into place.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Let's just say the office furniture beat us down and won.

Here is what really happened this weekend:

1. Position office furniture around the garage so we can paint all three sides. Remove shelves and doors and position them on saw horses. Remove plastic feet used for shipping. (3+ back breaking hours!!!!!)

2. Fill nail holes and sand. Drill holes into desktop, desk pedestal and hutch for computer cords (scary!)

3. Start priming. Realize that priming unfinished wood is like painting with paste. Its hard to move your paint brush, you get zero coverage and IT TAKES FOREVER! By 9pm Saturday night, we weren't even half way done with priming.

4. Sunday: continue priming. All. day. long. Finish by 8pm. No way in hell are we painting this weekend. At this rate, I'm hoping we get done this by Labor Day.

Next up for THIS weekend: sanding EVERYTHING again (yuck!) and then we can finally start painting.

Boris, the dare devil cat

So, a post for my parents who love cats - but who also don't read my blog. Here I thought this blog would be a great way to keep them informed on what is happening with us and the house .... and they don't read it.

Anyway, our gray cat, Boris, has discovered two spots in the stair banister that he can fit between. He is a little skinny (brain damaged) cat so this is a little worrisome. You would think that after he fell off our two story deck at the old house he would be afraid of falling- but no.

 Here he is at the top of the stairs, caught in the act of slipping through the banisters...

Its a little odd to be walking down the hall and feel like someone is above, watching you -- so you look up to see this. What a weirdo.

And lastly, here is proof that the weirdo cats prefer hardwood steps to carpet--  I was able to catch them walking upstairs, careful to only walk on the hardwood part. Good thing our carpet was off centered!

Our weekend(s) project

The office furniture has arrived! It only took 5 weeks to make our furniture and ship it to us. Not bad for semi-custom, all-wood furniture that will last for years.

But now we have this in our garage:

Suddenly I'm questioning my previous decision of painting the furniture ourselves. Well, we actually didn't have a choice, since the company who made the furniture doesn't paint or stain it.

I know it doesn't look like a lot in this picture but this is going to take some time. These pieces are huge. And we need to sand, prime and paint two coats on everything. We are planning on painting with oil-based paint so its more durable, but that will add a lot of time since we need to let the paint dry for several days in between coats. But its BEAUTIFUL furniture and when I'm not admiring my organized new pantry, I'm in the garage staring at the new furniture. I'll have to take better pictures of the details- like the crown molding and wood trim.

 This is one of the two bookshelves (the other one is hiding behind it). Its 7ft tall!!!  Lot's of room for books and pictures and I love having cabinets to hide office supplies in.

 These two pieces are the hutch with file cabinet base. They will go in between the two bookshelves. This will also be 7ft tall when put together. The hutch and file cabinet are deeper than the bookshelves, so they added pieces of molding on the sides so they fit perfectly with the bookshelves and look like one wall unit.

They will live on the back wall of the office:

And these pieces are the desk. We have two pedestals for the sides and then the top is laying on its side against the garage wall. Hidden is the back of the desk.

Lot's of painting ahead.

And if you are wondering what color we are painting -- I put this last to hide this since it scares a lot of folks when they hear this---- we are painting everything black. Yes, black. No, not staining it black. Painting. Fingers crossed!!

Crazy Organizational Lady....

I finished my weekend project of creating a "second pantry" and organizing it - I'm so excited that I open the closet and stare at the organizational wonder of it all. I know I'm anal and weird. But I love it!

When we were building our house, I claimed the random hall closet as the future home for all of my entertaining stuff- platters, bowls, Christmas plates, cupcake carriers, etc. We already have a double closet in the mudroom for coats, so this closet (which is located right outside of the mudroom) really didn't have a purpose. Its really deep and really high, so lot's of room! And thank god for Brian, he knows I'm totally anal about organization so he let me have my fun with the closet and helped hang the shelving. Such a good sport.

The second pantry is located in the hallway leading to the mudroom and garage. It's the second door, the first is the powder room.

Here is what it looked like inside (sorry for the bad pictures, it was a tight space and hard to get a picture of the entire closet since I couldn't go back further)

Trying to show you how high the closet goes... it goes really high.

After painting the inside a fun blue color (leftover from the dining room) and two trips to the Container Store for elfa shelving here is what the closet looks like now:

So. Much. Room. I can't even get the entire closet in one picture. I had so much fun organizing everything and LOVE that I finally have room for all of my entertaining / kitchen stuff. In the old house, most of this lived in the garage on a shelf so its really nice to have everything in the house and so easy to get.   : )

Now I'm planning my next organization project.... kitchen drawer inserts, closet organizers, office organization.......... sigh. They all cost money, so gotta save and plan.

The stairs won't kill me anymore!!

Finally got the runner installed down the stairs, so I won't slip and fall down them anymore!

Here is what the stairs looked like before. Very pretty with the dark stain and white trim contrast, but also VERY slippery.

And here is what they look like today, with the carpet runner...

 Do you notice that the carpet isn't centered????  (Do you also notice the two freaky cats???) The carpet is off centered because there are three shorter stairs at the top before the stairwell curves, so we had to center the runner on those stairs. It doesn't look weird in person, but it is noticeable when you look at the bottom step. The things we are learning! And those freaky cats seem to enjoy the off centered carpet, as Tasha is dead set on walking up the stairs by only stepping on the hardwood part.

Here is a view from the side- so pretty. Love the contrast.

Three week update!

Its been about three weeks since we moved, so here is an update on what the house looks like. After two EXHAUSTING weekends of unpacking, organizing and running to Lowes multiple times we are finally over the hump! Most of the rooms are unpacked- yippee! This weekend hoping to tackle the basement and attic (organizing those rooms a little better) and finally unpacking our pictures to hang on the walls.

here is what the house looks like now:

 Outside the front yard gives the appearance that we are all unpacked and settled in. Ha!

The biggest disaster in the house- and its the first room you see when you come in the front door! The office.

Patiently waiting for the furniture to be delivered. We have a huge bookshelf for the back wall and a desk on its way. I will still have to paint them which will be a huge under taking but it was impossible to find solid wood office furniture in black without spending tons of money.

This room puts us in a bad mood because we can't find anything and all of our important paperwork is somewhere in these boxes. Like how I try to organize it by creating a ghetto desk out of one of our tailgating tables? It didn't work.

 Here is the dining room. The furniture looks great in this room, perfect fit for Brian's great Aunt's dining room set.

The bottom of the walls need to have the wood boxes added and then we need to paint it white (that's primer on the walls right now). On the hunt for some fabric to make really tall and wide curtains. I have in mind a bold print so I need to plan a trip to fabric row in Philly to see if I can find anything. Really need the curtains to warm up this space (and to hide the glass breaker alarm- that little white box on the left of the window). Still deciding what to do about blinds or shades for the actual window.

 Here is the kitchen table and the kitchen (plus Boris and Tasha eating). Its really bright and white in this space. Still working out colors for the walls and what to put on the doors to block the sun. We realized that when the sun sets we get a beautiful view but also we can't sit at the table or watch tv due to the glare.

 Right side of the kitchen. Looking a little plain right now. Need some color on the walls and some window treatments to add texture. And we still need to add the backsplash - maybe a summer/fall project.

Here is the left side of the kitchen - finally have a refrigerator! YEAH!!!!

 Sorry for the really dark picture. Still learning how to work the camera with the bright light outside... Anyway, a bad picture to show you the kitchen table and the living room. Tasha is at the window watching the golfers. The cats seem to like watching the golfers and their golf carts much more than watching the ground hogs.

Better picture of the living room. It looks small in this picture! The tv was missing in this picture, as we were waiting for the new one to be delivered. I'm sick of the red accents, so I'm thinking of adding blue accents in the future. Still need to hang pictures and the mirror above the fireplace and go to fabric row in search of fabric for the windows and pillows. Plus, we need to get actual blinds for the windows and throw away the temporary paper ones we are using now.

Here is a shot of the back of the house. Do you like our ghetto stairs and picnic table? After pricing out decks, it looks like Brian is seriously considering building our deck to save some $$. And we may have to wait until next spring as deck materials are expensive! Its hard to learn patience, especially when your neighbors are building their decks and we would love to have a deck now to sit out and enjoy our evenings - but you can't always keep up with the Jones, right?

Not very exciting, but here is a shot of the garage. We spent last Saturday putting together shelves and organizing it. Then we found 4 more boxes for the garage hidden in the basement (which we promptly decided to tackle next weekend) Can't wait to get rid of all of our moving boxes this weekend. I posted "free moving boxes" on craigslist and got 20 replies within ten minutes. Feel much better about giving them to someone else who needs them instead of just recycling them.

Our plan for the garage is next Memorial Day (2012) to paint the walls and floors in the garage after the concrete sits for a year.

 Upstairs - here is the laundry room at the top of the stairs. LOVE having the laundry room right by our bedrooms, makes doing laundry so much easier! I would love to paint this room a nice light green/gray and build better shelves for storage. Definitely not a priority though, although could be a fast weekend project.

 Here is the master bedroom and our new furniture. Love how huge this room is! On the hunt for some nice fabric for curtains and pillows in this room, plus maybe a bench w/ a fun fabric on it as well. And we need to get real blinds soon as the paper ones are driving me crazy!

 Another view of the master bedroom. The jewelry boxes on top of the dresser don't look great but they are temporary. We are hoping to organize the closets this fall and will have shelves for the jewelry boxes in the closets so we free up the top of the dressers.

And another view of the master bedroom, looking out into the hall.

 The very plain and boring guest room. This room needs some work to feel more cozy!

 Another view of the guest room--- boring!

And the second guest bedroom - also pretty boring!

May 23rd -- Moving Day!

Finally made it to moving day. After 8 months of construction and 1 month of painting and packing. Sad to leave Conshohocken and the townhouse we lived in for 4.5 years. We got married while living in that house! But excited to have new adventures and make our new house a home.

Our home for the past 4.5 years ~ Nathans Place

What our main floor used to look like

 Our empty main floor now : (

 So sad : (

Movers unpacking our stuff in Blue Bell. You don't realize how much crap you have until you see it loaded onto a truck!

Packing and Painting Fun!

So, we didn't pack until the last minute. And we thought we could also paint the new house before we moved in. Setting ourselves up for: packing Monday-Thursday and painting Friday -Sunday. Throw a garage sale in there as well, and we were exhausted by moving day.

Oh well, I'm not shocked we procrastinated - packing is horrible. It takes so much time, you never have enough boxes / tape / packing paper / etc. And we were only moving 15 minutes away but still had to pack everything like we were moving cross country.

here are some pictures of the packing:

Kitchen all packed up. We ate take out and pizza for 2 weeks, it was horrible. I was craving grilled chicken and steamed broccoli!

And of course the cats were all freaked out with the moving and took advantage of the relax "rules". Here are paw prints all over the coffee table. Our cats aren't allowed on furniture normally....


And some pictures of painting:

Master bedroom all prepped for painting. We painted this room a really pale blue. As we were painting though it looked more like "electric baby blue". And we realized the trim was painted a creamy yellow color, which looked very colonial with our paint colors. So, we called in painters to quickly paint all of the trim and doors in the house bright white. This helped tone down the baby blue lots! Saved us from having to repaint!

The family room all prepped. We are painting this room one shade darker than the hall color. The green from the golf course is screwing up the colors! Everything in the room gets a green glow to it.