Busy few months and a lot to catch up on! But wanted to start by recapping our house project for August & September. We combined 2 rooms - the old office and the old gym - into one big "Bonus" room upstairs. Since it was two rooms, we gave ourselves two months, and boy did we need it! There was a lot to do in these rooms and a few hiccups along the way. Here's a rundown of the highlights:
- Curtains: This was as easy as a trip to Kirkland's Home for a curtain rod and some fun printed curtains in teal. We had actually started at Target and found some beige and coral curtains that we liked but didn't love. Then we ducked into KH on the way back to our car and found these beauties instead. This probably made the biggest "pop" of difference in the room.
- Wall Art: In order to pull the teal color over onto the adjacent wall, we decided to re-purpose some canvas art work from our last house by covering it in fabric. We went to JoAnn's and found the peacock-inspired fabric below. Matt had to paint the canvas white since the previous art was darker in color. Then a few minutes with the staple gun and we had stretched the new fabric over and hung these bad boys up.
- New Furniture: Our old desks were very basic table-tops from IKEA and our bookshelf was a hangover from Matt's college years. So ordering new furniture was a fun splurge and took up most of our budget for these rooms. We found this Sauder set online and had good experience with the brand (Ryan's bedroom furniture) so we went for it. But the shipping was a bit of a debacle. It took a while for it to get here, and when it finally arrived, a few of the key pieces were visibly scratched and had to be replaced. Getting the replacement pieces was a pain since some of them were on backorder, so it really stalled our progress. Frustrating, but the end result was good since we really like our new desks and bookshelf!
- Photo Array: Always looking for places to put more adorable pictures of our son, we decided to create a photo array in the bonus room. That way we could look at fun photos while we work (me) or play video games (Matt). I selected a few of my recent favorites, bought a few cute wooden frames on sale and Matt was kind enough to hang and level all of them for me.
- Gym: We consolidated all of our gym equipment into one area to clean up the room some and make room for the desks. I got rid of my treadmill since I haven't been using it much (at all) lately. It's too noisy to use while Ryan is sleeping, but if he's awake, both he and the dog want to walk on the treadmill with me. You can see how I might not get the best workout with their "help" :) Matt offloaded him on craigslist and our new home gym is down to just essentials.
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We were able to do a lot of cleaning, organizing and consolidating throughout these two rooms. Now the Bonus room is an enjoyable, open space for both working and working out. The old office is now an empty room - a landing space for extra storage for the time being while we try to decide what to make of the space. Stay tuned for the rest of the housing excitement coming soon!
