Timeline: I think I can, I think I can ...

Monday: Seriously—clear out the bedroom shelves and closet.

Tuesday: Vacuum/mop. Go shopping for front room color—chair pads, table runners, etc. Design kitchen storage and arts/craft storage of my dreams. Consider front room stencil.

Wednesday: Buy ceiling, bedroom, and bathroom paint, blue tape, tarps, and extension rollers; and research how to and prep front room to paint the ceiling (gulp).

Thursday: Paint front room ceiling.

Friday: School

Saturday: Hang art back up on front room walls. Decide on additional shelves for cookbooks (possibly over sideboard). Prep other rooms to paint ceiling, and paint as much ceiling as possible.

Sunday: Finish painting ceilings. Possible trip to IKEA for ideas on realizing storage dreams. Prep bathroom for painting.

Monday: Paint bathroom, maybe prep bedroom for painting, or clean up for next day’s day trip.

Tuesday: Vegas

Wednesday: Prep bedroom for painting, prepare to sleep in front room until fumes clear, start painting.

Thursday: Finish painting bedroom.

Friday: School

There's no way around it.

First, the good: I've been able to keep everything clean, at least. I've been making my bed every day. I make sure all my dishes are done before going to bed. It really does feel better.

I need a timeline. I mean, having a general timeline from the book helps, but I'm so equally overwhelmed and uninspired with the state of my room, that I don't want to do anything with it. Yet, it's the room I spend the most time in. Granted, changes I've made to the front room have drawn me out to it more often, but there are still some questions I need to answer for it. Mostly, am I happy having the TV as the focus of the room? While it made for a good conversation space, it was unavoidable at my last lunch party that the thing to do was turn it on so we could all watch it. Granted, it made for good conversation, but I don't want me and my guests to be sucked into it. I should set a deadline to be decided by the time living room week comes around. Wait ... is that this week? Already?? *sigh*

So! Timeline.

Monday: Make timeline and post it in blog ...

3/23/08 update: the kitchen after

Today, my house is full of flowers--both buds that have hung on from last week, and new flowers I've gotten in the past few days. They really do make my home happy!


My post-cleaning Friday fridge. It's almost always this bare on Friday, after I've cooked everything up to eat as the week's gone by. Saturday mornings, I fill it up with produce and groceries from the Public Market and store. I'm also a bit of a neat-freak about my kitchen, cleaning it frequently, so this week's kitchen focus was fairly easy.


Butter, fake butter, mustards, sweet pickles, apricot preserves, plain yogurt, a hunk of ginger, some black bean sauce, a couple of bottled waters I picked up at a recent foodie event, flaxseed, hoisin sauce, some gluten-free bread that I made into croutons today ... and that concludes our tour!


Some shrimp, posole from my friend B, frozen spinach and raspberries, a couple of lamb shanks, a couple of chicken backs I'm saving for stock, ice ...


The little cupboard over my microwave.


I don't use a lot of self-rising flour, so that bin is empty. If I don't plan on using my wheat flour within a month, I put it in the fridge so it doesn't get rancid. I really love my knife bar. I always wonder why some people hang them blade up, and others blade down. I like them blade up so I don't accidentally stab myself when reaching around behind the sink to clean, and so if the knives fall while I'm pulling them off the magnet, they don't land blade down. Also, it just seems safer this way when reaching for the knife.


Random dry goods.


The awkward back wall of the kitchen is clean, but still just a pile of random storage furniture. I'll figure it out, I'm sure. I had friends over for lunch today and got their opinions on a wall treatment. But I need to figure this storage thing out first.

Maybe I'll just design something from the ground up that fits my exact requirements, like the storage of my dreams, then try to flesh it out with stuff I can find at IKEA and Goodwill and whatnot.

Today was my first real test drive in the new front room arrangement. I like it for small groups, but I still need to see how I'll manage with sit-down dinners when I open up the folding table.


My outbox, or outpile, shrank when I invited my friends to take whatever they wanted home. One friend joked that she felt like it was her birthday, and I laughed and said I felt like Oprah Winfrey doing her Big Gift--"all of my guests today get to bring something home!"

March 15: still fussing around in the front room

I'm definitely not a pro when it comes to arranging flowers. I just haven't really had to do a lot of it. When I'd do event coordinating work for my friend, CP, the flower arrangements we'd do for banquets were pre-planned, so it was just a matter of following the plan. When I'd get flowers, I'd just stick them in a vase. Splitting bouquets the way I have been for my weekly flower therapies, I've at least made an attempt. I like seeing their sculptural values, trying to even out colors, heights, and shapes, then trying to design them for the rooms I plan to put them in. They're not fancy, but I usually just go for the mixed bouquets that Maya's Farm sells at the Public Market, and if she doesn't have any, I hit the grocery store cold case. None of my bouquets ever cost more than $10, but I think the flowers are always beautiful. I used to be so opposed to having cut flowers around, watching them slowly die, then having to toss them afterward. Now, I love being able to have them in front of me, filling my place with their beauty. Personally, I also think they just wouldn't be any happier wilting away on their home plant.

Counter flowers--it's simple, but I love this arrangement; it's the sort of thing I'd stencil on a wall. I tried to bring all the flowers to the "front," away from the wall behind it.


Bathroom flowers


Bedroom flowers


One of the reasons I was opposed to getting rid of my CDs was because I like to listen to them in my car. Hun helped me find a good mp3 player on eBay for a price I was willing to pay for it. I bid for it on Monday, and it came in on Friday. It's a little small at 4G, but I'd have to drive a really long time to listen to 4G of songs ...


I finally sorted the books I most wanted to keep, yet I still have a few that won't fit. Two shelves of cookbooks, one shelf of poetry, one shelf of fiction, one shelf of resource/nonfiction, and one shelf of art, architecture, and craft books. I actually took the photo boxes and albums out of the top shelf of the left case to fill with cookbooks. Now, the photo boxes are on the coffee table shelf and on top of the table.


I picked up paint chips from Home Depot. Happily, they actually have some eco-safe paints in the colors I'd like to use--a sort of periwinkle for my bedroom, and a light sage for my bathroom. I've checked the chips on all my walls, under lamp light and daylight, and am getting close to narrowing something down.


I also did another full-out clean. The condo people should be coming back after work on Monday to double-check the AC, and if all is well, we'll schedule time for them to come patch the hole they made in my bathroom wall.

I really, really need to make a trip to the used bookstore to sell books, the indie music/movie store to sell the DVDs I downsized out of my collection, and to Goodwill to donate the latest batch of stuff. I still haven't hauled out the debris from my book case tragedy; I keep thinking I can DIY something out of it. It's just pressboard, though, and may not even be worth trying to salvage. I like that it has a maple vaneer, since that's my choice wood (fake or faux), but trying to finish the edges might not be worth the time.

March 13: still working on the front room

I'm done weeding out books, and about half the original collection is gone. Still, I can't quite fit them all in the book cases that remain. On a whim, I picked out some of my favorite books, and these were just some of the books that define me. Of course, I'm trying to keep a lot more ... I have two shelves just for cookbooks!


While I'm moving stuff around, I'm keeping Scotch's giant dog bed in the closet, and she likes to sleep in there--a funny twist on the idea of putting your bed in your closet!


The Jo-ann fabric and craft store by my house is closing, so everything is on super sale! I bought a few things, including fabric for future window sheers (I hope).


I also bought chair pads so that my chairs are a little more comfy and there's some added softness to the front room. Hmm ... I wonder if they're too small. I knew I didn't want them too big, but should they be a little smaller than the seat? Blast. It feels comfy to sit on, anyway ... (EDIT: I returned the chair pads. I'm going to keep looking for something else. I'm even wondering if I should try a different color, since there's an increasing amount of red in the room and I plan to use just a bit for my minimal wall treatment.)


Thanks, JB, for going shopping with me and coming over to hang out while I sorted books!

March 9: trying to arrange the front room

Oh boy, I asked for this one.

A post on AT showed a photo with the same tall, pressed board book cases that I have, and I left a comment along the lines of "I have those same shelves! If I focus too much on it, the joint in the middle drives me crazy." See, the shelves are basically two short cases stacked on top of each other, precariously held together by four short plastic dowels. They're great ... if you never try to move the cases ... while they're full of books. I was convinced we could get the cases on sliders and slide then to flank the new entertainment center getup I put together. Well, my friend W and I got them on sliders, but as we were pushing one of the shelves to the far side of the entertainment center, the bottom case caved in. That's what we get for pushing the top half, leaving the bottom to bear way too much stress--the friction from the floor, the torque from the top being pushed, all that physics hoo-ha. So yeah, the bottom crumbled, the books tumbled, I ... uh ... fumbled and found myself holding the top half in my arms, full of heavy books. We slowly laid the books out on the floor as if it were a fainting woman.





After assessing the damage and finding it irreparable, I resolved, "Ah well--I needed to get rid of more books, anyway." I kept thinking back to Maxwell's words of wisdom about how old books sorta stifled new creativity--they were good while it lasted, but now it's time to make room for something new! Let's see *flipping pages*--ah yes, here it is: "Books are good resources and markers of experience, but we all tend to hold on to far more than we actually use. To ease the process, it is helpful to realize that books are collections of memories and old thoughts, not new ones; they carry an emotional weight as well as a physical one. On the subject, I have often quoted Karen Kingston's words from Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui to my clients: 'Holding on to old books doesn't allow you to create space for new ideas and ways of thinking to come into your life.' Not only is letting go clearing out the old, it is also trusting in the future."

So, we had a usable top section of shelf, and I filled it with some of my favorites from that case for awhile before we decided to deal with the second book case. This time, we took all the books out before moving it and sliding it to the other side of the entertainment center. We stood back and looked. The whole grouping looked like stairs, with the tall book case, the shorter entertainment center in the middle, and the new short book case on the other side. Neither of us liked the look of it so ... we broke the other book case so we had some uniformity. We tried to just ease it apart, but there were connectors we couldn't access, so we just snapped the two plastic dowels that were holding us back. So then, I had two short shelves flanking the entertainment center. I filled it with some of my favorites from that shelf (minus the cookbooks, which just wouldn't fit), then we stood back and took a look. Neither of us liked the look of it. The entertainment center--really just a black utility shelf--was like a bix black square--the big TV screen, the stereo components, and the shelf. It was fine when it wasn't flanked by the two lighter-colored book cases. W looked at me and said, "You know, I really liked them better where they were. I should've said something." I replied, "Yeah, I liked them there, too, but this just seemed like a better idea. I was really wrong." Plus, while the symmetry with the group was nice, it looked really cluttered in context with the rest of the room. So ... time to spread out again, perhaps.

I'd been thinking about just getting shelves that span the wall where the cases were--that way, I got back an inch or two of floor space and I could fit more stuff. I've also considered getting just one, good quality, tall book case, maybe with doors so my books and my few tchotchkes don't get dusty so easily. Maybe I'll just keep using the short shelves in the places I instinctively placed them when Hun and I first put them together. Dunno. I didn't like the gap between them--it seemed like a waste of space, but I wanted to be able to access the outlet on that wall. At least the short cases look better than the tall cases with the seem halfway up the case.

I told W that I'd just sort through my books again and put even more in the outbox (about 50 books, she suggested, to make them all fit well). Deep breath. In the stack of books, I found the old "All About Me" book that was kinda trendy about 8 years ago. Somewhere in it is a description of my dream home, complete with a big library with tall book cases and a bay window for a window seat. It's definitely not the home I ended up with. And a nagging part of me is trying to get the rest of me to admit that it's not the house I need. In the same book, I wrote about how I disliked excess, especially material excess--that unfulfillable desire to have more and more things. I wrote about how I hated having so many things I felt like I didn't need. One of those voices from the past is right, and I'm tending to thing it's the latter voice. There are a lot of things I can fill my little house with, but it doesn't have to be material stuff.


As for the rest of the front room, it seems to be holding up fairly well. After our attempt at arranging furniture, we closed the day out by making pierogies from scratch. I pushed my futon up a little and was able to fully extend my gateleg table so we could roll out dough on one end and sit and fill the pierogies on the other end. Then we ate them with onions, the whole shebang sauteed in butter. And I did up a cake.

Here, W beats potatoes for the pierogies while Scotch the Dog, always underfoot when there's food around, blinks for the camera.


All in all, a satisfying day. Later that night, I discovered a bruise the size of a large grapefruit on my thigh, and a large knot under it, from where I caught the book case with it. My first Burrow Cure battle wound! I finished copying the last of my CDs, which was cool. I also replaced my old shower rings with rings that had roly balls. W mentioned she had the same ones and while she liked how easily she could open her curtain, she didn't like the noise they made. They weren't any noisier than the rings that stuck, and in fact, they at least slid more easily, so the noise was briefer. Today's homework for after work is to sort through my books, carefully shuffle the cases around to see if I can find a placement for them I like, and hopefully get my rug back into my room.

March 8: the front room--arranging furniture

So I established a landing strip. Before, it was to the left of the door, which was fine, but walking smack into the futon, I'd be more prone to toss stuff there, especially my bag. I still haven't decided if I want to line up some hooks above it, or maybe a rack next to it.



Pulling the entertainment center was more involved that the final results may look. The TV used to be on top of the coffee table, and the book case (entertainment center) as next to it, loaded with everything else. I moved the shelves to fit everything snugly, slid all the components in, and tied up all the cords. Instead of sticking it in a corner, I centered it on the wall. I'm not sure if I'll keep it there. It makes the TV the focus of the room, which I don't want. I plan to put some chairs around the coffee table, facing the futon, so it's more of a conversation space. The back flap of the futon doesn't bother me the way I was afraid it might. Again, time will tell how I feel about it later.




What to do with the coffee table is another question. I like it for things like game night, propping your feet up (as Maxwell mentioned in his book), and holding drinks, plates, and food stuff during luncheons. Since I don't dig into my DVDs and VHS tapes (yeah, I still have them) very often, I don't feel badly about blocking them off. Though I do miss the checker pattern. ;) I still have to sort through the media and get rid of the DVDs and tapes I don't want or need anymore.


I was wary about trying to create little spaces with furniture, but I like the feel of it. We'll see how I like it after I've used the space more, though!


Tomorrow's project will be to try flanking the entertainment center with the book cases--one on either side. Then I need to figure out wall treatments. I'm not sure if I should paint. The beige isn't really bad, and it doesn't wash out the space the way I'm afraid white would. It also doesn't make the room too dark. I need to start considering whether or not I can stencil the textured wall. If I can figure it out, I'm thinking of trying to incorporate some white from the base boards and trim into my stencil design.