Am
I the worst blogger ever?
I
don't think I'm the worst EVER. I mean, there have to be people who put up one
post and then abandon their blog forever. I'm not THAT person.
But
I'm pretty bad.
I
haven't updated since August. Shame shame shame. What have I been up to?
A lot of this:
Also
a lot of this:
I
took a photography class and a ceramics class at our local community college
the last two semesters and what little free time I had was taken up with
completing work for them. I needed to take classes in order to maintain my teaching certification, but at least these were FUN classes. House projects kind of stalled. But I got some
awesome photos and pottery to show for it!
And now, I'm BACK! And a major thing has happened in our
house. Remember when we were looking at our office way back in August and it
looked like this.
With that railing that was wobbly and the spindles were so far apart a toddler could just fall through them?
Well
for a couple of days it looked like this:
(ignore the wall color
here, Adam was in charge of photography at this moment, and doesn't understand
white balance)
Can
we say "unsafe"? Yup, we basically had a giant hole in our floor with
no railing for a couple of days. But at least that hideous railing was gone!
Also, Adam doesn't do heights, so it fell to me to rip out the carpet, pull
staples and generally prep this back area while it was railing-less.
But
shortly after this period of serious-not-to-code-ness we had the bookcase we've
been longing for!
You'll
notice it's empty. Even those white boxes in the bottom right corner are empty.
Yeah. We don't NEED this storage. We might move some things up here eventually,
even if it's just for looks. But the truth is we will use the storage someday
and the railing needed to go.
Take
a look at the whole office now:
The
bookcase is wonderful and we are very pleased with it. No, I don't have any in-progress
photos for you, because most of it was built at Adam's father's house. Yes, we
did DIY this thing, but it was with the help of Adam's dad, who is a fantastic
woodworker (he made all of his own kitchen cabinets, and LOTS of other pieces
of furniture in his house). So while normally I'd be telling you all about how
this was built, I wasn't there for any of it. Adam and his father built all of
this and I am thankful for it.
Also,
having stuff custom built away from your house allows you to be blissfully
uninvolved, and then suddenly the thing you've been asking for just appears out
of nowhere. These are the best kind of home improvements.
Oh,
and remember the crow's nest behind the old railing?
Well
now it's display space.
I'm
not 100% happy with this arrangement of objet d'art (aka, stuff), but I think
it's the kind of thing that will develop over time. It'll get there, but I'd
rather collect things over time than buy a bunch of stuff at Home Goods to fill
it in (no lie, though, I did go buy that pheasant at Home Goods).
We
also finally hung our diplomas.
If
you didn't already notice, these are over the stairs. When I mentioned hanging
them a long time ago I said we'd have to construct some kind of scaffolding in
order to get them up there because there is no floor right below them. That
didn't happen. How did we get them hung? Well, if you haven't figured it out
already from the photo where we tore out our railing and left a giant hole in
our floor for two days, safety isn't really #1 around here. Hanging these
things was done in a totally unsafe manner that I'm not going to describe in
too much detail. Let's just say it involved Adam holding on me by waistband of
my jeans. But hey, they're up there!
So
the office is MOSTLY done. There is one last detail that needs to be tackled -
the wall over the chaise.
It's
a whole lot of nothin'
I've
been looking and looking for solutions for this wall that are more interesting
that slapping a painting up there. But, you know what? I think we're just going
to slap a painting up there. Since big art is expensive, and because I'm an art
teacher with a knack for painting, I'm going to paint something and hang it
there. I don't have my own art hanging in our house (except a couple of things
that were little crafty projects). But here Adam and I decide a HUGE painting
of a stick or twig would look cool. Big paintings of twigs, not really
something you see all the time, so we'll make that happen. Eventually.
"Eventually"
should be my middle name.
So
anyway, that's the office update. And I have some good news. I've already
redone the upstairs bathroom about 90% of the way. I'll have the befores and
afters on that soon!