How to Turn Your House Upside-Down part 4

The Master Bedroom

Well, there was a very brief time in the course of this series where my house was clean. We're talking every room of the house was at least 90% clean, every single day. Sometime after reorganizing the dining room to include the new sideboard, and setting up the wardrobe in the nursery, we needed a break from the general upside-down-ness of organizational projects. I'd say it probably lasted a week and a half.

And now it's all undone again.

After my tea party, we decided that we didn't need the house to stay pristine for any upcoming events, so it was the perfect timing to start the big overhaul of our master bedroom. And when I say 'big overhaul' I mean everything is coming out except the subfloor; new baseboards, new carpet, new light fixtures, new paint on everything including the ceiling... This is a big project. This is also the project we've been trying to get to for the longest. Our hallway upstairs has sat without baseboards for 4 years now. We took them off to paint, and left them off in anticipation of getting new flooring, but something else always came up before we were able to buy the new carpet (hot water tank dying, dishwasher blowing, more kids...) So now we finally are getting the new carpet that will cover the stairs, that hallway, and our bedroom. So excited!!

But in the meantime, I have a dining room full of excess furniture again. And a temporary bedroom set up in the basement. Matt and I are sleeping on our mattress laid on the floor in the basement, with out dressers and night tables down there, while our headboard, bed frame, hampers, shelves and box spring are all shoved in a corner of the dining room. We also don't have carpet on the stairs or in the hallway or bedroom since we needed to tear it all out so we could have a place to do all of the painting of our doors and baseboards. That means the kids can't play in the basement because there is simply no room, they can't roam free through the upstairs because of the potential for slivers, and they have be supervised in the dining room so that they don't pull anything over on themselves. My poor kiddos are going to go crazy by the end of the week... Hopefully it stays warm outside!

Since we started our overhaul on Friday, we've stripped the floors, pulled out any remaining baseboards in the bedroom, puttied all the walls, primed and painted all of the door jams, primed the bedroom and closet doors, and done one coat of paint on the ceiling. I'm a little bit useless when it comes to alot of this stuff (I don't have the balance or strength when I'm pregnant to hold the doors upright while I roll them, I'm allergic to the rubber pad that was under our old carpet so I nearly had to evacuate the house during the tearout, and given my pregnancy I'm limiting my exposure to paint, so I can't just paint all day long). So I've taken some of my extra time to do a couple other touch ups through the house, like filling holes in other rooms and touching up the paint on those walls, plus on areas like our banister downstairs and anywhere I see a chip in the paint through our house. I've done all I can do up to this point and until Matt gets the ceiling painted and the doors rolled, I can't get started painting the walls in the bedroom. But that's about the last thing I can actually do! Matt will need to rewire the lights to install a new ceiling fan we got, he'll need to cut and install the baseboards, he'll need to put in the carpet and even rehang the doors! Plus, after I do one coat on the walls we're going to wait for the second until the baseboards and carpet are in (the walls are bound to get scuffed during the installations), so I'll be sitting around being useless for a little while in between. Depending on how crazy my household feels at that time, perhaps I'll break out the sewing machine and make some accent pillows for the bed. Funnily enough, when it comes to 'finishing' the room, it's all up to me. I'll be responsible for the menial tasks like steaming our window panels, rehanging curtain rods and pictures to ensure they sit in the ideal location, dictating where furniture needs to sit and figuring out the accent pieces for the room. We're moving the bed to sit under our window and since we moved our big art piece from over our bed to the dining room, we actually have a surprising amount of open wallspace on what is supposed to be our accent wall... looks like we need to find some more artwork too! I'm thinking something bold and a bit dark with deep, smokey blues and strong reds. Perhaps we'll have to commission a piece from one of our artist friends (which we have quite the number of actually!)

I've noticed that the general cleanliness and tidyness of my house is shot when so much is out of place. I find it harder to convince myself to do the dishes in the sink when I look around and see how trashed everything else is too. Instead of trying to preserve the areas that can still be maintained, I just feel drowned by the messiness and feel like I've already lost. But it's just for another week, right? After next weekend when all the painting and flooring is done and our furniture moves back in, everything will be back to normal. Right?

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)