I am not sure if this enthusiasm is because we are having company over tomorrow, there is a giant hurricane headed our way, or just because I go back to work on Monday and have an urgent need to clean the house from top to bottom before essentially saying goodbye until next June, but I have been really going to town on fixing up our house. I love being home so much, and am sad to have to go back to work. I love my job, of course, but playing house is just so much fun! Anyway, let me first show you our hurricane "preparation." Here is our 4th bedroom post-cleaning (last night, notice the eerie light outside!):
The first task was to get all the plants and outside furniture in, so they won't disappear into someone else's window. Yikes, that's not a good image. Since we are having company tomorrow and will need our main living spaces for entertaining, I had to haul everything upstairs to the 4th bedroom. Which I did while Pat was taking a nap, thankyouverymuch!
We also really got busy in the utility room. I fortunately do not have a "before" picture to share, because it was sort of a disaster. Rubbermaid bins are meant for stacking, yes, but it can sure be a pain to try to get whatever bin was on the bottom! So we did it the right way, by taking everything out of the laundry room, so it was completely empty. Unfortunately, that meant that our den looked like this:
Yikes. How did we end up with so much junk?? Of course this little project led to a huge trash pile and another huge Goodwill/Re-Store pile. Meanwhile, Pat was plugging away at our new Ikea storage units (purchasing them took two trips, since the first attempt was during the great East Coast earth quake) and we finally got them installed. He is so happy about having room for all his brewing stuff, and I am so happy about having storage for our holiday decorations! Here they are empty:
And about 30 minutes later, they were filled. Voila!
These beauties also contain plenty of drinking water, so we are all set to be hydrated if Hurricane Irene does indeed cause trouble for us. Right now it looks like NY/NJ will get hit worse than us, but we will see tomorrow. We are also stocked up on non-perishable food, flashlights, and candles. I filled the bathtub so we can flush if the power goes out, and put several containers of water in the freezer. So now that we are all 'prepared' for the hurricane, I guess I got a little carried away and started seriously sprucing up the rest of this place. First up was the clarinet room.
This room gets a lot of use, so sheet music ends up everywhere. I organized our filing cabinet (that was sooo therapeutic) and after some general cleaning, I decided it was beyond time to hang my Indiana diploma. I worked hard for that thing, goshdarnit. I also managed to get Pats IU diploma up there, although it decided to fall crooked after I was done. Oh well. His is in a very nice frame (which was too nice to put a hanger on the back apparently). Mine, on the other hand, sat in the filing cabinet for the past 3 years while I waited for 'when I have the money' to get it professionally framed. Since I now recognize that I never will 'have the money,' I just opted for the $20 Target frame. And I think it looks great!
I also have to show off our fabulous music cabinet. Pat got it for FREE and it is just amazing. (I also love the clarinet print that my mom bought me in college, hanging next to it.)
I also got to work on our guest bedroom, which was looking pretty messy before. Also it didn't have a side table. We have the most trouble keeping furniture IN that bedroom! We once had a desk in there, but then realized we really needed it in the clarinet room. Then we had a drop-leaf table for a long time. After our dining table broke two weeks ago, though, we had to actually utilize that drop-leaf table. Then we were down to just having a bed (pretty covered in cat hair, I know it is gross but the cat likes that room and we never go in there) and a dust-ridden bookshelf. Since I had picked up another bedside table to go in our room, that meant we could move our old wash stand (which I love, as I remember it from my parents' room growing up) to be a side table in the guest room. After a little fixing up of the book shelf, that room is ready for company! (Although the company we thought we were going to have next weekend, the reason for sprucing up this room actually, decided to not come after all. But at least the room looks good!)
Sorry for the craptastic quality of all these iPhone pictures, and especially for the ones taken at night. Clearly this 'sprucing' adventure has been many days in the making. We actually do own a very nice camera, and I even bought Pat Photoshop last year for Christmas. But I am too lazy to figure out the camera and have not had any desire yet to sit down and figure out the computer program.
So the last room(s) upstairs that got attention was our room. (Finally!!) Our room has long been the last to get anything. We finally painted it a few months ago after living with paint samples splattered on the walls for more than TWO YEARS. Sorry to admit that. Then we finally got some freakin lamps from Target. (There is no overhead light, and we had one little dinky lamp, actually that one that is in the guest room now, but that definitely doesn't cut it in that big room!) And we purchased a duvet from West Elm shortly thereafter. Are you picturing how absolutely ghetto our bedroom was? No paint, no light, no bedding. Oh, and we don't really have a bed. We have a mattress and box spring. And they are on the floor. I put a fitted sheet on the bottom, but that has been another 'when we have the money' thing. Although, it really doesn't look toooo bad. I mean, it could be worse.
Anyway, the excitement from this sprucing was that I got all the clothes off the floor. No, I'm not so lazy that I can't put my clothes in the closet or the hamper. It's just that I ended up sacrificing our (small) pretty dresser to be used as the downstairs linen cabinet. Which meant our clothes were re-routed to suitcases. On the floor. Didn't that classy image just get even better? Finally I had had enough! I was comin' to the edge, as my favorite bacon-loving internet child says, and I just bought some plastic storage bins. I knew that 'when we have the money' wasn't going to be soon enough. So here we go, with a clean floor, paint on the walls, a duvet, and finally--a mirror hung on the wall! We enter civilization! Oh, and don't mind the Goodwill dresser. We really will get around to painting it one day.
Our bathroom also got some sprucing. As in, a serious deep-clean!
I have to show you now where I put that dresser that left the bedroom for the living room. It really is handy to have linens in drawers, plus more people get to enjoy this pretty piece if it is out in the open.
The living room was easiest to straighten up, as we were forced into doing that earlier when we had the broken table fiasco. We decided (after paying $120 to have the table put back together) to leave our awesome dining table folded up as a desk. It is a really awesome antique piece that folds out to be a 6-seater, but we felt that overusing it helped cause it to break. So here it is, set up like a desk in the living room.
Isn't it crazy that thing becomes a full-fledged dining table? Yeah, pretty awesome wedding present. (Thanks mom!) Here is a view with it from the sofa.
Okay, nevermind that actually doesn't show the desk at all, but it does show the fabulous centerpiece our friend Kristin bought us after hosting her for auditions!
The piano was fun to decorate.
Especially when considering that after coming home from the earthquake, we found it looking like this
Now one day we have to get that sucker tuned! (cue 'when we have money...') The other parts of this big blue room include the sitting area, with our awesome blue leaf-print chairs (thank you to Obama for the first-time home buyers tax credit, which also paid for our amazing sectional downstairs and all of the wood blinds throughout the house) and third-hand sofa. I honestly thought when I ordered that slip cover that we would have a replacement sofa within a year. Not that I mean to complain though, we've done well in this house for 2.5 years!
The dining area isn't looking so shabby, either. This is the breakfast table I had growing up and I remember doing crafts in elementary school there, watching my dad help my sister study for spelling tests, cutting my own hair around this table circa age 5...Yes, lots of memories around this old oak table. And I guess you can't go wrong with claw-and-ball feet.
And now that this has been the longest post ever, especially coming from someone who never blogs, I should stop. Even though I am not including pictures of the other two bathrooms I scrubbed clean, the kitchen basement that is ready for hanging out tomorrow, or the kitchen (which I actually have NOT cleaned), I'll end with one final picture of the downstairs closet. Because this cleaning kick is so thorough that it involves closets. All of them. Go me.
Here's to hoping everyone has a great weekend and stays safe with Hurricane Irene. That party pooper.
