Life on Baby Time

I realize it's been more than a hot second since I last posted.  Since I finally had a few minutes to rub together, I decided to give you a "life on baby time" home tour.  I have desperately been missing blogging and finally decided it would be better for me to throw something together in a few minutes than spend a couple of hours photographing, writing, and editing a post.  Photos literally took me 3 minutes.  I just marched around the house and snapped.  Nothing was straightened or adjusted, and the photos are unedited.  Consider that fair warning.  Come see what our life is like now with a mobile 8 month old.

Welcome!

Come on in.  The hydrangeas have been picked over by tiny fingers.  You can see a leaf on the floor by the vase, and Stanley the Squirrel has been unceremoniously tossed under the bench.  See also: spit up on the rug I noticed after I took the photo.  Overall this space has stood up pretty well to baby.  Connor loves using the bench to pull up on and makes a few stops a day in this area to just investigate things.

Dining room?

The dining room is to the left.  You can see it's been pretty much completely taken over by baby stuff and mess.  The ladder shelf had to go (too unstable and offered too many ways for little fingers to get pinched) and the pack n play hangs out there instead.  Crazy vinyl tablecloth is under the booster seat to save our rug from further damage caused by flung utensils and food.  The curtains remain closed almost constantly because, yes, that is a breast pump you see on the kitchen table.  The dining table is covered with a weird mix of baking dishes that need to be relocated to an as-yet-undetermined less baby-accessible location, and printer mess (mine needed to be replaced about a week ago).

More mess.

I've managed to baby proof most of the hutch, but it still isn't really styled.  You can see the random extension cord snaked over the top instead of hidden under the hutch.  Fortunately Connor can only reach the bottom two shelves for now, so I've moved all of my table linens down there and some infrequently used baking supplies corralled in rattan baskets.  At this point Connor isn't tricky enough to pull the baskets off the shelves, and there's not enough clearance for him to pop the lids open.  I'm guessing we'll need to redo it in a few months when he gets stronger, or we'll learn the joys of cleaning flour and corn starch out of carpet.

Kitchen!

The rug that lives in front of the sink is in the wash, and there's a pile of baby feeding stuff to the left of the sink and a container of kitchen-specific baby "toys" on the right.  Other than that our kitchen hasn't changed much (yes, of course we baby proofed all of the lower cabinets).  It just doesn't get cleaned as well and as frequently.  Pretty sure you'd see crumbs on our range and fingerprints on the fridge if you look close enough.

Here's the living room.  It's covered in baby toys- the lower shelf under the TV, the box next to it, hiding in front of the grandfather clock, on the coffee table, on the side table (yes, baby likes to play with a foam roller), on the floor.  Our TV has grown since last year; somehow Steve convinced me we needed a larger one.  I find it to be way too large, but there's almost always Sesame Street or something similar going on it now, and Steve and I usually watch a show on Netflix while we eat dinner after Connor's gone down for the night.  So even though I don't like the looks of it, it functions very well for our family's needs.  Steve built risers for our couch in the fall because we had more and more difficulty getting off it safely with a baby in our arms as Connor got heavier and heavier.  The risers are still raw wood, which looks terrible.  We were thinking of covering them in leather, but right now they just look funny.  We've also discussed getting a more baby-friendly coffee table, but for now we just supervise closely when Connor's around it.  And frankly, he's skilled enough at pulling up and getting back down now that we don't really have to watch that closely.  I also hit a new milestone in life: the spring decorations on top of the piano got left out so long last year that they are now season-appropriate again.  I rearranged things a little bit using items that had to be moved off the bookshelf.

The hallway.

Aside from the addition of a baby gate to separate Connor and the dogs when they're not being closely supervised, this looks almost the same.

Guest/baby bathroom.

Our guest bath gets a lot of use these days.  In reality, the tile doesn't look creamier than the tub, as it appears in this photo... the whites are very cohesive in person.  You can see evidence of baby stuff in the shower (there are some toys on the tub floor as well).  I'm happy to report that our DIY bathroom overhaul is holding up pretty well.  Now that it's been complete for almost a year, there's a couple of areas on the bead board I'd like to recaulk, and we still haven't gotten the matching extended shower head.  But both Steve and I have showered in here on occasion and we both think it's a very nice bathroom.  The tile and shower curtain going all the way to the ceiling makes it feel much larger than it is.

Blurry nursery.

I feel I need an extra apology for this blurry photo.  There was a baby asleep in the crib when I took the photo, and he has super-sonic hearing for anything that sounds remotely metallic (like a camera shutter) so I didn't dare take more photos for fear of waking him.  This room is wreck at the moment. The crib has been lowered twice in a month and I haven't bothered to reattach the crib skirt.  The rolling cart is holding outgrown odds and ends and there's a giant pile of additional outgrown items behind it on the floor and on the other side of the chair (hey rock n play).  The changing area looks a little worse for wear as well.  The paint chip orbs I made fell apart not long after Connor arrived on the scene.  We hung a Star Wars alphabet poster from our friend Rachael, which Connor loves so much that he regularly knocks the bottom part of the frame down.  He also loved the mirror so much that he figured out how to pull it off the wall.  So Steve nailed the frame to the wall.  And Connor pulled it down again.  So now it's just a blank wall full of nail holes.  The bins in the top of the closet have been working pretty well for storing outgrown and not-yet-grown-into clothes, but it's been tricky to keep up with them since Connor has changed clothing sizes 7 times in 8 months.  I feel like I am constantly rotating clothes into and out of his dresser changing table.

The office.

I rarely use our office anymore.  During the day, the dogs get free run in this area and the back half of the hallway.  We removed my leather chair (it was getting too saggy to type comfortably from it anyway) and replaced it with a rolling office chair that I had to bring home from work last June.  Our reading area has been taken down to make room for an extra dog cushion and more floor space for puppies to run around on.  My side of the desk is covered with random projects I haven't gotten around to doing for several months as well as our new gargantuan workhorse of a printer.  I also need to rethink my paperwork filing system because having an extra person in our family has created a shocking amount of additional records.  And because I know somebody will wonder, the green thing and the bowl on the floor are the dogs' food bowls.

The master bedroom.

I actually have some *pretty* photos of the progress on refreshing our bedroom and making it less precious, but this is what it has looked like for the majority of the last 4 months or so.  Bed unmade because of early baby wake-ups.  Connor's doorway jumper in a pile on the floor for easy access when I just need him to hold still for 10 minutes so I can get ready for work without worrying about him.  Vitamins and wrinkled sheets and cords galore.  Maybe the pretty photos will show up in another blog post one day.

Master bath.

First off let me say that our linens are not dirty like they appear to be in this photo.  I should've flicked the lights on before I snapped the photo, but I didn't, so you get an icky photo.  I hate it when towels look janky on towel rods.  Our towels have looked janky for months now.  Twice a week we get new towels out, and they look pretty for the duration of your shower, and then they get used and flipped onto the towel rod as fast as possible and look janky again.  There is actually less stuff piled on our bathroom counter than there normally is.  And not pictured here is the aftermath of a leak we had to our bathroom skylight in January.  After 2 tries we finally were able to find the exact source of the leak and stop it, but we've got a ton of drywall that will need to be replaced above the lights in this photo.

I didn't take any photos of the exterior or garage because sleeping baby, so here's the quick update.  The garage doesn't "look bad," but good luck if you need to find anything in there.  It's a hodgepodge of tools, paint stuff, lawn things, baby stuff, things waiting to be gifted-sold-donated-returned-rehomed, exercise equipment, classroom supplies, and boxes. Outside, our paint job is holding up really well.  There's a couple of trim spots around doors and windows that could use recaulking and a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise things look good.  I *think* all of the stuff I planted in the front yard and back yard overwintered.  And the bleeding hearts and coral bells on the north side of the house not only overwintered but are thriving (the ferns and everything in the window boxes were not so lucky).  Our lawn is a terrible wreck.  This was our third winter in this house and the mildest one in the PNW in years, so our lawn is a bumpy, mossy, dandelion-infested pit right now.  The faucet at the back of the house is still working great but we haven't gotten around to fixing the one at the front of the house.

So there's a peek into our house with an 8 month old in the mix.  Overall I feel like we are becoming a little smarter about what makes sense for us to have in our house with a baby here too, and we are definitely not pushing as hard to do things just for the sake of making it pretty.  What changed about your home once you had a baby?

Keepin' It Real

I have to let you in on a little secret.  Most of the time, our house is kind of messy.  And most of the time, we're not doing any home improvement upgrades.

Those photos you typically see posted on this blog?  They're usually taken when things look their best, like right after a deep clean or the clean-up from a project wraps up.  They're also usually taken in a short time span- we'll do one big project or several little ones over a three day weekend or a week when we happen to have the time and energy to do projects- and post about them quite a bit after they've occurred.

Steve and I love fixing up our home to make it a place we really like to be.  But there's a reason I've been averaging less than 5 blog posts a month during the school year.  We both work full time.  We have dogs that leave toys and hair (and the occasional other undesirable item) all over the house.  We get tired and don't always clean up after ourselves.  We help out our family and friends on the random evening and frequent weekend.  We attempt a social life.  We don't have kids, so I know that gives us more free time and less kid-created "tornado factor" than you parents out there.  Don't get me wrong, we're not entirely slobs when there's no cameras around.  And I know that different people feel comfortable with different levels of tidy/clean.  My version of "kind of messy" may look like your version of "really clean" or your version of "hazmat suits required for entry," and that's OK.  I merely intend to say that what you generally see on this blog is a representation of the best version of itself not our everyday life.  Reality means that I realize having my version of perfectly kept home, besides being an unwinnnable battle, is something that would not add value to my life or the lives of others.  I'm just fine with our house being kind of messy most of the time and squeezing in projects when we have the time, energy, and finances to do it.

Let me show you what I mean.  Call it Truth in Advertising.  The photos that follow were taken as I walked in the door from work on a Wednesday night.  The photos haven't been altered in any way.  What you'll see is completely typical of the usual state of our house (and some less than stellar photography).

The hallway.

Note the dog toy in the foreground, and the cable box waiting to be returned at some point.  It's been sitting unattended in the hallway for three days.  It's hard to tell in the photo but there are a dirty pair of flip flops stationed under the bench by the front door.  I'm supposed to put them in the bench cubby, but I'm usually too lazy and just leave them right where I step out of them.

The office.

Ah, the center of productivity.  On my side you can see two separate days worth of coffee cups, chocolate blueberries that I didn't bother to put away, a used paper towel and jello cup, a coupon book, receipts, hair ties, three half-eaten dog toys, and counting chips.  Steve's side features several soda cans and a dirty spoon.  The side table has one of Steve's fleece pullovers draped on it.  It's probably been there for about a week.  I spared you a close-up shot of the dust that has been accumulating since... maybe around spring break?

The kitchen.

Dirty things everywhere.  At least we managed to push in the chairs after dinner the night before.  All dirty dishes seen here (on the counter, in the sink, on the stove, on the coffee robot) have been left unattended for up to three days.  And FYI- after this picture was taken, two more days' worth of dirty dishes accumulated all over the counters and stove before they got cleared off and put in the dishwasher.  The plastic bags in the foreground and the clear bins against the far wall have been there for over a week- we can't figure out what to do with them now that we've had to replace our fridge (it died a slow and painful death).  Two days' worth of mail is languishing near the plastic bags.

Living Room.

The pillows are wonky, the blanket is in a weird spot. Other than looking a little disheveled, we're not doing too bad here.   Probably because we haven't watched any Netflix for about a week.

I didn't bother to take any pictures of our dining room, guest bathroom, or guest bedroom for the simple fact that unless we've had company over, none of those rooms get used regularly.  And since we don't have kids, things pretty much stay the way we leave them.

The bedroom.

I'm impressed that I bothered to straighten up the comforter a little before I left for work.  It was probably to give me room to sit on the foot board while I put my shoes on.  My PJs are in a heap on the floor.  So are a pair of jeans I wore four days ago.  Oops, is that bra on my nightstand?

The bedroom.

This actually looks better than normal.  Typically there's a stack of T-shirts waiting to be put away piled on Steve's highboy.  Here we only see the piles of clothes that were worn for the last three days.

The bathroom.

I tried to get a nice wide shot and spare you some detailed agony, people.  Towels are askew, rugs need to be washed.  On the counter you'll find cleaning products, two bottles of lotion, used tissues and soap, all of my makeup (some of which is spread out over the counters instead of in the wicker basket- and hidden under the sink- where it belongs), beard trimmings, long hairs that fell out of my hairbrush.  I didn't bother to photograph the toilet or shower, but neither have been cleaned  in about two weeks (yuck).

Obviously, my blog life is somewhat divergent from my real life.  And I'm so happy that's the case.  Although I think improving our home is fun and keeping it tidy is nice, our home is ultimately a tool to serve our needs and let us recharge enough to help serve the needs of others- not a showpiece.

Thanks for showing me a little grace for our imperfections.  Isn't life so much more pleasant when we try our best but still cut ourselves some slack?

A McListerson of Our Own

Come August, we'll have been in this house for two years.  Have we made a ton of progress in that short amount of time?  Heck yes.  Have we done everything we want to do?  Uh, no.

Just like John & Sherry, we keep a list around of all the projects we'd like to accomplish around the house.  It's not comprehensive, and sometimes we change our minds about what stays and goes on this list, but having a running list of all the projects helps us with planning and budgeting.  It also serves as inspiration when we run out of steam on a project (like I have right now with the path and planters on the right side of the house.  It's hard to be motivated when it's raining cats and dogs).  And anything that's still in the "just an idea" phase rather than the "it's only a matter of time before we tackle it" phase will be followed by a question mark- something Steve and I need to wait and see on or talk more about.  Normally I update this list in a shared GoogleDocs file every few months, but I figured it might do just as well to stick the list out here on the blog.  So, here goes nothin'.

Exterior

• Eight million landscaping projects (Exhaustive details on our plans can be found here)
• Chunk up the support post on the front porch
• Put up house numbers, front and back
• Replace broken screen doors outside dining room and master bedroom
• Purchase window screens for all north & south facing windows
• Prettify our mailbox
• Find a more permanent solution for missing knobs on water spigots
• Replace the fencing (hoping we've got a few more years before it starts disintegrating)
• Build up the trim around windows and doors?
• Plank the roof above the front porch?
• Install a second porch light to add symmetry and safety?
• Fix our driveway- concrete?  gravel?  asphalt?

Dining Room

• Card Catalog-esque buffet for small appliances and table linens

Kitchen

• Finish patching ceiling above pot rack
• Replace dinged, stained, and sagging countertops
• Fix ducting to heater vent
• Finish recovering ruined shelves with contact paper
• Add bins under sink for more better organization of sponges, scrapers, brushes, dish soap
• Some kind of privacy solution for kitchen window? (revisit once landscaping is done)
• Decorate above cabinets?

Living Room

• Add seating in front of windows?  (We did it out of necessity at Easter, and I kind of liked it.)
• Change stain on the Kentwood?  (I'm thinking less dark and more like weathered cedar.)
• Change color of frames on the gallery wall?  (Again, I'm thinking less dark, but not sure what I'd like instead....)
• Install can lights?  Maybe sconces?

Laundry Closet

• Finish "hiding" the under-cabinet support bar and pipes
• Add some fun artwork
• Install a counter top?

Hallway

• Replace wire shelving in linen closet with real shelves
• Add some character
• Gallery on wall between guest bathroom and master bedroom to disguise switches, and plugs, and detectors oh my?
• Two other large expanses of naked walls that need.... ???

Guest Bedroom

• Add crown molding

Guest Bathroom

• DONE!!

Office

• Add crown molding

Master Bedroom

• Touch up crown molding

Master Bathroom

• Touch up paint, trim
• Frame out the mirror
• Stain the vanity- espresso?

Garage

• Organize, organize, organize
• Paint the wall closest to the house
• Put trim around the side door
• Paint the door into the house black

This kind of listing actually makes things feel less overwhelming to me.  After all, look at all those rooms that only have one or two things left to do before they'll be done!  And holy cow, we actually have one room that is completely done.  It's just a tiny bathroom, but who cares, it's done!

Are you a list-maker?  Do you keep a giant lists of house projects too?

Garage: Move In to Present

I've managed to give a tour every area in this house except the one that Steve describes as "man territory."  That's right, the garage.  In our last house, we turned the garage into a sunken room which eventually became a nightmarish pit of moldy storage (a burst hot water tank will do that).  Our cars were relegated to the drive pad.  Once we moved into this house, I told Steve and I wanted both of us to be able to park in the garage.  This was especially important to me since we live in the downtown area of our rural community and most of the crime that happens here is vandalism or petty theft (read: bored teenagers).  I have had the lovely experience of running late for work only to discover your car window has been broken out and the contents of your car are in disarray or missing at previous residences, and I have no desire to repeat it here.  These photos were taken on a day when the garage was serving its alternate purpose- workshop for Steve- so the cars were parked outside.

Let's start with the view walking from the house into the garage.

Busy bee.

Fortunately, this house had a garage door that was still in usable condition when we moved in.  Unfortunately, it had no garage door opener.  Or rather, it did at one time but didn't any longer.  Getting the garage door opener installed was one of the first things we did after buying the house.  Steve also put up the two sets of long fluorescent lights (leftovers we got for free from his parents).  If you look closely, you can see that we use the rafters for storage.  We've got the two wrecked black screens for our sliding doors up there (we saved them because they're nonstandard size so we want to have them matched), the indoor/outdoor rug that used to be in our living room (we know we'll eventually have a place to put it again), the box spring from our mattress (I am still incredulous that Steve managed to get that thing up there), and a snow shovel.

Down the left side of the garage, we tried to maximize storage.  There were no shelves out here when we moved in; Steve built them all himself.

Holy hoarders, Batman.

I know it looks like a ton of stuff (and it is!) but believe it or not, it's pretty well categorized.  Closest to the garage door is holiday stuff and car stuff, in the middle there's camping supplies and dog supplies (including a large dog crate that opens toward the doggy door), and closest to the side yard is painting supplies and lawn care/gardening stuff.  You can also see the first coat of stain on one of my planters right front and center.  Hee!  This is part of the reason why we are planning on adding a lean-to style garden shed in our back yard. About five feet of linear shelf space can be moved out to the "garden shed," meaning we'd have more room to organize what's already here.  The small cement patio is right outside that door.  You can see the basketball hoop on our neighbor's back patio.  I'm just thankful we can see anything at all- that window was so crusted over with gunk when we moved in that it took three separate encounters with a soapy green scouring pad and a hose to make it clear again.  Eventually I'd like to put some trim around the door too.  I know it won't serve any real purpose since most of our garage isn't insulated, but it'll gross me out less than looking at the cobwebs in the gap between the frame and the drywall.

And speaking of places in our garage that accumulate cobwebs- here's our hot water tank and furnace system.  We actually manage to store most of our long-handled tools around our water heater, which works pretty well for us.  Steve hung a row of hooks right next to the door out to the yard to hang out extension cords on.  I have to tell you, this was the BEST thing we have done in organizing this garage so far.  It's so easy to see which length cord you're grabbing, and we have wayyy less issues with tangling than we did before.  Plus, it's right on the way out to the yard.  You can grab the extension cord you need while holding the string trimmer in your other hand, and then all you have to do is plug it in and string trim to your heart's content.  The rug that used to be in our entry is also here.  It's the perfect spot for it- it's cute, plus it's large and nubbly enough to get most of the wet and dirt off shoes and paws as we come in and out.  We have a basket full of dirty/yard shoes at the entrance to the house so we can easily find those stained-green old sneakers when we go to mow the lawn without having to trip over them incessantly.  And we've got a small chest freezer where our frozen meat lives, hidden by some boards Steve was using for a project that day.  I love that I don't have to sacrifice freezer space in my kitchen, and it's really easy to pop out to the garage and grab the meat we'll need for the next day or two.  I don't even have to walk on the cement; I can stand right on the rug and do it.  You may notice something weird with the color around the door into the house....

Identity crisis?

It's paint.  The same paint we used for the bulk of our home's interior.  Remember when I talked about painting the door black?  Yeah, still want to do that.  And then I shared this inspiration pic?

{via}

Yeah, still want to do that, too.  I actually got impatient once the new door was installed and decided to start paining the drywall to make things look a little cleaner.  I just patched some of the holes in the wall (who knows what they were from) and went to town.  There were also a lot of strange messages written in chalk and spray paint along this wall, not  to mention dinosaur stickers, so painting is helping things look less unkempt out in the garage.  See?

Apparently someone was queen.  Their reign is being endedby Sherwin Williams' Kilim Beige.

Here's the rest of the wall closest to the house.  This is what we refer to as our exercise center.

Let me get a little Clueless on you:  Exercise?  AS IF.

In addition to the treadmill (Steve's sweatshirt and a bag of talc powder are hanging off it), we keep our yoga mats, kettlebells, and Steve's heavybag out here.  Steve also had the genius idea of hooking up his older Xbox and a cheap TV out there so we can watch Netflix while we treadmill or use exercise videos if we want.  Our old door is hanging out waiting to be taken to the Habitat for Humanity store, and Steve's most recent target practice victim is on display.  Having been in the Army, he loves to shoot and he's a really good at it.  I joke that hanging this in the garage was a great way to deter potential thieves who may peer in through the side yard door.

The north wall of our garage is Steve's makeshift shop.  We already know that someday when we move, our next house will need a shop or a place to build one.  When the cars are pulled in, all of Steve's tools and equipment and pushed tightly against this wall (we keep a piece of cardboard over the legs of the band saw so I don't ding my door when I get in and out).  And obviously, things get pulled away from the wall when Steve's using them.

Man time.

His work bench is recently installed from an old tabletop used at his office.  We use a dresser and his tool chest for organizing smaller tools (although I use the term "organizing" loosely since I can't ever find what I need out there).  And surprise- more stained windowboxes drying on cardboard!

It totally looks a mess to me, but Steve is very accommodating as far as me doing the bulk of our home's organization and decorating, so I try to let him do what he wants (mostly) with this space.  And obviously he has a good time out there.

Gratuitous manly action shot.

 Does anyone have some good garage organization tips for us?  How do you organize a multi-function garage (shop, exercise, storage, lawn care)?

Guest Bedroom: Move In to Present, Really.

One thing about living in a relatively small 3 bedroom house- the bedrooms aren't that big.  The floor plan of our guest bedroom is essentially a mirror image of the bedroom that's currently serving as our office.

The office before- vanilla.

There's a window on the wall opposite the door, a closet to your left, and that's about it.  The only real difference is that the guest bedroom sits behind the laundry closet, so the guest bedroom is about a foot and a half narrower than our office.  And the fuse box is in the guest bedroom.  (Who thought that was a good idea??)

Although we don't host guests often (Tabi was the first guest we've had since we moved in 16 months ago), we wanted to have a functional guest room just in case.  We also wanted to avoid having our guest room turn into a junk room like the guest room in our first house did.  As you can see from this photo last August, keeping it clean is a constant struggle for us.

Looks like an episode of Hoarders.

However, we managed to get things cleaned up, donated, Craigslisted, or put away for Tabi's visit and tackle a few neglected little projects in this room.  Here's how things look now.

Ready for visitors!

We painted this room Kilim Beige from Sherwin Williams just like the office way back when we moved in and traded out the brass boob light for a less obnoxious (and super cheap) oil-rubbed bronze one from Lowe's.  All of the furniture in this room is hand-me-down or borrowed.  The bed frame, mattress, and nightstand used to be my Gram's.   The curtains, comforter, sheet set, and throw all came from Target on super-sale last fall.  We already had the pillows, so I was happy they could find a home in this room.  There's a leather bin on the lower shelf of the nightstand for clean linens, and a basic alarm clock, framed picture of a pretty landscape, and Tiffany-style lamp on the top.  The framed still life hanging over the headboard was one of the first decor purchases I made for our previous house.  My friend Laura helped me pick out the print and the frame, and I still love it. Until Tabi's visit, it had been leaned up against the wall in this room, waiting to be hung.  Three cheers for motivation!

Just hanging around.

On the other side of the bed, there's a library table that Steve's mom made that I loooove.  We couldn't find a place for it to live in the rest of the house where it wouldn't be obstructing traffic, so it came to find a home in the guest bedroom.  Luckily for us, the natural finish looks really nice with Gram's bedroom set.  We already had the candlestick lamp and the mirror.  The preserved boxwood topiary was snatched up on clearance from Target after it had been calling my name all spring and summer.

Cord management, anyone?

On the opposite wall from the bed, closest to the doorway, there was a little sliver of wall.  Gram's tallboy lives there.  It is juuuust narrow enough and there's juuuuust enough space between the chest and the bed.  Everything that lives on top of the chest are items that we already had.

Tight fit.

Although our guest room isn't plush, it's functional and looks nice enough.  At this point, there's not much left to do with this room.  The door is a little difficult to close- we think the contractors' drippy paint job on the casing is to blame.  One of these days I'll sand it down and repaint it, but for now we open and close that door so infrequently that it isn't really worth the effort yet.  And this room may eventually be a nursery, so there's not much point in really trimming things out.  Besides, keeping it from turning into a room-sized junk drawer will keep us plenty busy!

Master Bedroom: Move-In to Present

The house tour continues!  Our master bedroom has been "mostly finished" since move-in.  Like the office, we knew we'd be spending a lot of time in the bedroom so it was important to us for to make it comfortable ASAP.   We were aiming for a room that felt calm and luxurious.  Let me tell you, we have come a long way from sleeping on a futon (like we did in the early days of our marriage... until I put a knee through it.... long story).

Steve and I have never had bedroom furniture before.  After the futon, we did upgrade to a queen-size mattress.  It was our first big purchase as a married couple.  For a long time that mattress lived on the floor.  We kept our clothes in mismatched hand-me-down dressers and made do without nightstands.  Then we inherited a very pretty cherry veneer bed frame with two matching nightstands.  We felt so posh!  But after living with those for five years or so, we decided that as long as we were going to move into a new house, we might as well take the plunge and have a real grown-up bedroom, with furniture that matched and a mattress that two tall sleep-thrasers would comfortably fit on.  We drained a large chunk of our savings on a king size bed frame, two nightstands, a tallboy dresser, and a Tempurpedic mattress.  Let me tell you, that mattress is probably the best investment we have ever made.  Worth every last penny.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's what things looked like when we first bought the house.  When we first walked in from the hallway, we were excited about how BIG this room was!  Not that it's huge, but it was bigger than any bedroom we'd had before.  There was a sliding door to the small concrete patio in the backyard (which included a view to the aforementioned McChevron).

Blank slate.

And once we were in the room, we turned and saw this:

His and hers.  Oh yeah!

Steve and I were lucky enough to have a walk-in closet in our last house, but we've learned that walk-in closets mean you have to share space with your spouse, and unless your walk in closet is ginormous, that can be tricky.  His and hers closets meant Steve was excited about never having to trip on my shoes again and I was excited to never see a pile of his clothes on the floor again.  I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you it doesn't exactly work out that way all the time, but it's a lot easier for each of us to camouflage our own mess now than it was when we shared a closet.  I offer this photo as proof.

Hidden mess!

You can see three of the only four upgrades we did to the room itself in this photo.  We painted the walls a soft grey-blue called Rising Tide by Valspar in Sherwin Williams' low VOC Harmony line.  I think it's really pretty with the white base trim.  Steve and his dad installed crown moulding, which made a huge difference in making this room feel upscale.  We replaced the white wooden pulls on the bifolds with oil-rubbed bronze ones.  We also switched out the overhead brass boob light with a less obviously boob-ish one in oil-rubbed bronze.

My closet is on the right.  These closets were chock-full with icky looking coated-wire closet systems when we first bought the house (like pretty much every other closet in the house).  Steve ripped them out and built us a sturdy, more traditional shelf and rod closet system.  I've got a box of keepsakes and a box of off-season and off-size clothes above.  Shoes live below and in a hanging organizer that's hidden behind the right bi-fold.

A peek inside my closet.

Steve's also got keepsakes and off-season clothes in the top of his closet and shoes down below.  His closet is a little emptier than mine because he also has total use of the tallboy dresser in the foreground.

A peek inside Steve's closet.

 Since Steve gets to use the tallboy, I use the two storage drawers in the footboard of the bed.  I wish I had a better camera- it's difficult to capture how regal the furniture looks.  The headboard is sleigh-style.  We lucked out with the color scheme- the bedside lamps are tiffany-style hand-me-downs from Steve's parents in blue that go perfectly with the blue and brown that's already going on in the room.  We are still on the hunt for artwork to live above the headboard.  I have a very specific idea of what I want; I just haven't found it yet.

Comfy.

And then there's my quasi-vanity.  I wanted a place for my jewelry to live that wasn't in the bathroom or on my nightstand.  So I morphed a few different ideas I had seen on Pinterest.  I bought some cheap boxes at Target to hold our socks and my odds and ends like belts.  I spray painted an obnoxiously teal cheap-o mirror with oil-rubbed bronze and used a towel rack with shower curtain hooks to hold my necklaces.  I love that I can see everything easily.  Plus it's pretty.

Vanitatiousness.

 And thus concludes the master bedroom tour!  Only two more spaces to go before we're up to date, everyone- the master bath and the (eeps!) garage.