86'n It

I don't know if it was the choices I had already made on the nursery that were giving me heartburn, if it was the bigger issues in our life right now, or even actual heartburn (hey, I am 5 months pregnant!), but it was all not sitting right with me.

I was second-guessing myself. Marc was unsure. Marc made some suggestions, but I still wasn't sure..

So we rebooted.

A couple of things happened:

• I spam-emailed 4 of my most color-savy friends and annoyed them to no end with options.

• I spent some time in that room at night and realized it is WAY darker than Franca's room. Yippee! I do not have to stress so much about curtains!

• I had some dreams. Seriously. About color.

• I stumbled on this image:

Via DesireToInspire.net  from Jorge Rangel, an interior architect/designer in Barcelona, Spain

And it just all clicked for me. I'm not ready to talk about it just yet, but it led me to a solution which solved the nagging issues.

It is nothing literal from the image above and don't worry, there will be no white walls. I haven't completely stepped outside of myself!

Franca and I are buying paint Friday morning!

Stay tuned.

I'm just going to be honest here:

I'm barely hanging on today.

• I've been up past 1am for the past 3 nights which is rough on a pregnant lady.
• We just drove back from a very difficult funeral in Detroit. I'm not dealing well and it wasn't even my relative.
• Franca will not sleep at night and she will not nap. I *may* have just said the F-word at her [and now I'm beating myself up for it.]
• Due to the funeral and nanny quitting early [bitch], I have only worked 37.5 hours this month. I need to work 80.  [Nope, not beating myself up for calling her that at all, she really screwed me.]
• The kitchen cabinet project still looks like this --->

Do you ever have those days where you just want to step away from your life and come back 5 months later? I don't want to BE anywhere else, I just don't want to be here.

I want to come back to a born infant, a less than 4 page excel spreadsheet of renovation "to-do's", a reliable nanny, and to be honest, a new pair of boots and haircut that make me feel like I'm NOT the mother of 2.

Too much to ask? Probably.

Thanks for listening anyway.





p.s. Brent - not sure if you read my blog, but if you send me the photo of the "Hang in There" Kitten, I will pop your truck tires. (But probably laugh first.)

In other news, I'm nanny-less for the next two weeks. Since the girls stopped sleeping at least 3 hours a day, I've had some help at least 2 days per week.  Being nanny-less would be fine except for two things: I have a ton of work-work to do, and we need money.

This predicament has made me resort to a fun nap method. Namely, I let Franca put herself to sleep. There are only 2 rules:

1. She must stay in our bedroom or her bedroom. (No coming into the office.)
2. She must at some point fall asleep.

So, I posted my mock-up of the nursery: (The rug is thrown in there at a crazy angle to obscure a brightly color bed spread.)

I originally showed floor-length curtains. I was thinking a velvety-gray. I know, I know, dark, but this is the look I'm going for here.

Two issues:.

1. I forgot we have baseboard heat. It is just hot-water, but still. Fire Danger. I'm not comfortable putting anything on it especially in a nursery. So the curtains would be short, like the above (and how they are in the parlor.)
2.  I can't seem to find dark gray velvety curtains (or even make them) for a reasonable price. 

In the process of clearing the junk room, I was faced once again with what to do with our 16 vintage coke signs.

We discovered them during our kitchen demo because they were being used as interior wall sheathing. (see above) After we found them, Marc did some library research discovered our house was built in 1922 by the region's coca-cola rep. (Hence the odd red and white exterior color scheme.)

Marc and I were secretly hoping they were worth millions, but alas, after a pretty through search, I'm mostly confident they are not. Bummer.

A blog reader from Canada has been consistently emailing me for over a year wanting to buy some of the signs.... Well, persistence pays! Four of the best signs are currently on their way to him.

Honestly, I got a little sad packaging them up, but the buyer seems like a really nice guy who will appreciate them more than we could. (And if you sell them for a million bucks Ryan, a pox on your house!)

We already highlighted the best one in the still-not-finished dining room niche. And hey, we still have 11 left. (Although in lesser condition. Any takers?)

Renovating is hard.

Renovation with kids is a million times harder.
(but it can also be pretty hilarious.)

I think in a perfect world we would have finished our renovation before having kids, but here we are expecting a new Pork Chop and still firing up the table saw. Such is life.

To illustration just one morning of Renovation with Kids, I've put together a helpful info-graphic explaining the steps of Toddler Carpentry Apprenticing. Enjoy:

Here are some additional general guidelines:

• Distraction is futile.  But if you desperately need a moment, hand your child a tape measure, ball of twine or flashlight. This will buy you approximately 15 seconds.
• The Wife is not the Default Child-Minder.  Remember that bad-ass woman who can to swing a mean sledgehammer? She is still there.
• Keep things extra safe.   Learning to place dangerous things out of reach while working takes some getting used to. Nothing is worse than hearing "wha dees Momma?" and wondering where you put the jumbo bottle of wood glue.
• Plan around naps.  Organizing your day to do the heavy/dangerous/complicated/etc. things during naps is key. Buy a $15 noisy box fan for the kid's room.
• Your missing screwdriver is always in the play kitchen oven.  Always. Duh.

One of the Best Things about Renovating With Kids is showing them the finished work. Often we will start a project during the day and finish at night after Franca goes to bed. I get all giddy like Christmas morning to show her our progress.

For example, when G (the other child I care for part-time) rounded the corner into the kitchen after we did this work, she SQUEALED with delight and exclaimed: "A new table!!". Exactly G, exactly the reaction I wanted.

Here's a sneak peak at our most recent work. We are finishing up the LAST cabinetry project in the kitchen before we start on the new bathroom. 

Ikea cabinets have been successfully hacked. Next up is a trip to IKEA to get more counter tops.

My wonderful, marvelous friend Michelle over at So Wonderful, So Marvelous is celebrating her 7th wedding anniversary this week by doing a series of marriage guest posts.

So head on over and check out Marc and my brilliant answers. You know you wanna..

But first, check out two of the earliest photos known to exist of Marc and I together. These are so old they were taken on FILM y'all!

My blogging friend Meryl over at the fabulous Picardy Project has teamed up with Tinkernation to bring 86'n It some free labor!

Meryl and her man are doing a crazy renovation road trip that includes a stop at our humble crack house. We *think* we might make them help with front porch railings, but now I'm leaning toward kitchen wood wall. We shall see.

Head on over to Tinkernation and check out their plans and other renovation pit stops!

For some crotchety reason, I cringe every time I see the term "mood board" being used.  So this is decidedly NOT a mood board:

The color is Ben Moore's Dark Pewter. Its gray-green-blue. Not exactly pulled from the canvas, but complimenting it AND the furniture.

I tried to do a google search of this color, but the only photo of it in a room I could find was MY mockup! HA! Here are some other photos of similar color pulled off the interwebs:

• Tell me I'm nuts.
• Suggest something radically different.
• Tell me you love it.
• Suggest something a tiny bit different.

I'm just going to put it out there that I think Jon Rafman's 9-eyes.com blog is the best on the internet. It is in fact, everything I love about the internet.

Simple.
Random.
Inspiring.
Diverse.

Mr. Rafman takes images from Google's Street View (vehicles mounted with 9 camera lenses traveling the world taking snapshots every 30-60ft). The things he find are amazing, starling and very often beautiful. I love it when another selection pops up in my google reader. (Seriously, the best way to follow blogs.)

With all this hate and intolerance in the world lately, sometimes it is nice to be reminded at how different, wonderful, the same, and interesting we (and this world we call home) really are. I think his image selections capture that.

This one in particular made me almost wish my NYC photo canvas wasn't about to arrive tomorrow for the new nursery.



But then I got to thinking, that photo is MY and Marc's "9-eyes" shot. A random captured moment in our lives that was filled with such simple beauty.

I can't help but think that a captured moment like that is fitting for our new baby. A baby created and grown by pure random chance. A baby sure to fill our lives with simple, amazing beauty and love.

A little glimpse of our world, in baby form.

Ok, only 95%, but that's about all will be removed until real construction starts. The rest is things we use daily (stroller), bathroom & kitchen construction materials, and things that are a bit complicated to get rid of (century gothic letterpress font set).


Sort of hilarious that I'm calling these 'after' photos, but considering how I was feeling and the fact that this clearing took us a whole month, I'm celebrating!

Here are 2 cleaned 'after' photos I couldn't even get to the other side of the room to take before.