progress

things are moving along slowly, but there is some progress.

Got 5 more Billy bookcases from IKEA (at the suggestion of the interior dectorator) to line the long wall in the living room. We put them together this weekend and made the cutouts for the electrical and heating vents.



The new table is setup with the chairs.



Many of the bigger pieces are picked out for the living room/on their way. I can't wait to see it all in place!

we have lights!

the bedroom lights arrived and i mounted them! and i am super excited to learn that you can get LED light bulbs (instead of the halogen that they come with) for these fixtures!!

the last remaining task is the window covering, not sure what to go for here. I saw some nice solid colors but maybe an interesting pattern would make things a little more exciting.

Bedroom lights

I think I found them! And they aren't crazy expensive like some of the others I like

Also, I'm crazy with the paint

I painted the living room and dining room a few weekends ago.

Swiss Coffee by Benjamin Moore.

I hate it.

A combo of too much reading online/too little testing colors on my walls.
I told myself it was fine, that I would go with it. But I'm ready to admit that I hate it. And I'm changing it this weekend. To a pure cool white. And yes, I know a warmer white would be warmer in the winter. But I have a furnace, and I live in a place that is very very cold but also very sunny. And the room has 4 giant South facing windows.

I'm just glad I decided before I also painted the hallway, and the bathroom, etc. etc.

Pictures to come when it is the nice pure white I wanted all along.

stuff

So I will pretend people read this blog in Google reader and thus are totally unperturbed by the lack of updates.

I got a toaster this one



it looks like this.

For some reason I have been looking for a toaster for weeks, unable to make a decision. Do you get like that about random things? I'm pretty sure I spent more time looking for a toaster than a car, and about as much time as I spent looking for all the rest of the appliances (fridge, dishwasher, stove). And actually I haven't owned a toaster for 5 years because I never got one in France (i guess partially because the bread there doesn't really need a toaster)

So come on over, toast at my place.

bedroom, again

it is inching along but getting closer to being done. the two main unfinished items are the window covering and the bedside lamps

for window covering, it is a very wide but short window. i was thinking honeycomb blinds, as i think floor length curtains might be too fussy, but then if they are plain white maybe it would work. long window is annoying because it = custom necessary. none of the off the shelf honeycomb blinds are wide enough. same with most of the curtain rods. (i didnt see the point in paying for temporary shades so that is some packing paper taped up to the window frame, classy!)

for the bedside lamps, i had a square one for me, but it got a little crowded on the nightstand now that the clock radio is here. im thinking maybe little ones you can clip onto the headboard above the nightstand, something in chrome?

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.