Command Central Before and During!!!

 oof. before. v bad. That stupid closet just collected everything and anything and it was a mess. All the papers and mail and stuff ended up on my desktop and on top of that cabinet. I took the bifold doors off the closet because they were just ALWAYS in the way. and I hate them generally. Mark and I found grey curtains at Ikea that look great!

also...for some incomprehensible reason they put two can lights in the ceiling for a six foot square room. I painted two coats of white primer on the walls before the blue, and that area was blindingly bright. I have replacement lights from Home Depot, a spot for the closet and a hanging lamp for above the desk.

 after emptying everything into the dining room. bleh. you can see in this photo that the builder absolutely loves loves loves recessed lights. there are an even dozen in the living room, kitchen and dining room. I find the ones in the living room especially incomprehensible, because I am used to there not being ceiling lights in a living room, and there is a ceiling fan so we could have a ceiling light if we wanted.

I am not a fan of recessed lights. I would get rid of all of them if I could.

 I taped. I never tape the ceiling, but because I was using a Woolie paint pad -- it's a woolie sheepskin paint pad that makes great texture -- I taped the ceiling and promptly hit the ceiling anyway. sheesh.

after painting. this photo doesn't do a good job of conveying what the texture actually looks like. It's much more swirly than it looks here. if we EVER get sunshine again I will try taking better photos of the texture.

notice that the desk is completely useless. it has no imagination, no cool details, just a granite slab and cheapass cupboards. granite desktops might look cool, but damn are they cold in the winter.

I am realizing now that the builder or the previous owner of this house or somebody apparently thought we would be doing minor surgeries here. The lights above the dining room table added up to 180 watts. Now we have a fisherman's lamp from Ikea with a 40 watt bulb and it's so much warmer and funkier feeling. which is what I live for, you know.

I will post photos of that Ikea lamp and the amazing wonderful pretty organized Command Central closet soon!

Things I have done lately.

Listened to my son bitch and moan about the weather in Minnesota. This is a kid who considers winter in the Puget Sound to be just fine, but snow in April makes him despondent. It may of course have something to do with being in the final spasms (I was gonna use a different word there, but couldn't figure out how to spell it...) of senior year at the UofM.

 Been seriously proud of my kids. Zach is staying put at the UofM (yay! not moving to Boston or DC!) to pursue a Masters in Maternal and Infant Public Health with an emphasis on epidemiology (ha. spelled that one right). Thor is heading off to Winona in the fall to start on a degree in Computer Science with an emphasis on human computer interfacing. And Tess is still a 4.0 drumming engineer.

 And if I am wrong about any of the details there, I am sure my kids will correct me toot-suite.

 Done a little moaning of my own about the weather. Northern Illinois is seriously grey and boring this spring. We are having a thunderstorm (actually more like a thunder minor event, since no lightning and thunder that actually rattles the house but is not loud at all) right now, but mostly it's been just grey. boo.

 Cleaned out my office area. I need a better name than that for it. Cleaned out Command Central. That's more like it. Off of the dining room is a little nook with a built in desk with a granite top. It's not a computer desk. The only indication that the person who built this desk even knows computers exist is that he drilled a hole in the granite top for the cords. There is no room in either cupboard for a printer or a CPU. Also, resting one's arms on a granite desktop in the winter is just freaking asking for hypothermia and frostbite. yikes.

 Repainted Command Central. It was a sage green that just did not work with the other colors in the living/dining/kitchen. Now it's peacock feather blue. Much more better.

 Dealt with the tremendous pile of stuff that came out of the closet in Command Central. We got a filing cabinet. Black, so of course it's gonna get spray painted or covered with fabric or something because it's boring. I still have the box of paperwork that was my "filing cabinet" to sort out, and the Mexican Cabinet is still right in the way of everything in the dining room because I don't know what to do with it, but my Closet Central is now beee-u-t-ful.

 Become really annoyed with car manufacturers and the car buying public. Really, damn. All cars are exactly the same. Neutral colors - and when it comes to cars, red has become a neutral. It's a safe choice. Identical designs. All sedans are now wedge shaped. All SUVs and mini vans are rounded off and streamlined and boring.  No whimsy. No playfulness. No imagination.

Fallen in love with my Alien. Kia's name for the green paint color is Alien, so my Kia Soul has become the Alien to us. I guess I really like naming things. I love my Alien because it is whimsical and different and fun. I don't take cars seriously and I heart having a car that doesn't take itself seriously. While still being an awesome car.

Final THROES. That's the word I was looking for. Zach is in the final THROES of undergrad.

Gotten a virus. It's a hideous virus, that gives you a sore throat and completely messes with all the plumbing in your head. My inner ears are itchy and annoyed and semi-plugged and my sinuses are just mean.

I have to go put the sheets in the dryer so Mark and I aren't reduced to digging out sleeping bags for bed tonight. I hate making beds, especially since we got the world's tallest queen mattress. Forcing the last corner onto the mattress requires a backhoe and an act of Congress.

And we all know how hard it is to get Congress to do anything these days.

things I learned or remembered about painting this week...

Dogs don't understand wet paint signs. Mojo has a blue ear and the tip of his tail is white, and Abe has new white patches on his side. I. HATE. Taping. I also HATE pulling down the tape. No matter what color white paint you have, it doesn't match any ceiling in any room in your house. Unless of course you don't get paint (or the previous tenants didn't) on the ceiling. Door frames in a corner suck. Dogs make good drop cloths. (I neglected to move the drop cloth to where I was painting, but Moj walked past me just as I dripped paint, so he saved our hideous carpet.) I have to start with white walls. Any other color, light or not, will change the color of the new paint. Painting sucks, but having walls painted NOT WHITE is awesome.

Sanding is fun.

No. It's not. Not fun at all.


I have a dresser. I hated this dresser.


We bought it when Zachie was a toddler, when we lived in Lacey, Washington. We bought it from an unpainted furniture place and had it stained a darkish oak.

We were young.

At some point I painted some of the drawers red. Because I did. Four of the eight big drawers.(I have already sanded the red off one of the drawers in that photo there.)

I may not have been young.

I don't know why I hated this dresser, except that the drawers are kinda shallow, and the red does not work AT ALL in our current bedroom scheme.

So Thor and I have spent much time today annoying the neighbors with sporadic sandings. Our hands do not like the vibrating and shaking and the dust in the eyes is no good.

But now it's looking really cool.  I was going to paint the case with dark gray, so that the grain still sorta shows, and paint the drawer fronts peacock blue, the color of our walls.

Also, I papered the light switch cover with some cool wrapping paper and about eight layers of mod podge.

But I am loving the raw stripped worn wood look of the sanded wood, so I am rethinking the whole thing. I am gonna just oil the hell outta the dresser with lemon oil and leave it at that. I can always finish it later if that doesn't work.

The idea behind our bedroom these days is -- okay. I have an idea. I know what I want. I just don't know what to call it. It's supposed to feel like the colonial days in the Caribbean ( c'mon, spellcheck. I add two "r"s and just one "b", and you can't figure out it's supposed to be Caribbean? Sad and pathetic.) or India or Africa, but not the bamboo pole and palm leaf. Instead it's should be feeling like furniture that was hauled in the hold of a ship from England or The Netherlands or you know, Europe.

Our bed is beyond awesome for this, and is in fact the genesis of this idea.

(the wall is peacock now, not white.)

This has no basis in reality, very likely, it's probably about as authentic as an Indiana Jones movie set. But I like it.

I am really tempted now to do the same sorta brutal sanding to this case.  I have already papered the inside back with the same wrapping paper used on the light switch.


This vanity is from my Mom's cousin's home, and is going in the room too, as my instead of bedside table.

But first I have to sand ten drawer fronts.

Where.

Where is my damn crockpot?

Where are the jeans I ordered?

Where is my cute little vintage crazy daisy pyrex bowl?

Where can I get an awe.some. but cheap vintagey old looking globe?

Where is that disc from Netflix?

Where is a tough question to ask.  I mean, I ask why, I can come up with plenty of them.

Why the Kardashians?

Why did I lose my crockpot?

Why is this keyboard so ridiculous and Why am I using it?

Why am I not independently wealthy?

Why did Harry Potter have to end?

Why?

Why is the sky blue?

Why didn't I get a vote about that?