Sunday, March 19, 2006

Home Improvement

Oh, my achin' back! I spent the weekend up at the new house sprucing up a few rooms pre-move. And I'm feelin' it today. Ouch. The good news is that I got done all that I wanted to accomplish, so that feels good. I painted both the kids rooms as well as the family room. My mom, dad, and sister all pitched in to help me, and thank goodness they did or I never would have finished. Never.

Nicholas's room now has a khaki/tan color on the top portion of the walls, a blue on the bottom (not quite the right blue, but we're rolling with it. I was aiming for a soft chambray blue but got more of a robin's egg blue. Damn.) with a crimson red chair rail splitting the two. Very classic boy. He has a set of sheets that are a denim/chambray plaid with red and white, so it all ties together. He helped pick the colors so he's happy as a pig in shit with his new room. Only remaining eye-sore? The wood chevron-patterned wall. He's the only one who likes it. I came this close to pulling it all down, but I wouldn't have had enough paint if I had so I left it. Nicholas likes it, so that's all that matters.

Lauren's room was painted in the same lavendar color we used in her room here. Only in the new room we painted the lavendar as high as the top of the doors/window and left the top foot or so the neutral cream color. It looks nice. I'll go back through and add the flower stencils like we have here and "girlify" it a little more. (and yes, that's a word as of now. Shut up.) I love the light purple color in Lauren's room - always have (duh, that's why I stayed with the same color!), but my dad's reaction was a little more telling. He walked in after we'd finished and said, "Whoa! Is that the intentional color??!" I guess it's not his taste.

The family room was the biggest pain in the ass to do. One wall is paneling that had been painted (badly) a flat, almost chalky white. There was a darker wood chair rail molding around the room. We pulled the chair rail off (which we then painted red and re-purposeded it in Nicholas's room) to discover that the walls had once been wallpapered and no one bothered to take it down before putting up the chair rail. So we had to do a little wallpaper removal before we could do anything else, and I HATE wallpaper removal. So my mom did it. As we looked more closely at the paneled wall we noticed lots of holes that needed to be filled and lots of rough spots from a shoddy job of removing the wallpaper and they painted right over some of the paper and glue splotches. So I ended up sanding the entire wall (it's a big, long wall) BY HAND to smooth it all out and then went back through and filled the holes with putty stuff, then sanded those when they dried. And then we painted the room a warm neutral color called Travertine. I love that color. It warms up any room and doesn't fight the furniture. I have it in my living room and entry here already. But doing that one room took pretty much all day. For just one room. The prep time was substantial. The actual painting was the easy part. But now it's done and it looks 10x better! Yay! I didn't bring my camera, like a dumbass, or I'd have taken before/after pictures to show you. And oh yeah, we (my mom & dad and I) did all that while watching 5 kids. My parents were babysitting my sisters' 3 kids, plus my 2, and that's a lot of kids running around an empty house and trying to keep them both entertained and out of the rooms with wet paint was, well, a challenge.

Mr. Chick returned from Vegas last night and we visited the house together today. Just our family. It was really the first time we've been able to spend any time at the house together without other people there (realtors, primarily). And then we took the kids on a walk through the neighborhood and explored the walking trails near the house that lead to the park. What a fabulous park! The kids played and we enjoyed a rare sunny & warm spring day. It felt like a perfect way to get "introduced" to our new neighborhood. We met a few more neighbors and learned that the people right next door to us have 7 kids. 7!! Most are adopted and they range in age from 3 to high school/college. And they're homeschooled. Sounds like a super-mom. I'm looking forward to meeting her and I'm hoping that at least one of their many kids line up in age to one of mine.

And now the countdown really starts. We move in 6 days. Time to get serious about packing. The living room knick-knacks and movies and such have already been taken up. All the pictures are down. The china and crystal are up there, too. It's feeling more barren here with just that stuff gone. But it's excited and I'm actually looking forward to the move. And to the "farewell" ladies night out for cocktails and dessert this week. Some fun in the midst of chaos.

I may not be able to post much until after the move, but don't think I'll have forgotten you. I'll just be in transition. So don't forget me!

Comments:
YOu called the mother of 7 children- Supermom? I bet she is, but I think you deserve the title after the weekend you had. ;)
Good luck with your move. Can't wait to read all about it. :)
 
The house sounds swell!
all the best
 
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