Yesterday and today have been moving-of-furniture days but Monday was Moving In day so here are some Before photos. I came down and took out a lot of old furniture and painted the living room and the hallway so they are not 100% Before, but they will still be a good comparison for the After photos I will take in approximately 5 years.
This is the view from the living room. On the left you have the dining area and the right has the entryway and the kitchen area.
Closeup of the dining area. With any luck there will be something more useful under that window soon, perhaps a cabinet or credenza of some sort. The bar cart is cute but that area just invites clutter.
Hello, kitchen. This was a gut job by the landlord so everything is very basic but new and clean and very functional. But man, how did I not realize how much storage space I had before?
Living room from the entryway. On the left is the hallway entrance and on the right is the patio door. Thus, not a lot of ways to arrange furniture in here. On the plus side, I painted it before we moved big heavy stuff in!
My office. Small and I inherited an awesome desk and bookshelf. The tippy standing light on the right is the only room light - there is no overhead light. This means the window always stays open. However, the view is a narrow little patch of fence where I can't plant anything exciting so I am contemplating a white roman shade so I can leave it shut and have it be light but with no ugly view.
Tiny bathroom. Redone before renting. Art will probably get changed.
Master bedroom. Enthralling, eh? Desperately needs painting, this room will get a color. I also inherited the awesome dresser on the left that needs A LOT of love. Not a full-on refinish, but probably a gallon of elbow grease...
Master bath. Also freshly remodeled and painted. This was a disaster area as of a couple of months ago. Now it is pretty much all stock and plain and clean and that (not stock) shower door makes it look SO fancy.
Garden pictures will come eventually, right now I am painting things and putting things away and flattening boxes. Very exciting. So, any thoughts? I know I scored on the bathroom/kitchen fronts but the living room is incredibly awkward, so we'll see what happens there.
There is a dearth of furniture in my house right now, and a looming snowstorm is not looking good for our moving prospects in the next couple of days. So tonight we are hunkering down for a little dinner at home. Possibly sitting on the floor. It would have been fancier but I have packed 3/4 of my kitchen stuff already.
So, the menu:
Roast chicken, asparagus and carrots with a mushroom sauce,
Green salad with caramelized pecans, beets and gorgonzola crumbles,
and baguette (there was going to be polenta but this will be ok as long as I don't eat it all before dinner)
with some kind of nice white wine,
followed by:
Haagen Dazs rocky road ice cream (Matt's fave) with milano cookies and fresh raspberries.
Best I can do is still not too bad. Also WAY cheaper than going out. And we have free movie passes that we might use for True Grit if we are so inclined. Sticking with the cheap theme, can you tell?
Also there may or may have not been a small jaunt to the outlet mall to perk up my poor sad wardrobe. Not only is it in piles on the floor, it is sad and saggy in the winter sunshine. So I now own some new shirts in BRIGHT colors (F you, winter) with cute stripes and embroidery and ruching and whatnot. My wardrobe was boring me so I was not allowed to buy anything plain or black. Also, ruching: hideous in theory, super-flattering in practice!
Also, because there is more than one song on The Lady Killer album.
We're sleeping on a mattress on the floor for the next few days, the giant captain's style bed frame is in storage for now. This also means we are also surrounded by piles of our clothing as the bed frame was also most of our clothing storage. I feel like I'm back in college.
Also because Matt is listening to Weird Al in the other room.
The move is fully underway and my house is a wreck. The next phase is taking the dining room table/chairs and the futon up to the storage container, as soon as the in-laws are back in town and we can use their vehicle. Then the big move will be on - the couch, loveseat and big living room rug are my big priorities (and the CD racks because right now all our CDs are in crates in my new office). Once those are down there we can figure out what we need and don't need and generally get the place sorted out.
The house is a lot cleaner and I finished painting the living room this trip. Thus far, the kitchen and bathrooms are pretty much good to go, having been renovated when my parents were going to rent the house to somebody other than me. Matt's office, the hall, the entryway and the living room are all now a respectable neutral color called "Bone". And I may have successfully chosen a color for the bedroom. It is BM Nantucket Fog and I think it will look really good with the wood floors (fingers crossed).
These lovely people used it to great effect and I am only mildly worried because all our trim is already semigloss Bone and I hope it will look as good as it does with the white. It has a lot more gray in it to me than this picture does, too.
So I am consoling myself for the whole can't-move-in-until-the-in-laws-decide-it-is-convenient factor by making lists. Lists comfort me in my time of need. So now I have a nice master bedroom list to go with my paint color:
Paint walls (Nantucket Fog?)
Paint trim, doors and closet doors (semigloss Bone)
Find a rug?
Wipe down closet interior, possibly stick a runner in there (we inherited a couple of random small runners and I don't know where else to put them, so hey, why not?)
Find a headboard for the bed (oh Bay Area Craigslist, don't fail me now)
Get a bedskirt (depends on the headboard situation)
this is our existing duvet cover, of course there are exactly ZERO pictures of it showing it with a bedskirt.
Refinish existing dresser (huge, old and cool but the finish is basically gone except for misc. rings from perfume bottles left on top).
Put drawer liners in dresser (anyone know where to get nice ones?)
Find some sort of blackout shade for the window (our bed is under the window and it is pretty light and a little bit drafty, but the window is single-paned and I wonder if the moisture build-up would be bad for whatever shade we stick in there).
Find something skinny to put the TV on (not much floor space compared to our old bedroom).
Not a bad start, eh? There won't be a list like this for every room, and it sure isn't all going to happen in a hurry, but it is SO good to get it all written down somewhere.
And just because it's Tuesday:
Pardon the general objectification and 80's-ness, and just enjoy that groove.
