Our magnolia made it through that last cold snap! I'm always happy when we get to see it bloom -- there are many years that we have to sadly rake up fallen buds. This is my favorite tree, followed closely behind by crab apples and red maples.
Now I just need to get my head cold under control so I can have a fallen petals photo shoot with the girls this week. Crabby sneezy mama is not the most patient photographer.
This weekend, I made not one ...
... not three ...
... but FOUR pillows for our basement couch!
Combined with a bunch of yard work, I'd say it was a pretty productive weekend.
I'd been meaning to make these pillows since Erin had her pillow week, but I ended up being too busy with Christmas Jack Rabbits during that time. So the pillows waited until now.
Our new-to-us basement fold-down couch is a bit on the firm side, so some pillows were in order. I took the easy route -- no trims. I think simple, knife-edged pillows suit the modern style of our home anyway. I put zippers along the bottoms of my pillows, so I can turn them around when some child inevitably wipes cheese or fruit on the front and I can't get around to washing them in a timely manner.
Our whole basement is white, gray and black, and now I'm adding the pops of color. So these pillows look a little circus-y out of context. Here they are in their new home. I'm thinking I need one more. I'd like a giant, white faux fur pillow.
Chris recently hung the wall of curtains. I have a plan for a kid art project in front of the curtains, to break up all that gray. We also have a lot of art that needs framing. I'm so glad this space is usable again!
So this is what my office looked like in 2006 (goodness, I'm about up to five years of blogging now -- crazy!):
And here is how it looked about an hour ago:
Ay, how embarrassing. But embarrassment is the reason I'm putting this photo out there. This state of affairs needs to change.
When we put our house on the market last year, I boxed up more than half my craft supplies, magazines, etc. Then we took the house off the market. The boxes slowly made their way back in, but didn't get unpacked. Then the basement flooded, and other random things starting piling up in here. This room is off to the side of the house, and it is oh so easy to just throw stuff in there, slide the door shut and pretend that stuff is gone.
But this is my own little space. And the state of it is a visual reminder of my own self-imposed position on my list of important things. I still sew in here, still use the computer, in the middle of this mess. It's not good for the psyche.
So this room needs to move to the top of the list. It needs attention. It needs care. Maybe so do I. And so I begin.
Here's where we are with the basement. It's getting there. You see that black strip at the top of the walls? That is a gap that shows the foundation, so Chris is in the middle of putting up some molding up there. I hate molding, but in this case, it's necessary. Once that is done, we can put up the curtain wall and bolt the cabinets to the wall so no childrens smish themselves. And art? That will have to come later. Over time. I'm not an instant furnishings gal. We have a few things for the walls already, but I'd like to get/make some more. And I'm sure E and C will be happy to masking-tape the walls with their art, too.
This doesn't even cover the unfurnished portion of the basement. We have gotten rid of a lot of stuff, but there are things like necessary files, holiday decorations, and kids clothing that all need to be organized. And while we've been doing this, our home office areas have been ransacked. Well, actually mine has become a repository for junk. We both really want to get our offices in order so we can work on our own little projects again.
I do NOT recommend trying to sell your house, giving up, and then flooding it in the middle of all that. It will eat up more than a year of your life. Chris hasn't been able to work on his animation. I have not even had my pottery wheel inside the house for a year. We haven't been having people over very often. No playdates that don't involve parks. We will be so happy to have things back to normal. I know this is a first-world problem, and we've still had a wonderful life this year, but I can still be happy for progress, yes?
Here's where we are with our endless basement remodel. Bored of this? Too bad. So am I.
So. The walls are all painted. We did chalkboard paint on one wall and a low ceiling. We thought it would be fun to have drawings on the ceiling. You know, planets and stuff. The vertical wall has magnetic primer, so that will be the place to play with letter magnets, etc.
We have started putting down carpet squares. We may have hit a snag here. I don't know if we have enough squares. I know I measured correctly, but when you add in all the crazy cuts at walls and corners, I don't know if we're going to make it. But I don't want to order a whole box of new tiles. Too spendy. So we're not going to carpet under the forthcoming cabinetry. And we may have some crazy scrappy sample patches under the bookshelves. (You shouldn't be able to see them.) I hope we can eek by.
The girls really liked helping us put the tiles down. Yes, M is working in her jammies. And C is in her perpetually backward dress. (Her clothes are always, always on backward. Shoes on the wrong feet, too.) The basement has already hosted at least one loud session of Gitchyou, one pretend classroom and one disorganized game of catch.
We're still in the dark valley of basement remodeling. I let the kids help with the paint again today. As you can see, that might not have been the best idea. I knew we were done when they started dribbling paint on the floor and dancing in it. We're not too worried about this floor though; it will be covered with carpet tiles.
This weekend we'll be recovering from a cold that has made the rounds through the family. We'll be making white chili and celebrating Halloween. We'll also either be watching the Rally to Restore Sanity on TV or attending the Kansas City satellite rally. It depends on the mental state of our children, which by standard definitions might not be considered sane. And apparently there will be no insanity allowed.
Get to work, childrens! That basement isn't going to remodel itself!
The walls are looking a little whiter (only primer so far), but things are still moving slowly. I tried to sand drywall the other day. Um, with a power sander. Shut up. I know. It had a little vacuum attachment thingee! Yeah, that didn't work at all. At least I had covered the ducts and doorway so I didn't destroy my family's lungs with all the dust.
(And no, the children are not regularly working in the basement. They spent about 10 minutes painting/dribbling paint on the floor.)
Would you like a tour of my in-progress basement? I'm sure you do. Well, it's exciting for US. Getting to redo the basement is one of the only good things about the flood. We're still trying to do it on the cheap though.
One thing we've always wanted to do was fix the lighting in our basement. We had a collection of weird fixtures all over the place, and some of them weren't even safe. So, we put in some recessed lights. With dimmers! Fancy.
We're thinking of ripping out half the drywall in the basement because it's glued to the wall. The cement wall. This is not even in the neighborhood of code. We're lucky we don't have moldy walls (knock on wood). Those wacky previous owners. We have someone coming today to give us an estimate on the drywall repairs for the other walls.
We're going to paint the concrete (WHITE, right?) and then put shelving and curtains over it to hide it. I have no idea how we're going to get a shelf to fit over our inconveniently placed main water line. Chris says he can do it though.
The fireplace wall is the one that's getting curtains. Check out the shadow of a Tudor theme on the walls there -- it looks like there used to be faux beams. And there's stucco! Perfect for a mid-century house. We can't decide what color curtains to put up. Chris says gray. I say white. But I'm losing my conviction. I think I have just been looking at this blog too much. But there's something to be said for keeping things light in a basement.
The floors are getting some commercial carpet tiles with no pad. We looked at FLOR tiles, but they were too pricey for us. Some of the commercial stuff is actually pretty eco-friendly, though it isn't as cushy as the FLOR. It will stand up to wear, and if we get another flood, we can take the tiles outside, hose 'em down and even bleach them if necessary. I looked at A LOT of flooring options. Too many. I got the computer-zombie eyes from it. This really is the most affordable, non-hideous option for a basement.
I've also been stalking Craigslist for stuff. We got this great little fold-out sofa that makes a pretty comfy full-size bed. We use the basement as our guest room, so this was perfect.
Chris and I built those orange bookshelves when we first moved in here nine years ago. They are getting a coat of shiny white paint before they get reattached to the walls. I keep trying to sand them, but the children only give me a few minutes at a time and it's too loud to sand while they are sleeping. We're hoping to knock it out this weekend.
Our goal is to get the painting and carpet done in the next couple weeks. Go team H!
Hello there! Since I last checked in we have been crazy busy making an attempt to buy the mid-century house I mentioned here. It turned out that our realtor was confused about which house we wanted, and it actually was not under contract. So we got our house ready for market, finishing up lots of DIY projects, clearing out extra clutter, renting a POD. The owners would not accept our contingency offer, so we just went on the market, crossing our fingers that Moon Light House (E's name for it) would stay on the market.
Nearly every day, we've been kicked out of our house and sent off to wander for one to three hours or more, visiting indoor playgrounds and child-friendly restaurants until we all succumbed to the inevitable bugs coating those sorts of places. We had two buyers putting their own homes on the market in order to buy ours, but then yesterday we got the news that Moon Light House had been sold -- with a back-up offer in the wings to boot. So we took our house off the market today. There has been no shortage of swearing and tears. E offered to go over to Moon Light House and "kick them out of there!"
With our house in the disarray that is staging, I have not really been able to do anything creative for a while. Half of my craft supplies are in the POD (which now needs to be UNloaded). We often had as little as 25 minutes to pack up the kids and run, so I was loathe to start any projects, bake any treats or cook anything complicated.
My one creative outlet has been my lattes. I got an espresso machine for Christmas, and I've been attempting latte art. I am not very good at it yet, but for five minutes I get to MAKE something. Something ever so slightly creative. It's little, but it's something.
Lately I have had about 50 browser windows open at once because I have been looking at upholstery fabric and can't make up my mind. For some reason, my mom has this nice little mid-century dining set sitting in her basement. She and Lloyd like to go to auctions and estate sales, and they somehow ended up with this stuff, probably because they know my sister and I like this style. I'd love to use the table right now, but my kids would destroy it with their daily art projects, and the dining room is really the only place for them to work. So for now, I am settling for the chairs. Our current woven chairs are totally falling apart. The new chairs need new upholstery though.
I've narrowed things down to these eight. On the upper left, we have Eclat by Knoll in bark and silver. I can't find these online, but my neighbor works for Knoll, so if I pick one of these, I was hoping she could get me a few yards. But these have so much light color to them, I think they might not be the best choice in our house (messy children). They are my favorites though.
On the upper right, we have a couple Maharam fabrics. These might hide stains a little better. In the lower left, we have Knoll Topography in alpine, which I found on eBay. Then in the middle lower left is Robert Allen Oakfield in pacifc. In the lower middle right, we have Robert Allen Modern Lines in sterling. Finally in the lower right, we have a Duralee fabric in seaglass.
The lower left Knoll would probably hide stains best, but dang, I like a pattern. So now I'm leaning Maharam (upper right two).
Help me pick, please!
