Extreme Dining Room Makeover

Before I post pics from Olivia's birthday (you'll just have to wait, heh heh heh!), I wanted to share the "Birthday Surprise" that JB and I worked on in preparation for Olivia's and Dad's birthday party. I was motivated to do this after seeing photos of other parties in our dining room, and realizing the sheer ugliness of that room. A dining room should be a focal point, but ours was more of a "try to ignore it" point.

Evidence:





Now, before you start judging me or the previous owners for the stellar color choice, please note that it was a group effort. The purply-mauve trim was from the previous owners, but I picked the blue. Called "animation blue" and it makes me think of Disney. The intent was to strip the oak woodwork at some point. But we never got around to that, and just let the blue walls clash with the purply trim. And neither of those paint jobs were done very nicely to begin with. It was just one big garish blob.

Here it is before I got a hold of Animation Blue. Don't you love the plastic chandelier?:



This was the heat vent. For one thing, 2 wrong vents do not make a right! Secondly, if you're going to have a hole for a heat duct, you might as well have an actual heat duct hooked up to it, and not have a hole that drops straight to the basement. I believe that it was these owners (and not someone before them) who redirected this duct to go somewhere else. WHY????



So, firstly, Mark and Marian got us a lovely register cover for Christmas one year, after we had the heat duct restored:



And THEN, here is the room that Olivia and my Dad got to party in on Saturday! We think it's much better. We painted that lovely green as we listened to MSU school Michigan in our annual football showdown. It felt good to be a Spartan that day. Go Green!







I consider our work to be a small feat, as we did this while dog/house sitting for the in-laws for 2 weeks. So we balanced living at their place and living/painting at ours. Lots of long days, but it's worth it!

Jesus Thong Room

Before we owned our Calvin house the back bedroom belonged to the teenage son of a single mom. They didn't have a lot of money, so he used what resources he could scrape up when it came to decorating his room: posters and magazine pages of his favorite role models. Well, and just plain old models.

Oh, and a random image of the Cross.

When our friends the Ficks saw the photos of his room, Jess dubbed it the Jesus Thong Room. (And no, I don't mean the thong you'd wear on your foot.) On one side you have the Cross hanging serenely between the basketball mega-stars of the day, showing off their rippling muscles as they drive the ball in for a slam dunk. On the other side you have... THONG TIME! And boob time. Thigh time. Basically, hot chicks.

Who would have thought that one could combine the two into the same space? Well, I guess you could, but who would want to? This teenage boy, I guess.

Since then JB and I have altered the room a little. Jesus is still welcome in the room (though he doesn't appear on any wall) but we had to let the thong ladies go. This house only has room for one hot chick, and I already got that job.

Notice the improvements we have made. Particularly the floor. And the nice clean doorknob. When these people painted their rooms they did not use drop cloths. And they didn't bother to try to wipe up any messes, either. Unfortunately, their painting indiscretions on the windows are not viewable, but they basically painted all over the panes of glass and never scraped them. They also never cleaned the windows, so you couldn't really see out of them. I cut them some slack on the house's condition because they were poor, but these little things I just listed can be done for FREE. And the whole house was like this. Agh!

The room has morphed into guest room and now baby/kid's room, but I'll always remember it as the Jesus Thong Room.

Good News Bad News

This week is filled mostly with good, exciting news. However, as luck would have it, it is also tempered with bad news. Fortunately, the bad news isn’t “end of the world” stuff. Since so much has been happening, though, I thought I’d just make a little chart instead of going into great detail over every little thing. Also, some of this is JB's good news, so he can write about that if he wants.

Good News	Bad News
We got a lot of yard work done on Saturday and the place is looking GOOD!	Our mulch for the yard still has not been delivered.
JB got a grill--YUM.	My vintage bike is not fixable like I had thought, so now if I want a bike, I have to buy a new one.
I got rhubarb from a friend and am making rhubarb jam.	My lemon tree is pretty much dead. Looks like everything got neglected when I got sick from pregnancy. :(
We’ve made plans to have a small vegetable garden this summer.	I gained too much weight last month (though I’m more concerned about it than my Dr.)—better get those veggies growing so I can lay off the ice cream!
The yard is fenced so now Lulu can run around with freedom.	Prenatal vitamins make me sick. The doc has me trying all sorts, but no luck. I’m close to swearing off of them.
JB got a whole week of vacation! (He had originally only gotten four days because everyone else hogged the days off.)	Our vacation will still be cut short because of a friend’s wedding (because all JB’s coworkers hogged vacation time and there was only one week he could pick).
My freelance project is almost done!!!	My eyesight is jacked because of pregnancy and there’s nothing I can do about it.
I have made plans to make curtains for all the upstairs rooms.	I do not have money to buy all the materials and curtain rods for all the upstairs rooms.
JB got a picnic table and has already sanded and stained it. It’s awesome.	I did not get into The Antiques Roadshow’s visit to Grand Rapids. Boo!