The Itch

I’m getting it again.  The itch to give part of our house a facelift.  Unfortunately I’m probably not going to be able to follow through for a while because we don’t have any money to put toward house projects (thanks, stupid medical bill).  B isn’t going to be happy that I’m wanting to do this either.  He hates house projects - he’s just not a handy DIY type of guy, so he probably won’t be too involved in the process when I finally get around to it.  And that’s okay with me, I’m more than prepared to do this mostly on my own once we have the budget to do so.

My desire to update another room never really goes away, but it became a stronger, nagging need within the past month or so.  Recently, my break between work shifts has been spent obsessively looking at home decor pins on Pinterest and watching HGTV (specifically Love It or List It, Property Brothers, and Income Property.  Those are my top 3 favorites).  All of the beautiful inspiration made me realize how ugly different parts of our house are (sorry house), and it sparked some ideas in my mind.

There are 2 rooms that I’d really love to tackle that I think could be done on a minimal budget and wouldn’t call for a lot of physically demanding work (I hope) - the laundry room and the front entryway.  These rooms are in decent condition, but they’re so unattractive - wood panels in both rooms - including the ceiling of the front entryway.  Yuck.

When I finally get permission from the Mister to update these rooms, they’ll both go through similar updates.  Due to budgetary restrictions (aka we’re cheap and broke), the wood paneling will have to stay.  It’s kind of crappy, but that’s more of a phase 2 update that will happen wayyyyy down the road.  To make it look less gross, the plan is to prime both rooms with a high quality stain blocking primer (I’m researching what would be the best option), and then both rooms will be covered with a pretty color.  In the laundry room, I’m thinking a nice pale blue to give it a light, clean, airy feeling.  Choosing a color for the front entry is a little more difficult - it has to go with the ugly brown and orange-y floors (hopefully those will also be part of phase 2) and transition well into our brown/tan living room, but because the room currently wood and there’s wood paneling on the ceiling, I’m not really feeling more brown.  I’d love to throw in a light, fun color, but it needs to “go” with the style and feel of the rest of the house.  Paint colors are tricky.  Both rooms will get some nice DIY’ed art treatments and will be de-cluttered, and that’s pretty much the bulk of the work I’ll be able to do on my own.

There are a few projects that I’d like to convince my father-in-law to build for the 2 rooms (I’d try to help at least).  In the laundry room, I’d like to find room for a laundry basket dresser (like the one shown here) and possibly even a litter box hider (like this one).  The front entry needs a bench with storage underneath for shoes.  I feel like all three of these projects should be fairly easy for B’s dad to build, but they’re the lowest priorities on my list, so they’ll be more likely to be a part of phase 2.

I really hope that we can get around to doing the easy, minor updates soon - I’m ready for some change.

Killer

This weekend, I killed something that I was kinda fond of.  No worries though, friends, because it wasn’t a living thing.  A few weeks ago, I started working on a Pinterest inspired project that everyone and their mother has been making lately - an ugly framed picture into a lovely framed chalkboard.  I bought a large framed picture from Goodwill for $8 and change, I grabbed spray paint in chalkboard, primer, and breezy blue, and I started spray painting my heart out.  Once the first coat of chalkboard paint was on the glass and I had primed the frame, I carried my masterpiece to the basement to dry.  Fast forward a couple of weeks, and tragedy strikes …

On Sunday, B was cleaning in the basement, and I went down to bother him.  The cat was wandering around downstairs, and B was mentioning that he didn’t want her to fall into a hole in the workroom floor.  I challenged him, saying I didn’t think it was possible for her to fit - so of course we had to go investigate to see who was right (spoiler alert:  It was B.  No surprise, because I know next to nothing about this house and he’s lived here for 20 years).  So we walked into the workroom, and I had to get closer to the area to get a good look at the hole.  On my way to the opposite side of the workroom, I wasn’t paying attention, and I stepped right on top of the chalkboard painted glass.  It cracked immediately, and I was so disappointed.  If anyone is concerned, I was lucky enough to avoid getting cut by the glass.  B was not so lucky, and got a small cut while disposing of the shards.  Sorry honey.

Even though I experienced a huge disappointment this weekend, I haven’t given up on the chalkboard frame idea.  I have come up with a new plan for *hopefully* making this work - I’m going to chalkboard paint the foam board that was going to serve as the backing to the glass - this could actually be a bonus because it will make it so much lighter.  Hopefully the paint will look just as nice, but if it doesn’t … then I guess I move on to plan C (start over with a new ugly Goodwill picture/frame and use the original in a different way - string some wire across, use small clothespins or clips to hang pictures).  Even though I failed miserably the first time around, I’m hoping that the mistakes I made will lead to an even better result to share in the future.