evolution of a room

Back in March, we moved the girls from their old room off the kitchen (even though days of work into making it a nursery to begin with) to the den in the back of the house.  I posted something about painting "soon," which apparently meant October!  Yes, we finally got it done last weekend, thanks to a lot of help from my parents and Brandon's parents.  We spent the whole day painting, installing a storm door (since their room has an exterior door), and putting in a closet organizer (I won't discuss the level of difficulty this always entails, but will direct you to previous posts here and here).  Brandon also caulked where the walls meet the floor and around the windows, as well as removed the pipe and patched the wall where the old gas heater pipe vented to the outside (the gas line was a dead end and had been cut before we bought the house).

I searched the blog for old photos of the den/nursery and thought it was interesting how the room has evolved over the last few years. 

 

   

Next on the horizon is hanging stuff on the walls, painting the trim, and putting in some insulation in the floor and ceiling.

the warm fuzzies

We have lots of projects in mind (but no money!) for the near future, but one of the more pressing ones is the fact that the girls' room is poorly insulated.  We got through last winter with an oil-filled space heater, but I'm guessing that before the end of this winter, the girls will be out of cribs and into toddler beds (pray for our sanity), so a space heater won't be a viable option any more.  We think their room used to be an old porch, and it doesn't have a brick exterior or a basement under it; the rest of the house has both.  So...what are our options?

Being a die-hard DIYer, Brandon suggested pulling down all of the drywall, installing insulation, and replacing the drywall.  My brother suggested we get someone who can cut holes in the wall and spray in foam insulation, which sounds expensive, but we haven't checked yet (not even sure where to start).  Brandon's mom suggests insulating from underneath and just dressing them warmly ("They survived last winter," she says, "when you didn't put enough clothes on them and they were tiny."  One of those times when "I told you so" is totally warranted...as per the books we kept the girls' room at 69 degrees and dressed them in light layers to reduce the risk of SIDS.  Later we realized they probably woke up so often because they were cold!)

We're open to suggestions and advice, so throw us some ideas!

*update:  Here's a description and photo of what we're considering.  This Old House says that foam is the most expensive, but best for air quality. 

something you haven't seen in a while

Me, with a screwdriver, working.  I'm back!  I'm dressed a little too nice for hard labor in this photo, but since we were just hanging curtains, I guess it's okay. 

We decided to undertake the project of moving the girls to the back room, which has been our den/library/office/spare room/catch-all since they were born.  It's a much bigger room than their old room and it's farther from the rest of the house, so it will be quieter for them when sleeping.  No more tip-toeing around to do the dishes or vacuum!  Yay!  Wait, that means I don't have any excuse for not doing the dishes or vacuuming.  Argh!

Here are some more photos of the chaos created by this move.  We've since gotten the girls moved in completely, and we do plan to repaint later.  But we haven't unpacked the office/library yet, so all those boxes you see in our bedroom are still FULL of books.  500+ books, actually (nerd librarian that I am, I scanned them all into LibraryThing as I packed them...here's our catalog if you care to take a look).

Our bedroom:

The dining room!

More dining room:

The new nursery.  We've removed the Batman print and the

scary mask on the left.  We hope to repaint soon!

more nursery pics

nursery paint project

babies and nursery update

I could have sworn that I posted this last time, but I guess I got all caught up in the excitement of paint stripping and forgot (ha ha). We found out that the twins are both girls!

Brandon's mom came down for the weekend painted the nursery walls and ceiling for us. We picked out a Freshaire color called Delightful Daffodil and it is gorgeous. Sort of a warm soft yellow, which coordinates well with our Classic Winnie the Pooh theme for the nursery bedding. It's really sort of a Pooh-bear yellow! Brandon's been sanding the trim and needs to prime it before we can paint it. We chose a barely off-white for the trim (can't remember the color name, will post later, but it's from Behr) since the existing trim color looked gray and dingy next to the yellow. The Freshaire paint looks good, but took two solid coats and for even that small room we had to buy THREE cans! We have most of a can left, which we'll probably need for touchups once the twins discover crayons ;) The Home Depot guy said we should have primed first, which we believed until we realized that we didn't prime any of the other rooms when we painted with plain old Behr paint after moving in. Ah well, it's gorgeous at any rate. Many thanks to Patrice for doing all the painting!!

Our friend Paul (an electrician) came over and helped Brandon with some electrical stuff, including adding new outlets in the nursery (it had only one originally!). I called from work to see how things were going and Brandon said, "Bad news. Paul says he can't believe the house hasn't burned down yet and the whole thing has to be rewired. And he can't do it--we'll have to pay someone to do it." Since everything else has tended to go wrong lately, I just said, "Yeah, okay, I kind of expected as much." Then I heard laughter and yelling in the background--turns out Brandon made it all up. I pretty much believed him until he said Paul couldn't do it...Paul is awesome and has gone out of his way numerous times for us lately and I knew he would do whatever he could to help!

Once we get the trim painted we can get to work putting the cribs together and figuring out where everything will go. We installed a closet shelf system this weekend, too, for the tiny closet. We've posted previously on our attempts to install these, but Brandon had a great idea this time. Instead of drilling with a regular drill bit, he used a flat wood bit. We started the holes with a regular bit, and then made them bigger with the flat bit. A regular bit won't actually go into the 80 year old wood lathe that the plaster is attached to, but the flat one dug right in. Hooray!

Posting in progress photos of nursery in separate post, along with closet shelving (already full with baby stuff!).

various DIY projects

We got a little bit of work accomplished this weekend, but really there hasn't been much to blog about lately. Brandon found some storm windows a month or so ago on Craigslist that amazingly fit our windows...we thought we would have to order them custom but he's been watching the listings like a hawk...finally it paid off, and for a mere $25 each, we got enough storm windows to do all the windows on the sides of the house (the back already had them)! He cleaned and painted them today and got two installed on our bedroom windows. Of course, it took longer and was more difficult than expected, which I think is the first rule of DIY, am I right? The other two bedroom windows will have to wait, because an additional piece of trim is needed between them. I assisted minorly from inside the house, holding the windows (pretty lightweight) in place while Brandon attached them.

We've been decorating for Halloween, a little at a time. We're having a party on Halloween, and hoping to turn the "serial killer" basement into a haunted house! Some of you I've already added to the Evite, but if I missed you, just let me know.

Brandon spent part of yesterday working on a small bedside table for me...we bought it recently at a thrift store for $10. We think it began life as half (or a third?) of a vanity table. A cool idea to divide one up like that, but I just wonder where the other half is now?? It would nice to have both and use them on each side of the bed. Oh well.

Blogging for the immediate future may be sporadic...it's a little early to share our news, but we've been working on a little DIY side project. If everything goes well, as we hope and expect it to, you can soon follow our progress as we turn our current library/office into a nursery! Expect lots of photos of Grandma Patrice painting, I think ;) Morning sickness has my computer time limited these days...it's gotten better but makes blogging (checking email...driving...getting work done at work, etc.) difficult because I feel ill if I look at the screen too long. Will update as we know more!