Mid-Month Progress

So my January goal was to deal with the flooring in the living room. Hideous. Awful. Bad. Nasty. Icky. We have carpet, it is just old and falling apart. You can hardly vacuum in there without pulling out long threads of loops. That conveniently wind themselves around the roller of the vacuum and then require you to sit and pick them out. So much fun.

We have honed in on carpet. Low hanging fruit. Truly "we" (AB) would probably (really) rather have hardwood. But we lack time, money and the desire to install it. And honestly I favor, for that room, carpet. It's the room where we roll around with the kids.

We have decided on style and composition and now just need to make a decision between the Home Depot "free install" (but carpet costs more) and the Cost Less Carpet, less expensive carpet but pay per square foot to a third party installer. I am leaning towards the Home Depot install only because when we were selling our other house and replaced the linoleum we went with one of Cost Less Carpet's recommended installers and he did a crap job, then refused to come back and fix it. Just not something I want to deal with.

So now we are doing the waiting and measuring and scheduling.

One of the Home Depot guys asked about paint on the wall. Yes, there is paint on the wall. No, he asked, fresh paint? Because it needs to cure a week before we install.

No, the paint isn't fresh, we told him and went about our business.

Then it dawned on me. HALF the room was painted a year ago or so. HALF the room hasn't been painted since we moved in.

And it doesn't look bad half painted. And in fact, I had only kind of given thought to someday it would be nice to paint that other half of the room and even knew what color it would be - the same neutral we used throughout the rest of the first floor.

Then I had a revelation! (AB loves my revelations.)

WE HAVE TO PAINT THE REST OF THE LIVING ROOM BEFORE THEY INSTALL THE CARPET!

We are going to spend a small fortune on super high end carpet, I am NOT going to want to paint that room for the next several years and risk (even with drop clothes - I am messy) a drop of paint on our beautiful carpet!

So January has become carpet and really quick finish painting the living room.

Today (and yesterday) I am hope with the kids as they have days off from school. Today, I tape and prep. Friday, we buy the paint. Saturday, I paint while AB takes Leif to his chess tournament. And hopefully the toddler naps better that day then he is today.

I really did get a lot of stuff done around the house today though. I picked up the play room. A small feat in itself. Days is how long I expect it to stay picked up. But while I was doing that I had another REVELATION!

My February goal. It's a revelation because AB is involved.

They always tell you at work that your goals shouldn't involve other people because that is out of your control. Yeah, yeah. I get it.

So here it is. My sewing stuff is in a bunch of bins and plastic drawers and stuff like that. I need a place to put it all and I have identified the perfect place! I just need a bunch of shelves installed. See that little inset area? It is a perfect nook for some "built ins". And I could even have a shelf dedicated to my sewing machine. And oh oh oh - imagine a table that folds down to CREATE a sewing table!

Ok, I know. Crazy talk. I just need the shelves. Then I can use that folding table over yonder...