Renovations

I had initially sent this email to some of my family, but thought it would be fun for everyone to hear about our progress on converting our home into a "child" friendly place.

(The picture shows the office about 3 years ago, but you can see the built in desk Charles made for me,...we have saved the wood in the garage for future use...)

We finally got everything cleared out of the previous office/guest room and now things are starting to move into the new babies room! Charles spent a solid week and a half moving the built in desk out, adding the window and door trim (which we had added to all the other rooms), and painting the room while I was away on Christmas break. He did an amazing job painting the bottom of the room light green, then putting in a chair rail and painting the top part yellow. He also put in white, wooden blinds...we had had makeshift shades for the past six years. It looks so nice!

(See Charles' new paint job and new window trim? Picture on the below is our current progress. No baby furniture yet, but blinds are up, and the old desk cabinets will work as great end tables. Even the colors are already syncing!)

The biggest pain for me was moving the computer into the kitchen. We had a wine cabinet/counter that was kind of used as our “dump” place. Mail, keys, purses, phones, etc. got dumped there. So I cleared out the appliances that were being stored under the cabinet and put all the computer gear (printer, sound system, router, cables, cameras, etc.) under there and put the monitor and keyboard on top of the counter.

Charles still has to go under the house to connect the internet line (which is still in the babies room) to the computer. Right now it is strung across the floor, which isn’t very safe. Matt spent quite a bit of time over the break, helping us try to reconfigure this house arrangement because our internet connection will stay in the babies room; it can be moved to another outlet, but we’d have to pay a guy to come and do it and he said it would mess up the wiring in our house.

On another note, I had told Charles that if I made it to the third trimester with babies safely growing, that he could get a new television. I realize that I am the one who is pregnant, but Charles has been an awesome support, helping me with medications, doctors appointments, listening to me gripe (alot!), helping me sleep, and doing the entire room by himself, while I was off vacationing with friends and family.

We have had our 23 year old boob tube for all 16 years we have been together. We had it in this lovely black wooden cabinet that was in the living room, but frankly the cabinet was always a little big for our tiny 12 x 16 living room. So we moved the cabinet to the laundry room and are using it like a coat closet (our coats were in the babies closet before). Not having a coat closet has been driving me batty for years!

So we got Charles a lovely flat screen that mounts directly on the wall. No cabinet! It is amazing how much more room we have! When you only have 900 square feet you have to be creative with your space. I am seeing the potential of this new arrangement, now that the computer and television are both up and working again.