Spare Oom

Our guest bedroom/workspace is affectionately called "Spare Oom". If you get that reference, I bet you are smiling! It's the smallest room besides the bathrooms and it probably needs the most work. The carpet has things melted into it and is pink in spots. The walls are smooth in some places and textured in others. The ceiling looks like a child had some fun with cottage cheese. It's just a really bad room. All of that is going to change! I'm planning a major overhaul.

First, the floors. We are going to install laminate flooring. The type I picked out is gorgeous and looks just like real wood. The color is amazing. This will also be installed in our front "foyer" area. I would love to have this put in my entire house because of our allergies, but I think we may just do our bedroom eventually. You kind of need carpet in the front room...

The walls are in okay shape, just need a new coat of paint. We are replacing the baseboards and door frames. The window doesn't have a frame, but we may install one. We decided on Behr paint (they have $5 off each gallon for memorial day, score!). The walls are going to be "Promenade", which is a sagey-green and the trim is going to be "Warm Muffin", a pale yellow. Lastly, the door (which will also be new) is going to be "Polar Bear", which just looks like white to me, but I like the name! Alexa said "Polar Bears are promenading while eating warm muffins". I wish I could name paint colors. Whoever has that job is awesome.

The closet currently has no doors, but I don't think we'll replace them right away. I am going to wait for them to go on sale. The ones I want are the mirror sliding doors. They aren't anymore expensive than the normal sliding doors, so I figured the mirrors would look really nice.

Lastly, we bought almost all new furniture for this room. Generally, it won't have a bed in it. Last year right before we closed on the house, we got a great deal on a fantastic queen sized air mattress. It's 25 inches tall and really comfy. Even my parents slept on it and thought it was great. This saves us a lot of room when we're not using the bed. My sister directed me to a great website that has all real-wood furniture for a great price. They had a special going on, so I ended up getting something for free. I bought an armoire, a nightstand and a cute little bench. I found a desk at Target for my computer.

The other thing we're doing is replacing all of our entry doors. They are all in pretty terrible shape and are rather inefficient. We're getting our new windows installed in two-three weeks, so what is the point if our doors are leaking too?

My only problem right now with all of this is - what color do I paint my front and back doors? I want to paint them blue (the guy at Home Depot even suggested blue!) and Forest is saying we should just paint them white. White is boring! Anyone have any suggestions?

So, we are going to be insanely busy coming up here, and apparently very poor too! After this project is done, I am going to be resting for a while. I think my dear husband can only take so much of this!

July 8th

I can't believe it's been 16 months since I have been to Michigan. I thankfully have been able to see my parents since then, but I miss my sister (and occasionally my brother!). Crystal and I are both planning trips there for the summer. I went back and forth between driving and flying and with how many miles are on our cars, flying won. Due to some heavy financial "burdens" we've had lately (I will talk about that later), we decided that I would go alone this time. I bought my ticket from DFW to DTW, but I haven't booked my flight home yet. The flight there has a lay-over in St. Louis of all places (an airport I am NOT fond of, but I will deal). I'm still debating on what airline to take and it wasn't any cheaper to book it round trip either way I went. I'm being a cheapskate because I don't want to pay a single cent more in fees for anything. These luggage fees are just insane considering I'm paying nearly $75 more for this ticket than I normally would. I pre-packed to make sure I could fit all of my clothes into my carry-on luggage and I managed to fit it all. On the way home, however, I may fly Southwest so I can check a bag for free. I'm going to pack a duffel bag flat in my carry-on and stuff it full of my clothes for the trip home. I'll check that and bring anything I buy home with me in my carry-on. It saves me money and the flight home is non-stop. So, I definitely leave for Detroit on July 8th and I'm pretty sure I am coming home on July 22nd (but at 6:30 in the morning).

As for the financial "burden" I was talking about, we just bought new windows. I cannot wait until they are installed because looking out of my old ones makes me depressed! We went with top-of-the-line windows that are eco-friendly and all of that. They are double hung, including the huge picture window in our kitchen, so they will be a breeze to clean. None of our windows currently have screens either, so it will be so nice to be able to open them (which will probably be in the fall, as it's in the 90's here already). Our electricity bill will be pleasant to receive those first few months too. This is the first big project we've started in the house. It's hard to believe we closed a year ago!

Things are good around here, we've been keeping very busy. My calling keeps me on my toes, I once spent 6 straight hours on my computer e-mailing, making bulletin posts, organizing our calendar year for the Ward. It's great, I love it! I'm not being sarcastic either, I really do enjoy this. I used to spend whole weekends organizing my room. I wish I were that motivated about things now in my house...at least I can be with my calling.