Home Improvements

This past weekend was busy. We have a long list of things we've been wanting to do with the house for the last, oh, 4 years or so and we are finally making progress.

The room I use as my office has had bare windows for the last four years. We bought some simple curtain rods and valences about two or three years ago and didn't get around to installing them until this past weekend.

Before:


After:


In 2003, we hired someone to paint most of the downstairs...but for some strange reason we didn't have her also paint the powder room and laundry room. I think it was a combination of cheapness and indecision on color. So, finally, we decided to be bold and used some leftover brick red paint to make the room a bit more interesting.

It is really hard to photograph a tiny powder room, by the way -- especially an interior room with no natural light. I had to use the flash, which naturally reflected off the mirror and all the nice shiny silver surfaces.


We thought some artwork would dress it up a bit, so I took six photos -- three of the pets, three of Montana scenes -- and applied a "sepia" effect, then printed and framed them with these two silver frames.


You can't see the pictures very well in the photo, so here are the sepia photos themselves at Flickr. I didn't notice it when I selected the pictures, but in the left-hand frame, the top picture of the river and the bottom picture of the road work very well together - they curve away in the same direction.

Anyway, we're happy with the results. Painting a tiny powder room is not much fun - we were constantly in danger of stepping (or sitting) in the paint tray, as there was no safe place to set the damn thing. After seeing it all done, I just wish we'd done it years ago--it is such a nice change from the cheap white paint provided by the builder.

We have several other jobs waiting on our list of additional work to do--mostly painting:

• Paint the laundry room
• Paint almost all the rooms upstairs.
• Install a new light fixture in the dining room. We bought it on Saturday; the only question now is whether I can install it without electrocuting myself.
• Finish cleaning and rearranging the loft, which is the room I use as an office at home. I've been working on this one (on and off) since November. I still have piles of paper to sort and file / shred / recycle /whatever.
  

Why are we doing all this? Partly because we've been meaning to ever since buying the house. Also, we are considering selling this house sometime in the next year or so. Where would we move to? That is still a matter of debate, as is the entire question of whether we move at all. Getting all this painting done should work out either way, I think.