I love my hardwood floors. LOVE THEM. For so many reasons, my allergies, no cat hair, etc, but the time has come for us to procure some type of… rug.  ANd good goddamn, but I cannot find one I like. I mean, I don’t want to spend a fortune, but I don’t want an ugly rug that is also scratchy and thin!  And chhhheeeeerist, even the ugly/scratchy/thin ones are 60 bucks at Target! Sigh.

I have expensive taste. For instance, I LOVE this rug by Momeni, or this one, or this one… and, embarrassingly enough, there are lots that I like in this line (whose name I cannot type, but I joked that the reason why I was drawn to it was that we both wanted to be able to hide puke stains), but alas, out of my budget. Maybe slightly more IN my budget is this one at Overstock, or this one, but then, I have no idea how plush or non-plush it is, or scratchy, or whatever. I’ve checked target, Marden’s, TJMaxx, Kohl’s, Home Depot, etc… and it’s all basically sucky, or 400 bucks for a 5×8 rug. Sigh. Anyone have any other tips?

Just posted a photo recap of Dave’s hard work in the hallway, with dust pictures!, over at my public-for-family blog.

Okay, as promised, some quick pics of the room changes:

First, the old paper.  The crazy clown-house was underneath the beige gingham print.  The blue tape is sizing up the furniture to fit the room.

Some spots were in better shape than others, but you get the idea.

After (not official after: I still have to make the curtains, I have a new duvet cover that I’m not going to put on til fall, etc)

Hey look! In that last one you see our wireless network.  I might repaint that stand, but it’s really not visible unless you are standing on Dave’s side of the bed, so, eh. The scale might be hard to figure out too, because we have a REALLY HIGH bed. Definitely a mattress taller than standard, or more. Also, I am beyond annoyed that my lens cleaning cloth is hanging out of a drawer. It’s a microfiber cloth that I use to clean my glasses and such, and I used it just before taking the photo, and obviously didn’t pay atention. ARGH. Really, though, there’s SO MUCH ROOM! in those pieces. I lurve it.

The furniture fit! It fit! THANK GOD. I can now sleep well again.  It’s embarrassing how stressed out the prospect of getting it into our room has been; I’ve made scale drawings, extended my ironing board for a 3D approximation, and still, worried.  But, it fit! YAY!

ETA: It fit, but one of the big drawers is off it’s track somehow, only discovered when I went to open it and add clothes.  I screwed around with it for bit, and then remembered, "Wait! This isn’t some Target thing I assembled myself! I paid an assload of money for this, and the damn drawer should work!"  So, I called the store, and they are sending a guy in the morning to fix it. Yay!  I’m not too concerned about it being a recurring problem, things happen (and you should have SEEN them getting it up the stairs!) but, they should get fixed if they do. And they will!  Other than that, everything is great. 😀

Man, is it hot.

We are almost done though! I realize I’ve been saying that for like, a week, but tonight? Tonight we will be back in our own bed! YAY!

Only hitch was that when we peeled the tape off the window trim, the top layer of trim paint came with it.  Whoops.  Not a huge deal though, since we had just said "now that we have a chair rail, our window trim looks shitty" and it doesn’t mean moving out to get it repainted.  I’ll work on that tomorrow.

Of course, the trim paint coming up put the fear of lead into me.  Reading the leery polyp’s story, coupled with Amy’s son’s lead test, had me panicking. I mean, what if I get pregnant and I’m breathing in lead? WHAT IF?  I picked up some lead tests today, swabbed the most suspicious areas, and what do you know, negative.  Of course, then Dave said "Well, think of what [previous owner] did for work…"

Oh yeah.  He was an EPA air quality scientist guy, and she was a physician’s assistant. And she was about 7 months pregnant when we bought the house. And there were two other kids that lived here, too. So, um,yeah. I guess they would have probably taken care of any lead problem really quickly.

As it is, I’m on a break, I am sweating like never before, hand scrubbing the floor (some dribs and drabs of wallpaper are stuck there, which just takes some elbow grease to come up) before I sweep, vac, and mop, and then as a final touch, I will be using some Floor Rejuvenater (Couldn’t find Halloway House or Old English at the depot, natch) and then, then i can make the bed! And bring in our nightstands and such! YAY!

Still. it’s hot. It was about 93 when we went to DQ for a lunch of small blizzards, and dave even used the A/C. For dave to use the A/C? You KNOW it’s hot.

The bedroom is looking AMAZING.  Spotchecking the darker bottom color was a breeze, and we are going to get the chair rail wood after lunch.  I picked up the duvet cover I wanted, after seeing it had been put on clearance by BBB and racing over. They had ONE king left, I wanted two so i could make curtains, but ended up with a Full/Queen size instead, which will be fine.  The duvet and curtains are a white diamond quilted pattern and 100% cotton.  I could NOT find heavy white curtains, but making them of the F/Q cover will be a breeze, and they will be thick enough for privacy, but white and light enough to not make our windows look like black holes. Yay.

Even Dave has come around on the room.  (It helped that I had about 350 bucks come in unexpectedly from a few sources, to offset the furniture purchase too)  He said earlier, "You know, I was thinking about what you said about how we don’t ‘just sleep, wink wink’ in our room, and realized you were totally right.  It’s just that my view is usually of you and the bed, but yeah, you’ve had to look at some ugly stuff in there, huh?"  YES! SEE!  What 14 months of TTC-friendly sex will do to you.

(Speaking of, I think the GOF season is about to commence again. Light a candle, make a wish, send good energy, whatever. . . . )

Painting color has commenced.  I am now in lockdown in the downstairs, because watching it dry (SHUT UP) was killing me.  Because it dries darker, I keep thinking that it’s going to look streaky, so I did a second coat… but then the drying cycle.. well, you know? Do you? It better be okay, because I bought the Duration Home blend at Sherwin Williams and I LOVE SW, and loved EverClean, but Duration is supposed to be the improved EverClean. So, yeah. Whatever.  We started with the lighter, top color, and I hope it looks okay and dries okay.  When the wall is all wet, it looks GREAT, It’s just the drying thing making me worry. Thus, grounded to the 1st floor until it has time to DRY.

So, another thing to ponder: Television. I have watched very little TV since I got back from NYC, by choice.  I watched Brat Camp, as I said, and the Family Guy last sunday, and when I was at my folks house I watched a LOT because there is a tv with satellite in the guest room, and they went to bed early, and their internet lines are all fucked up.  I watched the Daily Show (swoon) and Airline, and a thing on the best beaches in FL (And our favorite from April was #4, whoohoo!), and a LOT of Discovery Health Channel.  Other than that, nothing. I turned on the news the day of the London bombings, but that’s it.  It is a conscious effort, for sure, because I know that if I turn ON the tv, I will get sucked in and lose whole days to the thing, So I haven’t turned it on.  That, coupled with an IM discussion with Jeanne about TV placement/rules, had me wondering — what do you do when it comes to TV?

For us, we have three.  One in the living room, one in our bedroom, and one in Dave’s fort downstairs.  We don’t have cable, but have bunny ears in the LR and Bedroom.  Dave’s fort has the best technology, but he uses it for watching movies and the occasional PS2 game.

I bought the vanity chest for the bedroom in part because it could hold and hide the tv.  (It also had greater volume for the same price, which I liked, too)  Having a TV in our room is nice, but it isn’t necessary, and it certainly doesn’t dominate our bedroom activities.  I watch it when folding laundry, ironing, or when I’m home sick in bed.  We occasionally watch the 11 oclock news, try to watch SNL up there, and sometimes I’ll watch a 10 o’clock show in bed.  That’s the extent of our bedroom tv use.  I don’t foresee adding tv to any other rooms, not the dining room or kitchen, and certainly not our kids bedrooms — but if they are ever sick, I would not be opposed to letting them watch some PBS in our room, because basically, that’s what I got growing up. 

Anyone else have any rules for TV? Do you think it dominates more of your time than you’d like? 

Holy shit, I ordered furniture. Gulp.  I ordered the two pieces in black, the triple dresser and vanity chest.  I waffled on getting both for a while, but then was like, well, fuck it.  Because half of the money was gift money, I couldn’t count that, and by putting 75% down (they have to order it, of course, my furniture guy gets a kick out of me, I think, because I NEVER get stock) I figured it was like making 2 payments, not spending that much at once. Right?  And thinking of it as 2 payments from 2 paychecks makes it okay. It still makes my stomach lurch to spend that much money, but we have no debts other than the house and car, and my student loans (but like THAT counts right now) and we have savings and I CAN afford to do it…. plus, as I told Dave, it’s not like a headboard or something decorative.  By buying these two pieces, it’s almost like adding a walk in closet.  We will have trimmed down our bedroom furniture by one piece, and it will look GOOD.  And while yes, most of our time in there is spent with our eyes closed (as Dave likes to argue) having this room DONE will be SO NICE. 

We’ve stripped all of the paper on three walls, and will do the fourth after supper, and tomorrow we will spackle, tape and prime.  In a week or so, we will do the final painting, and add a chair rail, and then when the furniture is in, I’ll have it delivered. Cannot. Freaking. Wait.  After our room is Done, all that’s left is the hallway, which, whatever, we need a ladder to do it (for the stairwell) and we don’t have the right one yet.  The bathroom, eventually, will get an update, but it’s not HORRIBLE. Not crazy LSD circus tent fugly like our room has been, anyway.  CAN’T WAIT.

And as much as Dave sort of hems and haws about spending money on our bedroom, even he is looking at the three stripped walls and saying "THIS even looks better than it did before."  He likes the colors, too, he picked them, so he’ll like it when it’s done. I KNOW he will.  And yes, while we do spend most of our time asleep in there, we do other things too, ahem, and it will be so nice to have the setting be a romantic room instead of an abandoned yard sale.  Just sayin.

I ended up mindlessly picking at the top layer of wallpaper in our bedroom this afternoon, and ended up peeling off giant sheets of it.  Then I decided to see how the second layer was adhered to the drywall, and lo and behold, it WASN’T.  YES, it’s hideous old paper, but I think the previous owners did as I discovered in the other rooms (with the exception of that one wall in the sewing room) and sealed over the original 1954 wallpaper (cabbage roses EVERYWHERE! It prevents russian missile attacks!) makingmy job, 51 years later, that much easier.  I wet a rag and picked away, and found that with moisture, it peeled off relatively easily.  (Relative to that one damn wall in the sewing room, that had me wondering if we should just relist our house and move on to some builder’s beige condo somewhere.)

And, well, once I started, I kept going.  Dave and I just moved the heaviest pieces of furniture into the hall (shitty dresser #1 and cute, sentimental, but way impractical for my needs dead-nana’s dresser #2) and I’ve peeled the top layer off of one entire wall, dug out my depapering supplies from last year, and am giving the DIF another go in a test spot right now.  I’m just waiting for the proper amount of time to pass.

ANYWAY.  One of the hard parts of choosing furniture. Or paint. Or bedding, is having ZERO idea of what is going on in there.  yeah, remember when I had it figured out?  After a week, Dave decided it looked like dried blood, and it was icking him out. DAVE.  The horror-movie aficionado was creeped out by paint.  We’ve been going back and forth on What to Do, and Dave, while having firm opinions on what he DOESN’T like, can’t really ever say what he DOES like. Sigh.

When re realized I’d bitten the bullet and forced the paint-hand, we went off to get more ideas.  At the furniture store, He was okay with the furniture, but liked the dark wood stuff better, but not the maple.  I had pretty much fallen head over heels for the black stuff, and got the internet to back me on that one, but Dave ended up saying "eh, I don’t care, I’ll only be looking at it when I sleep, so who cares? I’m fine with what we have now."  And I hate to be all gender-stereotyping, but really, it was very typical manliness.  He also wants the tv, which we really rarely watch (sometimes when I’m ironing in the morning, or the 11 o’clock news, or when I’m folding laundry, or when I’m sick) and is only a 13 inch model — on a flexible wall mount.  You know, like in AIRPORTS. I am vehemently opposed to sleeping and fucking in a ticketed passengers only area.  He likes to have the TV high, which is understandable, since our bed is so high, and that’s why I liked the chest.  But he thinks he’d put the TV ON TOP of it. Sigh.

It’s understandable, though, since our room has been such a chaotic place for so long.  I mean, everyone said "well, what do you have in there now? What does the room look like?" and I only half-jokingly answered "crime scene."  Really, though, beige gingham wallpaper over a hideous red/yellow/blue diamond pattern paper, so hideous you could see it THROUGH the gingham stuff if the light was right, covered the walls.  And there were spots where we’d peeled it back, knowing it was coming down, to see what the hell was underneath.  Oh, and the dozen or so color samples splashed on the walls at various heights, some of which looked like dried blood, if you asked Dave.  Our curtains are purple canvas-y ones from sears that I got when we moved in because we needed curtains for privacy, and they were on clearance for like, 4 bucks.  The bed is a platform that dave made, that is fine, but our nightstands consist of one black lacquer with gold trim (you KNOW the style, picture it with a Tab soda and a Jackie Collins book on top) that is Dave’s, and serves the secondary purpose (or primary, depending on how sappy we may be) of being the step for the cat to get on the bed.  The other is a tall white melamine bathroom shelf from Target.  It has four shelves with a canvas bin for each, but I removed the top two and use that for books and tissues, etc, and the bottom two bins have other books and um, some adult novelties.  Our tv sits on a microwave cart, and on the open shelf are the two canvas bins from my nightstand, one for my undies and one for Dave’s boxers.  Behind the doors in the bottom is a cardboard box that holds all of our socks.  My dresser is from my dead Nana’s farm, and cute and adorable and has bad drawers for opening and closing and is way too small.  That will go into the nursery, as those will be assets and not liabilities for a kid.  Dave’s is a 3 drawer chest that was a throwaway from my folks’ condo, and the runners are rusted, and it also has bad drawer maneuvarability, but it will be curbed and not kept.  Oh, and we have that one standard 1954 closet that we share, which is okay as far as pole space (I hang up maybe 10 things, but dave hangs t-shirts, but because of my small dresser, all of my sweaters and pants are in a pile on the floor of the closet.  My dresser only holds shirts.)

You can see why I’m giddy over the notion of dressers, I’m sure.  And since we had that decision, we went to sherwin williams and picked out paint, finally, a more sagey-gray green, with a chair rail, and a very light sagey green for the top.  (from the color card, it’s the very top color, and then the 4th one down, if that makes sense.)  We also went and looked at trim for the chair rail, and then we came home and I went back to work on the paper after dinner.

So, yes. Dressers.  Lots of bad shit in the world today, that I can’t even comprehend, but I can comprehend dressers.  I’ll order them this weekend, and set a delivery date for 2 weeks or so from now, which will get our asses in gear to get the room DONE, which is always good. It worked for the guest room, the furniture delivery deadline, and will work for our room too. Yay! I cannot wait.