It’s time to make Eric cry again.

It’s time to make Eric cry again.

It’s getting a little heavy here. There are a lot of strong emotions and one of my most favorite coping mechanisms, when I start getting dragged down, is PINTEREST! The problem is when I start spending time on PINTEREST, I start getting ideas.

If you recall the nightmare that was Caleb’s room redesign then you know, you know, why me getting ideas is bad. But this time it will be different! This time we really are only talking 2 gallons of paint. Ahem. You can stop laughing now!

All I really need to do is narrow down my ideas a bit…

OK, maybe a lot…but, in my defense, I do have two different sets of stairs to do…

Yeah, he’s so going to cry…but I have to say, in the end, my ideas do turn out stunningly so it will be totally worth it. At least it was last time, right?

Whirling dervishes.

This past week has been an absolute whirlwind for us here at Chez Monkey. I don’t know about you but when we are expecting houseguests I suddenly feel this uncontrollable urge to wrap up every pending project on my wishlist before they arrive. Which explains why last Saturday morning I opened my eyes, looked at my loving husband (who was struggling to breath under 50 lbs of Monkey sitting on his head saying “Hiya Daddy!”) and said…”I think we should paint Monkey’s bedroom…”

Duhdee refused to get out of bed until I accepted the fact that he was not going to let me paint Monkey’s bedroom. He claimed we didn’t have time. I think he’s a wimp. Our compromise was that we would go buy the new bedroom set I had been eyeing. Once he reluctantly agreed to get out of bed with that task in mind for the day I broke the big news…the bed I wanted was at a store on the South Shore and since we would be in the general area it was only logical that we’d stop at IKEA too. Squee! Duhdee felt tricked, whatever. I was doing my “I’m going to IKEA dance.”

So last Saturday we spent 9 HOURS furniture and decor shopping. We got everything we planned and then some, as often happens when we go to IKEA. Anytime Duhdee moaned about not being able to feel his leg I reminded him that he could have just let me paint Monkey’s room and this could have all been avoided. *Snicker* Do not attempt to deny the Money, the Money alllllwayyyyys wins! He’ll never learn 😉

Sunday was kind of a let down for me. We had bought all of these amazing things but our bed could not be delivered until the following FRIDAY ((TODAY, yippee!)) which meant all of my plans hatched the day before were for naught. Frustrating. So I turned my eye toward things that we could accomplish. Duhdee recently purchased a new surround sound system to replace the one I hate. I suggested that he hook it up since I was going to clean and we needed to move all the old speakers around anyway while I did that so we may as well just swap them out. Duhdee looked at me a bit wide eyed, asked if I was serious *crickets* and then set to work. I felt so much better. 6 hours later Duhdee was cursing my great, great, great grandparents for my very existance BUT the new speakers were so cute! And not in my way. Of course, now I didn’t have time to clean the living room but our bathroom was sparkly!

On Monday we did the normal day before traveling things like vacumming and steam cleaning the floors and furniture, going shopping to pick up odds and ends like a new suitcase for Monkey, all new towels for the house and new full sized Toy Story sheets for Monkey’s bigger bed (which he was inheriting from us.) It was a third straight day of busyness and stress before embarking on three days of busyness and stress…perfect. That is how everyone else prepares for a trip right?

I’m sure you’re wondering how the heck Monkey was holding up with all this madness and I am proud to say he was LOVING it. He loved bed shopping (he jump tested all of the mattresses at the furniture store before we made our decision), he loved IKEA (he jump tested all of the mattresses we had no intention of buying), he was thrilled when we told him he was getting our bed, he was ecstatic over the new Toy Story sheets and when he saw his new suitcase he said, “airport? airplane? fwying?” non-stop for hours. How is it little changes set him off majorly but this total upheaval was the most thrilling time ever? I wish I understood how this worked.

Next up, the actual trip…

Since I didn’t have enough going on this weekend…

I decided to redo our bedroom closet.  I blame the 2010 Ikea catalog.  Ever since it arrived I’ve been paging through it and thinking which led me to browsing the website and even more thinking. All that thinking led me to suggest an Ikea trip on Friday even though I knew it was the very last place on earth we should be taking Monkey that day.  I did not buy a single thing (for the closet) but the damage was done…all that thinking had led to ideas.

Here is a picture of our closet.  Please take a moment to prepare yourself for the horror.

That is the ONLY closet in our bedroom.  It is 47″ wide, 19″ deep and 97.5″ tall.  Monkey’s room has two closets of this approximate size and then there is the linen closet in the hall.  That’s it folks.  Old houses have c-r-a-p for closets!  And this picture is the improved version.  When we started there was just one single rod in that closet, we added the shelves/rods you see here…and that lower shelf?  It ends right there only 1/2 way across the closet.  Oh, and, above the top shelf?  About 2 feet of totally empty space.

So using all my ideas I spent several quality hours with a tape measure and graph paper trying to figure out some sort of better solution.  Because the closet is so shallow (just barely wide enough for hangers) none of the traditional solutions would fit. 

When it was all said and done we moved the top shelf all the way up by the ceiling.  Since Duhdee is tall he can easily reach that rod.  We’ll hang his shorter hanging stuff up there and our long hanging stuff will be to the right (we don’t have much!)  As close to the bottom as we could manage, we put in another shelf and rod that goes the full length of the closet.  The long hanging stuff will come just to the top of that bottom shelf.  More shorter hanging stuff will be on that lower rod.  All that unused space at the top will now be between Duhdee’s short hanging stuff and that bottom shelf.  We can put some storage boxes there for additional storage and we gained an extra 21″ of hanging space too.  That’s the best we can do since we cannot enlarge it in any way.

Of course, not a single Ikea idea was used but I still blame the catalog!

This is just the first step in our bedroom make-over. Then we’ll paint the walls.  Take another look at that picture above…do you see that whitish area on the wall to the very left?  That’s a REFLECTION.  Great Grampy insisted we use high gloss paint.  You can see your REFLECTION in our walls.  That, coupled with the blue, means that room feels as warm and cozy as an ice cube.  We’ve wanted to repaint pretty much since it dried but we ran out of time and had to move on to other rooms so we could move in.

I guess technically the next step is redoing the wiring so it is 1. up to code and 2. so “we” can install a flat screen and media center which will allow me to lounge in bed watching all my DVR’d shows while Duhdee feeds me peeled grapes (a girl can dream, right?) but that’s not my job.  Duhdee is on his own for that.  I’d electrocute myself and probably burn the house down to boot.  *Shrug* No one is perfect.

Basement fun.

Monkey is understandably obsessed with our basement these days.  We spend a lot of time down there as we clean up, reorganize and prepare to build an office for Duhdee’s newest business. 

The clean up portion was a ton of fun for Monkey because we had to pull out all of his old toys which he really loved.  He would play with his baby toys and you could see that he clearly remembered all of these old friends.  We found a lovely young family via craigslist and we gave them ALL of Monkey’s outgrown toys and baby gear, they were very excited.

The reorganization portion is still on-going and Monkey is even more thrilled.  First, Duhdee built me a seed starting area, I have room for 4 seed tray flats now which is MORE than enough to satisfy me, lol.   He has hung 4 flourescent lights (two over each shelf) and yesterday started the process of wiring them to an automated switch.  He’ll program the lights to turn on and off automatically.  Woot!

All of this building and wiring has meant that Duhdee has been using power tools.  Nothing makes Monkey happier than power tools.  We bought him a set for Christmas and they are very cool but his drill isn’t quite as cool as Duhdee’s drill.  Initally, we kept him from using Duhdee’s drill but eventually we realized that he could use it safely as long as there was no bit in it.   Monkey was thrilled with this development and happily spent many hours pretending to drill holes in the walls, in my seed stand and in the floor.

He’s been keeping a close eye on Duhdee though and he noticed that when Duhdee used his drill he added a “bit.”  It wasn’t long before Monkey was scouring the basement looking for “bits” (this is the cutest thing he says right now besides “honey,” of course.)  He’s very creative and found several potential “bits” and asked me to help him with them.  After putting him off for the entire afternoon he brought over an actual bit that we decided he could safely use.  It was a short, blunt bit that could be used for sockets.  Duhdee installed the bit and Monkey was again thrilled. 

A short time later, Monkey approached me with a bolt.  He was trying to get the bit into the bolt.  I took it from him and showed him that it didn’t fit and Monkey wandered off again.   I showed the bolt to Duhdee before I put it away because I was amazed that, out of all the choices, Monkey had picked a bolt with the right shape!  A minute later Monkey approached me again, this time with a socket.  And again it wasn’t just any socket but one out of hundreds that very nearly fit his bit.  Duhdee was so impressed that he stopped what he was doing and found the proper bit and socket combination for Monkey to play with.   

I am so impressed by his ability to match odd shapes and to judge sizes so accurately, we’re talking a 1/16th of an inch (or mayb 1/32th of an inch) off on the socket and he had literally hundreds to chose from.  It wasn’t even the most convenient socket to reach, he had to reach over several rows to get the one he picked.  He just blows my mind sometimes.

Besides the wiring we’ve started painting the basement with a paint designed to seal out moisture.  Duhdee picked one that is water based so Monkey was able to help us paint.  He seemed to enjoy it at first but ultimately decided that using power tools is more fun.  I think if Duhdee had given him the roller he might have stuck with painting longer.  Though anything that we do down there paint-wise will be an improvement, we weren’t quite brave enough to hand over a full loaded paint roller.  We still have miles of basement left (we’re painting each area as we finish cleaning it up and just before Duhdee re-wires it) so maybe he’ll get his hands on a roller before we finish.

dscn04461

dscn04481