Blue is the new ugly white

The boy's bedroom is all put back together, and this morning I cleaned up all the Lego wreckage and carnage in order to take pictures of it. When I imported the pictures to my computer I wound up putting them in the wrong directory, and in searching for their location I found a folder full of bad memories. A folder named "Original House Pictures". And this was how Nicholas' bedroom looked when we bought the house - back when Nicholas was explaining to our real estate agent, Stacey, all the grand plans he had for it. Our grand plan for the room was "less ugly".



As an aside, I can't believe how tiny he looked in this picture. It was only 8 months ago and I swear he's grown a foot since then.

On our second day in the house Tom ripped up the carpet, and while I have several less blurry pictures of this event, I chose to post this one because by sheer stroke of luck I managed to capture the pet-stained Berber carpeting, a small pool of the powdery "pet stain smell cover upper" that covered the carpeting pad throughout the house, the lacy pink curtains, the wallpapered closet, and all the original woodwork. And Mo, of course. He always has his paws in whatever anyone is doing. You can enlarge the picture by clicking on it, but do so at your own risk because this level of ugliness could burn itself to your retinas and haunt you in your sleep.





This is how the room looks as of an hour ago (with a cameo appearance by "the boy" playing Lego Star Wars II):

I promised him that Bumblebee would receive VIP treatment. This was one of Tom's gifts to Nicholas for his birthday this year. It's almost as tall as he is, and Nicholas' desire to have it hung up on his wall is what drove us to get the room painted.

It's still not done

Nicholas chose his room color months ago - "Silver Blueberry" from Pittsburgh Paints. I felt that his choice was too dark for the entire room so we compromised with one another by painting two walls in his choice and the other walls in "Pageant Song" which is two shades lighter. Nicholas would have undoubtedly declared that Pageant Song is "a girl color" - so I never told him the name. I only told him that it was exactly two shades lighter than Silver Blueberry, and if he ever asks I will tell him that it's called something like "The Totally Manly Steely Blue Color of Death and Destruction" so that he doesn't demand that I repaint it.





Still haven't hung the blinds up, but I did manage to find his curtains from our old house stuffed in the back of the linen closet. I have high hopes for productivity this weekend. I can hear Tom in there banging on something, achieving some home improvement, even as I type this.

Note: I didn't paint the window slide in this room because the windows in OUR room now require a disproportionate amount of force to open and close. Live and learn. Blinds will cover up any unsightliness. We still hope to have all the bedroom windows replaced within the next two years anyway.

2008 Resolutions, Project 365, and the OCD kid's closet

Historically I've never been much of a resolution maker, but for some reason in the past couple of years I've given it a half-hearted effort every year. For 2008 it seemed like I had my resolutions all mapped out before the leaves changed colors. Which leads me to believe that I was prone to pissing myself off in 2007. Tom has his own take on resolutions:

"I think it’s a silly day to set goals on. Goals can be set and achieved any day with my new system: Tom’s Goalsetting, the not gay New Year’s way!"

I'm not going to rattle off my whole list of New Year's Resolutions here, it makes my eyelids a little heavy just thinking about how uninteresting the entire topic would be. I will share that one of my goals this year is to give Project 365 a try, because I have a lovely D50 that hasn't been fulfilling its photographic destiny for over a year now. Tom was the one who turned me on to the idea of tackling this project, and I'm intrigued by the idea of being able to see an entire year of my life through the photographs I took. I feel as though I have a love/hate relationship with my camera which could be alleviated somewhat (if not totally) by using it on a routine basis, so that would be a definite benefit to trying to keep this resolution. I warned Tom last night that it means everyone will have to get used to the sight of my heinously large camera bag around the house. I'm a routine victim of the "out of sight, out of mind" phenomenon. At some point I will have to pick up a smaller SLR case but it's not real high on my list right now.

At the house:

We spent the weekend painting my son's bedroom (finally) but it's not entirely done. So I don't have any "entirely done" photos of it. But I do have photos of how we repurposed his closet a few months ago. To start I stripped all of this lovely wallpaper from his closet.



We tried to convince Nicholas to accept the wallpaper. We told him all about little boys who would KILL to have pink and blue flower wallpaper in their closets but ever since he started school he falls for these tricks less and less. The wallpaper came off about as well as the wallpaper in our closet did, which means "not very well at all". It came off in little shreds of paper and required constant reapplication of wallpaper remover because it sucked it up like a sponge then dried out almost instantly. If I ever experience a moisture problem in my basement I'm going to want to get my hands on some of this magic, moisture absorbing wallpaper that they put in the upstairs closets. If our roof were to start leaking I'd install this stuff on every ceiling in the house.

Since we knew we'd be painting the bedroom a dark shade of blue EVENTUALLY, I wound up painting the inside of the closet a color that looked like light khaki at the store - but in reality it wound up being more of a pale butter yellow. I wasn't a huge fan of it in the end, but it's a closet.

Then Tom tackled the frustrating task of installing the shelving system I wanted in half of the closet. It's a fairly straightforward bracket and standard system, but I never really thought about the fact that we'd have to screw the brackets into the shelf boards. The one other time I had used these particular shelves it was a more utilitarian application where I had bare metal shelf brackets with a lip at the end to keep the shelves from sliding forward. In Nicholas' closet we bought some more aesthetically pleasing white brackets with no safety lip on them. It wasn't rocket science or anything, but there wasn't any wiggle room as far as installing the brackets went because once attached to the shelves they still had to match up perfectly with the notches on the standards. This required MATH. Which is a recipe for disaster for me, but Tom makes up for what I lack in the book learnin' department and it all went up securely - and LEVEL. Imagine that!





The shelves are for Lego storage sorted into plastic bins based on the size requirements of each kit. This is most definitely ME imposing my neurosis on HIM, because Nicholas would be fine stuffing them all in a paper sack. The colorful open-bin storage rack is your basic Target special that he's had since he was a toddler. As his toys become smaller and more intricate, this open-bin system becomes less and less practical for toy storage. For now it still serves its purpose for Transformers and various little boy "weaponry" of the Power Rangers and Star Wars variety. Because I recognize his need to be able to grab his lightsaber on the fly. There's no time to search for these things. I'm a cool mom that way.

His actual clothing storage needs are minimal, so in every house we've lived in I have modified his closet for toy storage in a similar way. I wanted the option to hang his winter shirts and sweatshirts and that's about it. He has a giant dresser to hold everything else. In the wasted corner space we installed some double coat hooks to hang backpacks, robes and crime fighting costumes on. This keeps all that stuff up off the floor. The closet doors are down in the basement being painted. Leaving the closet open like this would cause Tom and I to hyperventilate every time we were in the room, although I'm sure Nicholas would appreciate the easy access. Because opening and closing those closet doors is just one more annoyance in his everyday life, and he's all about streamlining his playing experience.

Once we get the closet doors up and the blinds hung I'll post them. And since I have to find things to photograph every day, the chances are very good that I'll actually follow through with it.

He told Bill that if we move his desk one more time, then he's quitting

My son's computer desk used to be in his bedroom right under one of his windows (and he could see the squirrels, and they were merry). It was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Like rolling your jeans. Or Color Me Badd. The reality was that it left his room quite cramped.

In July a solution came to us in the form of the local Home Builder's Association moving to new offices. They sent out an email to members offering up cubicle walls of various sizes on a first-come-first-served basis. All we had to do was pick them up, which Tom did one afternoon with one of our work trucks.

With the cubicle walls we were able to section off a space in the unused (because of the PLAID CARPET) rec room downstairs into a little computer haven for Nicholas right outside of Tom's office. Not that Nicholas spends much time down there playing on his computer anyway, so the little "room" also serves as storage space for a lot of his old gear - which we keep around because even though he doesn't play with all the stuff his three cousins sometimes stay with us and then we need more toys and we need them all in a place far, far away from wherever we are.





This is another one of those awkward angles that are so prevalent in our house. But here's a wide shot of the whole set-up, which winds up forming a long hallway down to the two downstairs bedrooms that currently serve as Tom's office and our guest room - while giving us more places to store things where people don't have to see it.




But if we take his stapler, he'll burn the building down.