I saw these ideas on Pinterest years ago and knew I wanted to do something similar at some time in some house in the future. Well, it turns out now is the time and this is the house! And I’ve been collecting trees and branches from my dad’s property in the upper peninsula on various trips so we were finally ready!
Tom built the box for the trees and screwed the individual trees/branches into pieces of wood which are then screwed down to the inner frame of the box itself! There’s 1-2 trees per piece—which is about the max weight Tom wanted to have to lift up the ladder!
Lined up waiting to be installed!
Done!
Our designer said we should add uplights. (I need to get a better pic — this was during installation.)
We pulled out two bags of garbage (sooooo much paper and candy wrappers and broken crayons), did about four loads of laundry, and removed two garbage bags of outgrown clothes. I cleaned the carpet TWICE (but alas it will never be clean because Katie loves to play with makeup and dye and markers and God knows what else and it has permanent stains).
She got a new ceiling fan, curtains, and princess netting, plus we finally hung her initials. Tom will eventually build a window seat with bookshelves IF she can keep it picked up. If not, the new rule is “If you don’t keep it picked up, I will remove the things so you don’t have to worry about it.”
So the way the front walk was laid out really didn’t work for us. Where we park the car on the driveway puts us getting out right in the middle of dirt (there used to be bushes there but we took them out (and replanted them) because they were in the way).
We had hoped to be able to just add on some bricks and adjust the design a little…but of course they don’t make the same bricks anymore. We totally didn’t want to rip everything out but we didn’t have much of a choice.
They worked on it over a few days, so here’s the progression.
July 30 — Demolition and prep day
July 31 — We decided on a raised bed on one side. More money. Plus they told us we really needed to redo the stoop because it was falling. More money. Plus we decided to add some accent bricks and a few in-brick lights. More money. More money. This is how a $1600 project turned into a $3700 project. DAMN HOME OWNERSHIP.
August 1 — the meat of the project!
August 2 — had we given it some more thought, we might have gone with a more squared-off design (and fewer accent bricks) to save some labor costs! But DAMN it looks amazing!
We really like the purple door…but it’s actually the wrong shade. When we leave the door open, the bright royal purple really clashes with the dusty plum of the front room. Yes it’s a minor thing but it bothers both of us…so we got our our trusty paint wheel and picked a new color! Stay tuned!
Don’t get excited thinking I’m showing too much… this is not the final look. This is just one picture of many different options she tried.
To be honest as she was doing it I was liking it, but /skipping a lot of design and redesign/ it ended up waaaaaay too flowery and poofy so I asked her to redo it. Those pics will come later!
I really wasn’t planning on cleaning Katie’s room (even though I desperately wanted to throw every single thing away because she’s really ungrateful). But it happened. I just could not stand this disaster any more. (And moreso because she swears she’s cleaned it and it’s always still a pit.)
Lots of stuff shoved in the closet. I pulled out about five bath towels.
I have no idea why this stuff was even in her room! Christmas cupcake wrappers and toothpick flags?!
All the clothes we pulled out from all the little hidey holes she shoved stuff into.
Just a regular shot of her room.
Yes, a partially eaten donut. Rock hard. There’s not supposed to be food in the bedrooms for this very reason.
More random stuff shoved into a drawer.
Two bags of candy for my work that she didn’t have permission to eat.
And why put a bed sheet in the drawer in your room where it goes…when you can shove it in another completely random drawer?
And everything that was stuffed in just three drawers of her dresser.
We both worked in there for hours. We did all the laundry (at least 4-5 loads—which she had assured us all her laundry was done), picked up all the toys and crap, tossed all the garbage, organized things, and created two boxes of crap for her to go through and sort. If she doesn’t want to, it’s going straight into the garbage. This is her LAST chance. If she can’t keep it remotely picked up, she’s losing things. I hope she’s having fun at grandparent camp because life is changing when she gets home. I told Tom if he ever wanted to be a drill sergeant, now is going to be the time.
Where we ended the first day.
And when we moved the nightstand…
MORE SHIT THAT HAD BEEN SHOVED UNDERNEATH
Sidenote: I did run across these. Cue ugly cry.
But lest you think we’re just picking on Katie…Owen’s room is getting cleaned out, too. I didn’t move from my initial position (between his desk and the bed) for almost two hours—there was so much crap shoved and crammed in/on/around/behind/under his desk/bed/drawers I wanted to scream. I mean I was duly impressed…but I wanted to scream.
After we’d spent hours working.
Swim shirt and bathing suit he couldn’t find for weeks? Under the bed. A pack of winter thermal shirts? Desk drawer. Missing laundry bags? Under his bed. All the school notebooks I’d asked him to find that he claimed were gone? Everywhere. Dirty clothes? Everywhere. Candy wrappers? Everywhere.
Lots of things shoved in his nightstand that he’s been missing. Plus garbage of course. Detritus under the big Lego bag! It’s neverending!
And of course Katie notes!
I took out two bags of garbage, a bag of recycling, and did four loads of dirty laundry (when he said it was all done) including about six bath towels and 83 socks. I picked up approximately 712 Lego pieces, 128 Pokémon cards, 300 random playing cards and other assorted game pieces, a shoebox of markers/pens/pencils, and about 13 spiral school notebooks that have 2% schoolwork and 98% drawings in them. I steam cleaned the carpet and half-heartedly dusted. Oh, and Tom put up a new ceiling fan!
Done!
Life will sure be different for him post-grandparent camp as well.
I realize most of this is par for the course for kids and kids their age but I just. couldn’t. any. longer. I don’t mind a little mess or being unorganized. But both rooms were flat out disgusting.
So Tom and I had been to what felt like every decent furniture store in a pretty wide radius trying to find the exact last piece we needed—and just couldn’t find anything. We finally found something that was comfortable and about the right color (we thought) but we got it home and meh—not it. (It clashed with the other gray couch since they were different tones.) So we decided it was a temporary piece and we could take our time finding exactly what we wanted and maybe even get something made.
FAST FORWARD TO TODAY
We were chatting today and someone said something about La-Z Boy. And I was like wait, whaaaaat?
Yes, we’d forgotten about the huge furniture store in town. UGHHHHH. So we decided we had to go just to say we did—and surprise—we found a perfect piece. BECAUSE OF COURSE.
We did actually go home to get the couch cushion to make double sure it matched!
So good news…we found something we like a lot better. Bad news? We’ll need to sell the other couch when this one comes in in September. But at least we have good seating in the meantime!
The first one they tried to deliver had a cracked foot and a really ripped corner. The foot actually totally split and fell off in our house. We didn’t accept it.
The second one had a ripped corner. The third one had leather squares that were totally different colors (I sadly didn’t get a photo of that).
Today was their fourth attempt and it had a little bit of discoloration again but not as bad as the last try—but the interior (when you lift the lid) was all scratched up. So we had to send it back again.
This one was actually the least ruined of them all so far and we told the customer service person that we would accept it at a discount and she offered us $50. On a $1500 ottoman. Ummm no. But sure, let’s keep messing around.
So now we get to wait two weeks for the next attempt because they are getting some new ones direct from the manufacturer in the hopes of getting an acceptable one. With all the prior attempts it was generally 3-4 days.
Our fingers are crossed but we really don’t think it’s gonna happen until number eight or nine.
Someone on Nextdoor was getting rid of household stuff soAnna grabbed a TV and sound bar…and together we grabbed the kitchen table and chairs—Anna wanted the table and I liked the chairs! So they got our old chairs and we had to do a switcheroo. They also took our old recliner that no longer matches anything in our house.
We got delivery of our gorgeous ottoman today. Or should I say attempted delivery! One of the wooden feet was completely cracked—and there was a huge rip on the corner. So they are taking it back and bringing us another. Thankfully they said they had like 8 in stock.
This is what it looks like (at the store). That’s also the temporary loveseat we bought. (It doesn’t really match the other couch at all but we needed something until we can find/order what we really want. Furniture is really backed up just like everything else due to Covid.)
So the hardest part of this living room redesign is finding the last piece of furniture. We have specific designer-mandated rules to follow on what can fit in the space…plus we know what we want…and it’s impossible.
Oh! The other problem is…due to Covid, the wait times on ordering furniture can be up to eight months. So we were also looking for something that was in stock.
I really really loved our sectional because it gave me a super comfy corner piece where I always sat. With the new furniture, I don’t have that anymore. The room looks big enough to get what we want, but in reality, we do not have that much space.
We found the exact thing that I wanted—called a Cuddler Couch—but it was waaaaaay too big for the remaining space.
So we kept looking, hoping to find that same thing but in a smaller form factor. It didn’t exist.
We ended up looking at chair and a halfs (they had more of the cushy feel I wanted but only gave us one more seat) or loveseats (which gave us seating for potentially 2-3, but didn’t have the same cushy feel I wanted) and were excited to find this:
It had the cushy feel, could easily fit three, was in stock, fit all the design parameters…but we measured it and it was too long. I just couldn’t believe it so we actually taped out the floor at home.
And I just about cried because it didn’t fit. We even tried switching places with the other couch and that was actually worse.
We are also going to be replacing the marble fireplace surround with tile…so we took a quick spin around the flooring store today and picked some to show our designer!
Since we now have new furniture coming soon, we HAVE TO clean out the basement bedroom. (This is where our entire 12′ x 20’ storage room in our previous rental house got put because we don’t have a big storage room in the new house…but we need the space as a regular room so this shit has got to be cleaned out and we hope to do it by our end of summer party.)
I’m going in. If no one hears from me by dinner send a search party.
After three hours, I called it quits for the day. And while that room looks better…now I have a bunch of piles in the other room!! But they are all going to be disbursed to other areas of the house, friends, Repeat Street, and Goodwill so it should be better soon.
And just because I like a good Before and After comparison…
I’ve always wanted to hire a designer so I can end up with a put together room/house…and it finally happened! A friend is an interior designer and came over to give us some guidance! We figured since this is our forever house, we’re ready!
We talked about what we wanted, what we liked, what we didn’t want —and decided on a color scheme, the curtains and rods, the mantle (Tom will build it), and carpet size.
So she sent us to look at furniture and we found a bunch of things we liked right away at the first store—a couch, leather glider chair (to replace Tom’s recliner that will no longer match), a new chair for the front room, a lamp, and an end table!
That night I searched online for the perfect rug and found it! So we have a good start!
He built and installed two corner posts to hang a shade sail (and more party lights) from. Eventually we’ll get a bit bigger shade to cover the whole deck.
He was creative since regular 4x4s (and all lumber) is crazy expensive right now (plus they were all wonky) so he used steel beams covered in cheaper wood!
From little things like hanging light fixtures and fixing cabinet drawers to big things like building pantry shelves or building a table, he can do it all.
This was his most recent project — now that we’re in our forever home and Owen has been upgraded to a Queen bed, I wanted him to have a cool headboard. I found about what we wanted…and Tom built it!
I’ve been wanting to do my H wall ever since we moved in but it always just seems so overwhelming.
When I did this at the last house I knew it was only temporary so I really didn’t care where things went on the wall and I would just put them up without much thought. But since this is our forever house I really don’t want to be changing things if I can help it so I wanted to make sure everything was perfect. And of course that leads to procrastination and anxiety.
Linda and I were supposed to do it the last time they were here but I just procrastinated. This trip she wanted to make sure we got something accomplished so…
It’s obviously not finished – the blue painter’s tape square is where that wooden H goes (that’s sitting on the buffet) once Tom is finished with it and makes a frame for it. And of course there’s space for more Hs that I run across.
It didn’t really take that long overall—we just had some bumps along the way that extended the timeline. Now we use it for a few weeks and make sure it isn’t leaking…and then we can get the hole in the ceiling fixed!
