“Design Star” Here I Come

I had the day off yesterday to get 4 doc appointments over with, all routine checkups (everything’s fine and I remain The World’s Healthiest Fat Woman – I mean, seriously, no one at my weight and age should have such perfect blood pressure, cholesterol, EKG, etc.). Anyway, in between appointments I ran to Ikea to continue the Great Family Room Makeover of 2008. So far this has included:

Having the slab jacked (yes, that’s really what it’s called; Google it if you don’t believe me)

Painting the walls “Golden Straw,” a fantastic warm color that looks like the outside of a butternut squash. This took me a day and a half, not including the hours and hours of patching work that Bret did – which looks perfect now with the paint on it (which is to say, you can’t see the patches at all…just nice, smooth walls).

Removing the hideous vertical blinds.

Removing the hideous brown wood spindles that “separated” the kitchen from the family room (can you tell my house was built in the 70s?).

Re-texturing the ceiling after the spindles were removed.

New carpet is coming on Thursday – yea!!! What’s in there now is pretty gross and I’m happy to see it go. Anyway, I had a successful shopping trip at Ikea yesterday and bought two end tables in white, curtains and the cover to this ottoman, in black (I have to go back for the ottoman itself because I grabbed the wrong box on my way to the checkout and didn’t have time to go back – honestly, who can tell with all those brown, cardboard boxes). I think this will all go nicely with my green couch and pillows I bought last week (see previous post).

I have really enjoyed taking on this decorating project. First of all because I still feel, after nearly 4 years, that I’m living in someone else’s house. I've done so little redecorating because I was burned out on “fixing up” when we moved in from working so hard on our old house. I was also pretty depressed at that time (infertility, adoption process, blah, blah, blah) and just didn’t feel like doing anything. And then Lauren arrived and there was no time, and definitely no energy. Now that she’s older and easier to care for and we’re sleeping more than 4 hours a night, we are able to tackle some house things. Finally, my 6,000 hours of watching HGTV are going to pay off.