Ingram's love old furniture!

Sometime last summer, I started working on Cate's room. I got a few things done in there. We hung pretty curtains, I laid some tack paper under the glass of her vanity, bought her a bed skirt, fixed up a chair that the boys destroyed in less than a month, we inherited an antique iron bed and painted it black, and even hung a few things on the wall. Then I just didn't have it in the budget to finish it all at once so I decided to do it little by little. Of course, when I do something little by little, I never really do anything at all so it never gets finished. I don't know at what point I just gave up and figured "one day I will finish it, for now it serves it's purpose just fine". I haven't done a single thing to it, decorating wise, since last summer and I honestly don't care right now. I was ready to move on to the next project...the boys room. 

The boys room has been a thorn in my side for..well, since we moved in a year and a half ago.The boys have never had a room to themselves. Actually, they have never had hardly anything to themselves. They share everything(sometimes more willingly than others). They share a room, a closet, clothes, toys, the TV, attention, and an aversion to anything remotely clean. Now that Little's crib is gone, they share a bed. Storage and organization has always been tricky for their room because it is such a small space to keep so much stuff. Our kids have never wanted for anything and clothes, shoes, and toys are no exception. We take a bag of something to the donation bins usually every month and 70% of the time, it's stuff that I took out of the boys room. Still, we have lots of stuff. And we don't even buy it, I have no idea where it all comes from. *Ah-ACH Granny,CHOO! .* Ahem, excuse me...dusty in here.

The boss' grandmother's house has been sitting empty since late October of last year. The family decided it was time to start cleaning out the house. The boss' grandparents raised their 8 children in this small 3 bedroom, 1 bath house(and it didn't always have a bathroom, from what I understand). A lot of the things inside had been there since my mother-in-law was a little girl, including a 4 piece bedroom suit that was painted green. My mother-in-law slept in this bed for many years. At first glance, you would have thought that maybe it was painted green and then distressed on purpose in an effort to make it look old. Newp. It's just old...and awesome! If you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably get the picture that we don't buy new furniture. That's for several reasons...A. We are poor. B. We are cheap. C. We like old stuff and D. there is a good chance the kids are going to scratch it or color on it at some point and we get less angry about them beating up already beat up furniture than we do about them wrecking something new. So when no one else wanted this awesome set of bedroom furniture, we happily accepted it and wasted no time putting our person touch on it. Ok, so we wasted like a week, but that was the tornado's fault, so...yeah. 

Now the boss and I differ somewhat in our opinion of how we should fix things up. Say for example, we have gotten a book shelf. And...it's solid wood, but has been painted a few times and is in desperate need of a new paint job. The boss would typically stand there for a few minutes and say "It's real wood. We should sand the paint off and refinish the wood. And those shelves need some work...see how that's coming off right there? Put it in my shop, I'll work on it this weekend." To which I would reply..."I don't want to sand it and refinish the wood, I want to paint it." And the boss will give me 3 paint options: white, black, or brown. Sometimes he might throw in a really unattractive green that too closely resembles formula-fed baby poop.Then I will throw my colors at him...and watch him growing more annoyed by the second as I try to decide between navy blue...or colonial blue...or maybe even pool blue! How cute would that be?!? 

So when I chose a very bright and vibrant red for the new furniture. He was a little skeptical. It didn't help that when the paint was wet, it looked hot pink :-) But once again, my appetite for bold and rich color in my house was a shining success and he did admit that it looks really good. 

Here are some before pictures

 

mmm, the paint!Let me just break here for a second and say one thing. Cheap paint..well, it sucks. The first room we painted in this house was Cate's bedroom. It was the room I was most sure about. The boss' buddy Gorg complimented us on the color choice the day we painted it and asked what it was called. The boss' response was "It's called $38 a can" Obviously someone wasn't very excited that I had chosen and refused to budge from the Behr premium paint(primer and paint in one). However, it was worth it to me. We painted the rest of the house with the same type of paint because it covers like a dream. It isn't runny. It's awesome. Once you go with a higher quality of paint, you will never want to go back and when you do decide to save some money and go with a cheaper brand, like Glidden, or Dutchboy, you will spend your entire painting experience cursing yourself for doing so. This will either ruin the high of painting for a painting enthusiast like myself or make the job even more miserable than it already would have been if you are a painting-hater like the boss.

After the paint was dry and the furniture was in place in the room, I was really excited to start getting a little more organized. The dresser replaced Simon's old dresser, which was great and well made by my father-in-law when he was in like...middle school, but it just was never quite big enough for all of Simon's clothes, especially in winter with all the thicker clothes. We never downsize Simon's wardrobe even though he always has far more clothes than he needs because he is so hard on them that only about half of them still have enough ware left in them to pass down to Liam the next year. If all of the laundry was caught up, none of his drawers would close all the way :-/ The new dresser has much deeper and wider drawers and everything fits now with a little room to spare! Yea!

One item that the boys were particularly excited about was the desk. They always wanted one in their room, all 3 months that they have been old enough to request such things. I was pretty excited about it too because it has 4 drawers on it that are PERFECT for storing small toys! They have a toy box, but in order to find the small things they have to take everything out first. Big mess. Not good. Mommy headsplodey. Now...not only are their favorite toys separated so that they can find them easier, but the drawers are old and don't slide easily at all! Wait...what? Yep, I like it that way. Wanna know why? I bet all the other mommies already know. If they can't open the drawers themselves, they have to get me to do it. And then I get to go in their room and either grant or deny their request to get out the 30 piece train track depending on whether or not they pick up all the jumbo legos(which are on the top shelf of the closet so they have to ask me to get those down too). Ahaha! Hahahaha! Bwhahahaha..ha ha...ahhh. *sigh*. I love this new set up. 

The nightstand is also a BIG perk for this set. The boss and I often end up sleeping with the kids. And we have to have water at night. I don't know why, we just do. So a bedside table is very useful. It's also nice to have a table lamp beside the bed rather than the flimsy crappy ikea floor lamp that was previous there(meaning you have to get UP and turn the lamp on and off. Really annoying). And for the record, that particular lamp is just temporary as it is ugly and I hate it, especially in the boys "boy themed" room. 

So there it is. For now. And like Cate's room, I have no intention of doing one more thing to it for a few years because it's functional and doesn't make my brain hurt when I look at. Ok, maybe I will put up some pictures on the wall...but that's it. Probably. Well, I want to get a new chair for the desk pronto. A cute one. Maybe painted blue...navy, not colonial...

Hi Buzz, whatcha doing? Hanging out? Cool.