It's That Time Again

It's been a year since we moved into our little duplex, and now it's time to move back out.  For the second year in a row, the place where we live is being sold, so out we go. 

The new place is a single-unit house (yay!!) a little bit north of where we live now. The house is much larger than the duplex we're leaving (yay!!), with two bathrooms instead of one (yay!!) and three bedrooms, which means we get our craft room back (yay!!) 

The move isn't until May 4th, so for the time being we're packing and cleaning and packing and cleaning.  Moving has catharsis built-in: after all the stress of looking for a place, filling out applications, and figuring out the money for the deposits and first rent, at the end of the day there's good, hard work to burn off all that stress.  Yes, I'm one of those crazy people who enjoys the physical aspect of moving.  The best part, of course, is setting up house after it's all over. 

No, actually, I think the best part is sitting around with your tired, dusty friends at the end of moving day with pizza and cold beers, laughing about all the work.  Yes. 

So the garage is full of boxes already packed; and the house is torn apart and upside down.  There's a mountain of cleaning I want to do now that it would make no sense for me to do until the duplex is empty.  Somehow in the midst of it all I need to lay down fresh sod in the backyard (it's delivered, I just have to find time to do it before it dies), wash two dogs at least once each, and figure out where all the boxes are going to go once the garage is full. 

Obviously, there won't be much in the way of projects here for a little while longer,  but I'll have pics of the new place to share in a few weeks. 

Onward!  Work now, collapse on the floor later. 

CAT TAX

@_@

You know that moment when you've been working on something big, and you suddenly stop and it finally sinks in that this is real... it's a real thing that's about to happen.  Yeah. That. 

We have a house! A duplex, actually.  Smaller than we're used to, but it's a great place, and the house we've been in for the past year and a half was really far too big for us.  Bulk day is on Monday, so we've been packing like crazy and purging furniture and small items ruthlessly.  Our motto right now is, "That's one less thing to move!"  It feels insane right now. I know everybody goes through this when they move, but it feels insane. I guess you know what I mean.  :)

After the 1st, I'll have pics of the new place for you, and likely a bunch of "hey, look how cute my shit that you've seen 10,000 times looks in this new room" shots, until I get actual projects going.  One of my favorite things in life is unpacking boxes and decorating a new space. 

I'm greatly looking forward to no longer being a live-in handywoman.  It was kinda fun, and interesting, until I broke my foot last year; since then I've just felt like the house was constantly pressing on me, looming over me to get things done and get caught up, and I'm tired of feeling that way.  That whole work-before-play thing has it's place, but it's all too easy to guilt yourself into doing nothing but work and forgetting to do the things that make you happy.  This new place needs nothing but decorating, and I'm SO excited to really get to know the new space without any attached responsibility.   

So, until the 1st, I doubt I'll have anything to post, but rest assured I'll be pretty much continuously covered in dust and tape and cardboard shavings. 

See y'all on the flip-side.

"Don't forget to pack me, Mama!" 

The Craft Room, and Another Big Change

I started this post two months ago, when I began working on the craft room.  I got a little distracted along the way, but we'll deal with why in a minute.   As you can see below, this room is red as fuck.  It's a gorgeous color, but very dark, and there's a whole lot of it in this big master bedroom-turned-craft room.

I started by finishing out all the baseboards, as in the rest of the house, and by cleaning, priming, and re-painting all the doors and trim.  The walls themselves are taking 2 coats of primer to cover up the red enough that it can be painted over. 

One wall of the room is textured with sand mixed into the red paint, just like the walls in the master bathroom walls ; except that on this wall, a sort of strié technique has been used to shape the sand texture into vertical  ridges. Just like in the bathroom, I wondered why??

While priming around one of the windows on this wall, I figured it out:  this wall is covered in wallpaper!  At some point, it was painted over (and over, and over - there are at least three different colors on top of it), and textured with the sand and dragging technique.

Hunter Green and burgundy, with gold.  Oh yeah! I thought. This house was built in 1984! Of course it's got plaid wallpaper. LOL.

I found wallpaper under the vanity in the master bath, too (blue with gold fleurs-de-lis)  - I bet it's all over the bathroom, under that sand texture. I can't believe I didn't put two and two together before.












So, I continue to chug along on this room.  It's about half primed now, and all of the trim and doors are finished;  It just needs a wall primed, and then paint on the whole thing. And while I've been working on repainting, I've also been  PACKING.

The Frost Is Off the Ground 

We're moving again.  My landlady-friend is selling the house.  Sylvan and I were supposed to spend 2017 preparing for a move to Oregon, but we both had a horrible year full of injuries and medical issues, and didn't get our shit together.  So we're looking for another rental house here in Austin. that isn't scary and that will accept 2 dogs and 5 cats.  And, of course, we're packing, and getting rid of as much as we can to facilitate a move into a smaller space, and eventually, a long move across the country.


I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of terrified.   But I'm pretty big on the idea of focusing on the tasks and items you can control, instead of worrying about the ones you can't.  We'll find a place; and in the meantime, I'm looking forward to not being anyone's live-in-handywoman anymore.  Projects are fun, right up until they're jobs.  Also, if I never have to repair any plumbing again, it'll be too soon.

So I'll keep you all updated on the usual house projects, the house search, and eventually, the new place!

BONUS CAT:  not supposed to be napping in houseplants

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Two Rooms (Both Alike In Dignity)

As much as I change my home - paint colors, furniture arrangement, the furniture itself, art and display - certain things never change.  My bedroom has been my bedroom for a decade.  My craft room has been my craft room for nearly as long.  I've mentioned that I was planning to swap the two spaces...it's begun.

I began with the closets: 

1.   First, I emptied my bedroom closet:

Ikea's STOLMEN post as closet rod:  great for a long wall;

although the rod is just a tad too wide for hangers to slide

comfortably. 

2.  Next, I started filling it, in order to clear out the closet in the sewing room.  I managed to get the ENTIRE contents of my sewing room closet into the bedroom closet, as well as the ENTIRE fabric wall, and, well, pretty much everything but my current sewing-in-progress and furniture.  Holy cow, this is a big closet!

Once the STOLMEN "rod" was down, I moved in the shelves

that once held fabric in my soon-to-be-ex-sewing-room.
(This closet is simply packed full;  actual organization
to occur at a later date). 

3.   That left me with an empty sewing room closet full of shelves that needed to be removed:

4.  Which was then fitted with a regular closet rod and wall brackets, and all of my clothing (which, despite this closet being the same length as my big now-ex-bedroom-closet, fits my clothes better somehow. It's a TARDIS.

*  I would like to thank, personally, both the inventor of the wheel, and my friend Debi for the use of her convertible dolly/cart, without which this job would have taken daaaays, and much back-breaking and expletive-flinging. 

And yes, that green box IS full of actual rocks. 

So now, both rooms are a shambles.  I can't sew until this job is done, but at least I have a space in which to sleep.  I admit, this project is so huge that it's been prohibitively daunting, but I feel good about it now that I've started.  Moving closets was a HUGE first step, and a necessary one.  You guys have seen my craft room - it was organized, but it was full.  Now there's room to move, and to slide things around in order to work on the room itself.

And I am somewhat pleased to report that during this process, I only walked into the wrong closet four times.

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