Creativity Room Master Plan...B

After consulting the experts at Sherwin-Williams, it has been determined that we have a few options that do not include what we thought we would be able to do, which was to put a nice big wallpaper band-aid over everything and pretend we never saw it.

Option 1:  Put a 'skim coat' over everything and start with a new surface resembling plaster.  Considering my skills at frosting cakes, this is definitely not a good idea.

Option 2:  Put a new layer of drywall over everything.  It may be weird, but knowing that I would lose an inch overall in the room would really bug me.  Call me picky.

This is obviously me.

Option 3:  Get the sledgehammer, have a couple cocktails and bang out some walls!!  This totally sounds like it would provide the most excitement.  But it would also take quite a while, I would be doing most of the demo myself (see pic), and I would like to make that room functional sooner than later.  Knocking out the walls would mean mess, cleanup, drywall, mud & tape (gag), sand, fix spots, prime & paint, decide I don't like the color and repaint.  That last one I threw in just for good measure.  Plus, we're not exactly drywall hanging pros, you know?  The ceiling in that room is all slanted and the house is old and crooked and the chances of us getting it all straight and wonderful aren't so hot.  At any rate, it's not a quick solution.

The Winner:  Strangely, the solution we have come up with makes me very happy!  Thanks to a conglomeration of high quality brainstorming, and a great suggestion from my friend Kimberly over at Scrap It Girl, this is it:
Ceilings will be redrywalled and painted some wonderful yet-to-be-determined color of my choice.
Lower walls will have wainscoting, topped with a chair rail where the wall meets the ceiling (about 3 1/2 feet or so off the floor).
Opposite walls will be covered in cork board (thanks Kimberly!).

Yes, the old mess will still be under there, but considering the lovely mental picture I have of what the room is going to look like, I'm just gonna go ahead and suck it up.  My OCD can kiss it.

My darling, wonderful, loving, hot, sexy, manly, macho, brilliant hubby said if it rains today and he can't work outside, we can voyage to the hardware store and get the supplies (Hi honey!  I'm ready to go!).  Yay!  I can't wait.

So I need to ask you all a favor.  PRAY FOR RAIN.  If you don't pray, then cross your fingers, cross your eyes, do your dance or sing your song.  Whatever you do, do it with RAIN in mind!!!  I will reward you all with another blog full of pictures of room progress and me being ecstatically happy.  And who doesn't want that?! 

Bite. Chew. Choke! I Bit Off Too much!!

There comes a time in the life of every person where you realize you're in a real big pickle.  In regards to this 107 year old farmhouse in which we live, we have been in many a pickle.  You know those GIANT pickles you can get at sub places or delis?  Yeah, those are good. 

This isn't like that at all. 

We came across this problem before when we were renovating our 1st floor powder room; multiple layers of badly applied wallpaper.  Wallpaper itself is just bad to begin with.  I mean, if you've put it up once, chances are you are so scarred for life that you'll never attempt it again.  If you've ever removed someone elses wallpaper disaster, you ARE scarred for life enough to never even consider wallpaper an option.  We're pretty well-rounded over here in the wallpaper-experience department.  As it turned out, our 1st floor powder room not only had a couple layers of wallpaper, but at least one of those layers had been painted over and new wallpaper applied over it and at least one layer was done with no sizing.  Of course.  And no amount of Basic H2 can touch that (yes, you can use it to remove wallpaper, and it works just as good as DIF.  Maybe better).  Once we realized the situation was hopeless, we ended up knocking out the walls.  Using a sledgehammer is actually quite exciting, I highly recommend it. 

Here's Bathroom Demo Bonnie.  You can't say I don't look excited.

In a house full of wallpaper horrors, we scraped our way down to one last wallpapered room.  My future creativity room.  After pulling off the top-most layer of wallpaper and border combination very easily, we were feeling pretty dang positive about how this room was going to go.  Both kids rooms were a piece of cake, and this room is in close proximity to theirs, so by association it should be cake too, right?  Here's a tip:  if you're going to remove wallpaper, remove it from plaster walls, not drywall.  Drywall stinks. 

My future creativity room is drywall.  And the very first layer of lovely pink and green floral striped wallpaper was done with...drumroll...no sizing.  It appears as if wallpaper layer applier #2 (keep up, here) attempted to remove layer #1, quickly abandoned that idea, and just wallpapered right over it.  But not before painting over some of that lovely stripey wallpaper with a gorgeous shade of country blue.  Wallpaper, paint, more wallpaper, with a border on top.  Sounds awesome, doesn't it?!  Yeah, it totally isn't. 


 

 It's a disaster.

What I thought would take me a couple days of H2'ing and scraping, washing, and repainting, will now involve a trip to Sherwin-Williams.  TO LOOK AT WALLPAPER.  My future creativity room is now my WTF DO I DO NOW? room.  But hey, I guess I can look at it this way;  I never thought I'd be putting up wallpaper again and now I will be.  Wait, that was supposed to be a 'glass half full light at the end of the tunnel' statement.  Shoot.

Oh well.  I've decided I'm going to try (very hard) to find something positive of my room every time there seems like there couldn't be a single damn positive thing about it.  So, have you seen my pretty hinge?

 

Oh, right. I posted that last time. 

Well...if you were a cat it would be GREAT!  

The view is like cat t.v., look at that action shot!

 My fingers in the picture are a total bonus for you, dear reader. Photographic proof of my mad skills. Yahoo!  

We're off to see the wizard Sherwin-Williams!  Later gators!

My Future Creativity Room

Installment one! 
I have been working on cleaning out this room of toys and toy shelving, and other kid-related items.  Obviously I am not done.  Here's a shot of me clearly not quite being done...

I've made more progress since I took this picture, thank goodness.  

That's dog-body in the lower right corner, in case you were wondering.  

The room sure isn't pretty (yet), but hey, 

check out the cool hinge on my door!

This room is getting cooler by the minute, dont you think?  Next step is stripping the wallpaper backing, which is gonna be a blast.  I couldn't help myself yesterday, and started picking at corners and edges, which is where I discovered that part of the wall is painted-over wallpaper that I'm going to have to remove.  I love that.  Oh my God I love that SO MUCH.  Here's what I accidentally did...

Awesome, right?!  I know.  I'm awesome.  Hey, it's progress!!

I'm Kinda Junky

I've been thinking a lot lately about what direction I'm going.  Both of my kids are in school all day, and I don't 'work'...outside of my house, that is.  Of course I still run my Shaklee business, as it is near and dear to my heart, being all about nutrition and health.

But I've been feeling...unoccupied.  Like my brain may not be getting enough stimulation and parts of it aren't working correctly anymore.  My ridiculously awesome sister-in-law says it's mommy-brain, but I don't think so.  Maybe I could blame my airiness on mommy-brain in the sleep-deprived days of infants and the 'can't stop to think of anything else but what my toddler might be getting into' days, too.  But not now. 

I'm a fairly creative person, that is, I like to make things.  When I say creative, I am definitely not saying that the things I make are necessarily good or original or artistic like so many that are really worthy of the title 'creative'.  I just like to make stuff, especially sewing and crafty type stuff.  And being a greenie, I tend to gravitate towards projects that have something to do with recycling, reusing, repurposing, whatever you want to call it.  Surprising, I know.  And I can really thank Pinterest for a lot of my inspiration lately, as there is no end to the fabulousness of remade junk that you can find on the internet and pin.  (Yeah, thanks a lot Pinterest, cause what I really need to do is spend MORE time on the internet.)  In fact, I've created a board of just the type of projects I'm talking about and I add new things to it every day.  You can follow me on Pinterest if you'd like...the little link is over on the right of this page. 

So now that my kids aren't babies anymore I am taking over their playroom, which was once filled with many colorful specimens, playsets (many of them vintage), and other now-neglected toys.  I'm reclaiming this space.  God, I'm so GREEN, how can you all stand it? 

When I die, this is what heaven will look like.

I have a number of projects lined up already, whether they are items I never finished or items on the to-do list, and many of them are using items that I've either bought not knowing what on earth to do with it but out of pure covetousness (is that a word?), or things that we no longer like or have use for that are just 'too good' to throw away or give away.  I have {conserve} very deeply ingrained in me, what can I say.  I also have quite a collection of wonderful items that I have collected to use in some un-pre-determined way, put away for a rainy, yet inspired day.  I call this stuff treasures.  My husband, though, calls it something else...when he talks about it it sounds a lot like...'hoarding' or maybe 'junk collector' or 'collection of crap'.  I don't know, but I think there must be something wrong with his mouth. 

At any rate, I do believe I will be using my time a little differently in the days to come, and I hope that I make things worthy of an Etsy store, or if they're not too hideous I'll keep them for myself.  I'm kind of excited!  I'll undoubtedly be blogging about it, which will involve many pictures.  I have a feeling some of those early blogs may have quite the comedic factor as my skill level builds.

Hey, everybody loves a good laugh, and I really don't mind it being at my expense...usually.  I know how to laugh at myself *wink*.  So stay tuned, or if you get bored waiting, check out my Shaklee store and buy some healthy, green stuff to help fund my creative process. 

See you soon!