blogging about home improvement is hard

after all the energy it takes to do the stuff, i have 0 left to write about it/post pictures.
but rest assured it does continue. highlights of today include:
- making our hedges have nice flat edges. I've never had hedges before but I love them, they are so green and pretty and square. I want to put them all along the fence in the backyard
- installing a door knob on the door we had put up to the 3rd level/basement (it is not really a basement, it is only half underground, but whatever). this will be the cats room, so it has a locking door knob on it, as in, lock them in the basement. This freaks me out a little (to have a door knob that you can use to lock the door from the outside), but less so because it is one of those safety bathroom door knobs you can unlock with the side of your fingernail (but hopefully you as in person you, not cat you). And then more so because my Austrian husband found it totally normal to install a locking door knob into a room (insert comments about Austrian tradition of locking your family up in the basement here).

So, as you can see, things are happening. Boxes (with the exception of the books) are all unpacked. And... interior designer is coming over on Friday for a 2 hr consultation about the living room. Woo hoo!

Pictures and all that good stuff to follow.

My room

Here is the after of the room from the previous pictures:







It is our third bedroom, and it is all mine :) This is partially because I have an awesome husband, and partially because I have a husband who doesn't like looking at my sewing mess.

It isn't all done, I need to paint and rehang the closet doors, put up some art, and I would like to get a new chair for the sewing desk. But things are put away and everything has a place.

more paint

the master bedroom is done, with the exception of the mattress. I had completely forgotten that beds are different sizes here so our mattress wont fit! pictures to come.

and i have started attacking the second room, just one more coat of paint to go. this will be "my room" with a sewing table, my closet, and a general place for me to make a mess :) i had left over grey paint so im using the same colors, i think the red cabinet will look nice with the grey.

bedroom

i finished the second coat of paint today, Benjamin Moore Metropolitan, which turned out to be exactly the not too light, not too dark, totally neutral, gray I was looking for!

I suck at taking "before" photos as I'm just too excited to jump right in, so you are going to have to use your imagination and picture the whole room in this pink color:



and now:







i need a second pair of hands to help me bring the rest of the bed in the room (those are just the floating nightstands), and i need to hang the pictures and get some window covering.

For the pictures, I'm thinking white frames would look best, IKEA has their RIBBA frames in white now. For the window covering I'm unsure. Either white wooden blinds or some kind of curtains? Any thoughts?

kitchen put away

we finished washing, drying, and putting away all the kitchen stuff today. here is how the kitchen looks now




and just so you dont think i took a picture of empty cabinets:





i really wonder if one can just change out the doors to ikea cabinet doors. because many components of this kitchen (the white frames, the white counter) are pretty close to what i want from an ikea kitchen. the cabinets are in great shape and there are even nifty things like pull out drawers for pots and pans...

It is ours!

Everything went just fine with the walk through and closing and our stuff arrived yesterday. Now we are surrounded by boxes, boxes and more boxes.
Yesterday we realized that the carpet downstairs (the lower level half basement) smells bad (the previous owners had cats), so we ripped it out (even the movers commented on it smelling bad). It smells approximately a million times better, still need to put a coat of primer on it to seal it and then lay a new floor on top.

It feels like there are about a million billion things to do, and im still exhausted from the 60 hours i worked during the last short week (as in 60 hours from m-thur). But the house is perfect and we still love it. the chairs look awesome in the living room, the bed the seller left for us is perfect, we met two of the neighbors who were so so friendly (our next door neighbor is a nice old german woman), and we OWN A HOUSE!!

Updates

Mostly just waiting (and working like crazy) so not much of interest to report. But today we went to the house to meet with the seller and learn about the plants (we apparently have a big bunch of raspberry bushes, score!)

And as a bonus she asked us if we needed a bed, because she has a teak bed with attached nightstands she doesn't need... um, YES PLEASE!
I didn't snap a photo or anything, because that would have seemed weird, but it looks something like this (picture snagged from here)



Granted I'm sure it isn't in as perfect condition as this one, but for free, already in my house?? When I have been searching the web/everywhere for a bed and nightstands? How more perfect can it get?

That just leaves me with the paint, I have approximately 45 gray paint samples layed out on the floor in front of me. There are a few I keep coming back to, but then I end up thinking they are too blue, or too putty colored, etc. Has anyone painted a room in Benjamin Moore Metropolitan AF-690??