My blog has been silent for almost a year. But it has been a year that has been eventful, in some rather non-traditional ways. I started working towards becoming a certified aromatherapist. I have been battling some pretty severe physical effects of depression. We had a spectacular family vacation at Disney World. My daughter was accepted to her dream college, where she will begin classes next fall. Our 18-year-old kitty Isabella passed way, peacefully and on her own terms. A year of change, and of both joy and sadness.
But tonight we spring forward and begin Daylight Savings Time. Even though Spring has not officially begun, I always feel like Daylight Savings Time is sort of the beginning of Spring. It will be light when I get home from work, which means I can work in the yard, go for a walk, meditate in the backyard, or just sit on the front porch and enjoy the sun. Everything is starting to wake up from a long, gloomy, rainy winter. (By the way, when did winter just become gray and rainy? What happened to snow?)
I have big plans for this Spring. I know, I know, I ALWAYS have big plans, but these are actually underway already! First, we are converting our dining room into a library. I have been steadily moving things out of the “dining room”, which has really just been serving as a giant store room for our junk since we don’t even have a dining table anymore. We carted off several un-reusable items to the dump, including a broken door, a falling apart bookcase, and, sadly, our old tube TV. The last one was hard – it still worked but no one wanted it. I literally couldn’t even give it away. The city doesn’t recycle them, so we ended up throwing a perfectly good TV in a dumpster. It broke my heart!
Anyway, environmentally-unfriendly disposal aside, I did get rid of several items on Freecycle, gave a bunch of stuff to Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and donated a whole truck load of clothes, household items, and toys to the Arc of Davidson County. We sold three huge boxes of boxes to McKay’s Books. And there wer five huge garbage bags of flat out junk that went into the trash, and at least that many that went into recycling. How did we have so much unused and unusable junk?
We used our tax refund to order 100% hardwood bookshelves and cabinets from Ikea. They have already arrived and are waiting patiently to be unboxed and assembled. We picked out a new paint color, which will carry through to the living room, and decided that while we were at it, we should go ahead and refinish the hardwood floors. I originally thought I might do a dark stain, as I love that look, but the room is fairly small and the shelves are already dark, so I opted instead to just sand them down and apply polyurethane, so that all the natural character of the 100-year-old wood comes through.
I will be removing the quarter-round and baseboards so the the shelving can sit flush against the wall. Then I will trim and reinstall the baseboard and quarter-round, which will give the shelves a built-in look. And don’t worry, I will have photos throughout the entire remodel!
This process has allow us to really think about what we want to have in our home. For example, we got rid of our desktop computer several years ago, but still had a huge desk that just ended up as a resting place for junk. We cleaned off and cleaned out the desk, and gave it away on Freecycle, then purchase a gorgeous antique Governor Winthrop drop-front desk, with four drawers, tons of cubbies, and even a secret compartment! It’s perfect for our laptop, and for storing pens, pencils, envelopes, computer peripherals, washi tape, etc. We got rid of our large dining table, on Freecycle of course, and purchased a small unfinished drop-leaf table with a minimal foot print. We donated our old TV stand, which was actually a coffee table, and purchased a smaller mid-century style cabinet with storage. Getting rid of some of the overly large items, and replacing them with items better suited to our needs has really opened up space in our home. Plus we now have pieces that really mean something to us (both Steve and I are in love with the desk!).
So where does the library project stand so far? After all, I DID say it was already underway. Well, so far I am still emptying out the room, which I am hoping to mostly finish this weekend. We have a couple of larger items that will need to go upstairs, so I need to clear a place for them before we can relocate them. However, we have already installed a new overhead light fixture. The old one was not my style AT ALL, plus it was meant to be hung over a dining table, so it was way to low.
We replaced it with a modern and kind of funky fixture that I think will look gorgeous in the finished room.
I love the pattern it makes on the ceiling.
I have other plans for Spring as well, so stay tuned to blog for updates!
Feature photo by:
Nikhil kumar
All other photos are mine