Home improvements?

Last week I went out to dinner with some friends. It wasn’t a “birthday outing” exactly, but since it was in the week of my birthday, I counted it as such. Actually, one of my faraway friends was in town, so we used that as an excuse to get some friends together and go out to dinner.

When I came home, I walked into our disaster of a mudroom (imagine coats, boots and shoes for not just the normal 7 people who live here, but for 13 people! All over the floor of the mudroom! Seriously, a disaster!) to see my brother-in-law standing on the counter in the mudroom, yelling into a hole in the wall. Yes, a HOLE in the wall. When I first walked in, I thought he was yelling at ME for coming into that room, but I quickly realized that was not the case.

The kids were running around and when they saw me, they said, “Mom! Dad made a HUGE HOLE in your bathroom!!!” They were so excited to tell me, and all I could think was, “Oh, joy.” I went upstairs to the master bath to see my husband laying on the floor, yelling into the hole. Really, it wasn’t a hole, he’d just taken off the front piece of marble that usually hides the innards of the tub.

Oh, and here’s another shot of the “hole” with my cute curtains in there. Since I’m showing you my bathroom and all. (Sorry I didn’t clean it for you.)

And I have no idea why this picture turned itself sideways as I put it in there. Ugh.

We had talked about doing this little project, I just didn’t know beforehand that this was the night to do it. You see, our hot water has always been kind of sluggish in getting to our bathroom. It is, after all, two floors up from the water heater to the bathroom. So, they installed some kind of direct circulation line from the water heater right to the bathroom.

It’s NICE. I mean, we have this nice shower with two shower heads, but it’s taken so long for the hot water to get up there, I hardly ever used the second shower head.

In other home improvement news, my husband finally ordered our boiler! I know, you’re wondering why we need a boiler when we have a water heater, but the boiler is for the radiant floor heating.
When we built the house, we installed all the pipe and everything for our warm floors, but we didn’t have the money to buy the boiler at that time.

We’ve decided it was time to order the boiler. There’s a tax rebate, so we got that ordered by the end of last year. Hooray! I’m not sure when that’s going to be installed, but I’m looking forward to some WARM cozy floors.

Ryan is out of town this week. He’s in Vegas at CES. He’s schmoozing, and explaining, and **EEK– a big spider just ran by. I tried to smoosh him but I missed. I may have to leave the room**

Ahem. Ok, I’m back. I’ve regained my composure.

While Ryan’s out of town, I usually like to tackle one organizational project. Last year I did the closet. This week I’ve been rearranging the bedroom. Because I’m kind of a rearranger. When I get bored or dissatisfied with my furnishings and start to wish for new stuff, it helps if I just clean and organize everything, sometime rearranging it in the process. Because of all the windows in our bedroom (3 of them, on two different walls), it makes it a little difficult to arrange the furniture in there. I don’t have a decorator’s eye, and I wish I knew someone who did, because I just arrange and rearrange the same furniture trying to find the right fit.

Before Ryan even left, I had him help me move the bed from one wall to another. It’s kind of hard to move a California King by myself. I got the bed settled in it’s new place, then during the week I got the dressers and other stuff moved around. But once I got things in place, I realized that I couldn’t put the dresser and mirror over by the window. I singlehandedly moved the BED, the heavy dresser, AND the nightstands.

It turns out one person CAN move a big bed by themselves. Just imagine me on the floor, pushing at the bed frame with my feet. No, it wasn’t graceful, and it wasn’t pretty, but it got the job done. It feels nice to get the clutter out, all the clothes put away and the room cleaned. The baseboards are dusted (it was VERY scary to see the amount of dust that had collected on those baseboards behind the bed after 5 years of neglect), and the silly pink garage sale curtains even got taken down and washed. Ick. There was a lot of dust on those curtains.

Now I’ve got the room cleaned organized, and rearranged. I even went shopping yesterday for fabric for new curtains. I don’t know how long it will take to get new curtains made and hung, but I’m excited about it.

I also like this little corner over here. I moved my tiny bookshelf and a chair to make a cozy reading corner. Isn’t that great?

The only thing I haven’t moved yet is the dresser with the tv on it. For one thing, it’s a heavy beast, and I don’t want to break anything in the process. And, if I unhook my tv, I’m not sure I would be getting it hooked back up again. And I do enjoy having a tv in my room.

So now I need to figure out what kind of curtains I want to make, sew them, hang them, and then find some decor for the walls. Piece of cake, right?