Five days left: Lucy's room chronology

This has been a chaotic, crazy process building a bedroom for our little girl in such short time on a very tight budget. We couldn't have done it without the help of our friends and family. 

I am happy to say that our tight budget days are soon to be over; after nearly three years of struggling after not one but two layoffs, Justin has a solid, well-paid full time job starting the week after Lucy is born. Things are looking up for us.

Anyway, the first step in getting Lucy's ready was moving our bed into the "closet," the little sideroom next to our bedroom, so that we could store Lucy's baby gear in our bedroom. 

Next, we addressed the ceiling problem in Lucy's room. This room had been added on to the back of the house and the ceiling was badly damaged, so several years ago, Justin and I took a hatchet to it and removed it, exposing the rafters.

The first step in installing a ceiling was adding insulation.

He then had to finish the drywall.

Before painting the bedroom, Justin decided to paint a chalkboard for the little girl to play with.

The next step was finding willing workers. Thank goodness for all of our helpers, especially Carole, Taeh, Justin's dad John, and Craig. And of course, I can't forget Arthur.

We painted the room colors inspired by the Flaming Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

I believe this shade of orange is called "burnt pumpkin."

Justin created a textured ceiling using a comb and then painted it this lovely golden yellow. He also installed a ceiling fan, seen below, and a light for a hanging lantern, not pictured.

The next step was to paint the floor, which he then coated with two coats of polyurethane.

Finally, we were able to add curtains and move her belongings in. Arthur was very happy to help.

 The curtain rods are made from galvanized steel conduit and cost approximately 4 dollars to make.

Justin added some shelving for the baby's belongings.

Pictured below, directly behind the tent toy, is where the door will be.

Next, Justin added some shelving and rods in the closet that had formerly held our camping gear in a disastrous cluster**** of a pile. These are all clothes for newborns, to give an idea of how many clothing items she's been given. The shelves are quite deep as well.

Next, having emancipated our bedroom from the chaotic stacks of rubbermaid boxes that held Lucy's things, Taeh and I moved our bed back into the bedroom. Hurray!

That massive lump in the bed is my pregnancy setup: memory foam and a full body pillow.

More destruction; Justin took to the wall with a saw.

In the process, he discovered a window on what had been the original back of the house.

Tonight and tomorrow, he will be finishing the door. We're down to the wire here, but looks like we'll make it,  god willing and the water don't break!

Arthur in his paint clothes helping out. Not coincidentally, this piece of wall will be made into a door by next week.

First coat of "Shrimp Toast" and a chalkboard. The Yoshimi mural will go around it.

Contrasting wall. Colors taken from the album cover.

Lucy's ceiling

I will post a picture of the texture Justin is adding later on. We just finished picking out paint for the walls/ceiling and should be putting together the mural soon.

T-minus 4 weeks and counting

Insulation and ceiling, check and check.

Where our bed moved

Remember when we were living in the living room? It's hard to really get anything done when you have to move around a bed every time you walk through the living room. But we are still out of a bedroom, so we moved into my boudoir, which is up for remodel, too.

Sorry for the lo-res pic. Our camera is still down, thanks to our blizzard.

Imagine lugging a big pregnant belly through a room full of baby storage into this one. Now imagine...part of that wall is coming down in the next month. The clock is ticking and time is running out! Will we have a bedroom big enough to put a bassinet in? Will we have a room to put Lucy's belongings in?

First look at new blue

I've been using these snow days to paint, paint, paint. I can't post pics of the whole kitchen yet because we still need knobs, handles, and a tall or non-pregnant-with-ladder person to finish the work, but I am happy with what we have so far. Here's a little sneaky peek of the windowsill, which makes me happy.

Built-in Storage Bench

In order to get Lucy's room ready, we have to be able to move everything out of there...all my hobby things, camping gear, musical instruments, years worth of things we've collected in the eleven years we were together pre-kids, back in the days when we each had our own room for hobbies. Things have changed!

So...Lucy's room needs a ceiling, a hole in the wall, and some storage built, but before that happens, we had to figure out where we would put all the things from what had essentially become a storage area next to our laundry room (in the midst of this chaos, we have two rooms that look like we are absolute hoarders).

Justin had the amazing idea to turn the open living room/dining area into one big living area, which I was super down with because we are practically on top of each other as it is and we already moved our little dining table to the kitchen.

This is the view looking in from the original living area. All this is recently added living room space. It's nice and big now. Double this and you have the whole room.

Ignore the pouting child on the sofa.

Justin suggested that we use the original living room area for additional seating, our musical instruments, and sort of a "living" family area, a place to play. He set up a place for me to put my sewing and craft things. Notice we are no longer sleeping in the living room. Thank you memory foam; thank you snoogle.

At first it seemed cool, but it started to feel like more clutter. It didn't seem to have a place in our living space next to our piano and other instruments.

That poor piano is going to get repainted very soon, by the way. I am so excited about the color that I want to shout it from the rooftops. But that will be a surprise...

Anyway, we had a terrific idea to turn the window area into an L-shaped storage bench. I am so lucky to have a handy guy.

The bench will be a seat but also is big enough to provide a bed for overnight guests or napping mommies.

I will post more pics when he's done. I plan to cover it with a padded surface and paint it.

This was my contribution. Hey, I'm pregnant! I chose the fabric and painted. That counts for something, right?

I love a man who knows how to handle a power tool.

He built two doors into the bench. The main part of the "L" was about 6.5 by 2 feet. He built the short section to be open underneath for toys and other items.

I chose oilcloth for the fabric because we have little kids. I went with a small aqua gingham, which I picked up from a local store called Tatermash. The woman who helped me was incredibly sweet and even assisted me with my disastrous algebra skills to ultimately save me a yard's worth of money. Surprisingly, two yards cost only $9, much less than what I'd expected to pay.

Because the oilcloth was 48" wide, we cut up the middle.

We used a staple gun to attach the fabric to the doors, which we removed to install the padding on.

The crazy winter storm that is keeping the rest of the country indoors hit here too, so instead of running to the fabric store for more batting (we had 1 package of Poly-fil from making felt plushies), hub went around the corner to Family Dollar and bought a two-for deal on cheap pillows, which I cut open to salvage the stuffing.

We stuffed...

And stuffed. We don't really know how to do this kind of thing, so we were winging it with a broomstick. Seems to have worked out all right.

At the end of day 2 in our free time, we managed to get this much completed. I will post a pic of the finished project tomorrow!

Bungalow Remodel Part 1

It's beginning. Only three months to go, but we are starting to get moving on the remodel.

These days, we sleep in the bedroom. Two reasons.

1. Our SertaPerfect doesn't really work with my pregnant hips.
2. We are about to knock out most of a wall.

So we sleep on this air mattress in our living room:

It's a bit awkward explaining to every guest why we have a bed in our living room, but I like having TV access when I wake up in the middle of the night with pregosomnia, and my sweet hubs sleeps in there with me, ever the devoted husband.

When we first bought the house, we both had mixed feelings.  We were proud that we were homeowners, especially at an age when we were the first among our friends. It is a 1920 Sears Craftsman bungalow, a style of home I have always been in love with.

...but to look at the thing, which we purchased for $33,500 in 1999, we wondered if we'd made the right choice. It needed so much work. It was so rough; when I look back on this photo, I can hardly believe how much work we've done since then. The first week we lived here, we layed in bed (on the floor) talking about our fears and hopes for the house.

It no longer sits crooked like that, by the way. Justin and his dad, my handymen, climbed under the house and re-piered it. Now, if you've ever re-piered a home or been around when one was being re-piered, you know that the whole house groans and grumbles and it can be pretty unnerving. I had visions of my husband being crushed under the weight of the entire house, which I only survived by blasting loud Ben Folds Five to sing along with, thus tuning out the nagging anxiety that I could be widowed in a moment's time.

Fortunately, the guys survived. They even found some random cool stuff under the house, like three old electric fans from the 1930s or 40s. Old like this...

My favorite thing about the house is the large porch with its columns. I have spent countless hours sitting, gazing, breathing everything in. It's a perfect spot for writing if the weather cooperates. In fact, I have written this porch into a few stories.

One year, my Kate and I planted a row of giant sunflowers along the front fence. Up, up, up they came, until at last they were about 12 feet tall, their massive plate-sized flowers hanging from the weight. It was stunning to see, even if they provided a bee hazard of biblical proportions (for a while, our postal worker even refused to leave our mail in the box). I wish I had some photos, but those were the days before digital cameras and cell phones were so easily obtainable.

Looking in from Leslie's yard. Our yard has such terrific potential that I hope to plant quite a bit--flower, herb, and food--this spring before Lucy comes. Wouldn't it be lovely to dine on fresh squash while seated on the lovely front porch, enjoying our butterfly garden?

Right now, we are owned by this board. It tells us that in the next few weeks we are going to

*finish the kitchen 

*install a ceiling (we once took a hatchet to the ceiling in Lucy's room--very cathartic but led to a weird squirrel infestation)

*build a storage bench in the nursery

*paint her room and floor

*knock out part of the wall between our bedrooms and install a door

*build a bigger closet in our bedroom

*de- and reconstruct storage in the basement

That's just for starters. I am so regretting putting off taking a woodworking class and I am too nervous about starting a new activity with power tools while pregnant.

I am proud to say our kitchen is starting to look mighty swell. The baby won't be living in the kitchen, but she won't be living in her bedroom either, at first.

I will be posting pics of our work as we go and links to our inspiration online.

Wish us luck, friends.