It Was a Family Effort This Weekend (Family Room 6)

For once I am happy to say I got a lot accomplished this weekend. No I didn’t finish the family room (don’t be ridiculous!), but I did make progress in there and elsewhere around the house. Yay!

Note: Just in case you’re inclined to feel badly for our kids… we did plenty of things besides work on the house this weekend. The little ones went to family fun night at the skating rink and met Elsa Friday night. I took the girls to a 3 hour Girl Scout event on Saturday. And Smart Jr had a field hockey game and a 3 hour lacrosse tryout. Plus we all went to church, tag-team style.

I had a few unexpected neighborhood friends tour my ~~disgusting~~ house last week, and shame got the best of me, so I put my butt in action. First order of business — cover the plywood in the kids’ bathroom. It’s been months since I pulled out the bathroom carpet (yes you read that right!) while my kids were taking a bath one night. I figured I could put peel-and-stick tile down until one day when I tear out the entire bathroom and renovate. Well… just because I could do something doesn’t mean I actually do it. The scary thing is that the kids got completely used to having half their bathroom floor plywood. Well, it’s time to say goodbye, because I finally spent a whopping $20 and installed 18″x18″ vinyl tiles. Woo hoo! It took way less than an hour. Duh!Don’t you just love my high-tech tools? I did have to swap out the bendy plastic pink ruler for a stiff plastic pink ruler at one point, but other than that I just needed a utility knife. And let’s not forget the washcloth I used to dust the floor off before I stuck the tiles down. But it came out better than I thought. Of course anything is better than that plywood. Well except for carpet. Who in their right mind puts carpet in a BATHROOM?!?The hallway outside the bathroom still had some carpet in it, which I also tore out on Friday night. And sad to say, but this is a vast improvement over how it looked when I had people in here last week. Ooops!Why haven’t I installed the hardwood floor, you ask? Well I keep telling myself to finish the family room first. But I think that’s probably not the best plan, seeing as I’ll been 90-yrs-old by the time that happens. Then I discovered a big problem on Friday while I was showing the wood to my friend Shari… actually she noticed that the bull nose trim I had sitting in a box was not what I thought I ordered. So I’m checking the Home Depot website now, and this is totally what I need and exactly what I ordered, but it is NOT what they sent me. The stuff I received has no overhang/lip. I guess I’ll be heading into the store, but it stinks because they don’t stock the trim, it will have to be ordered. Bummer.Anyway… Friday night started family demo night, which continued into Saturday morning. I took the trim off the patio door so I could get an accurate measurement of the rough opening, so I can finally order a new door. We all hate this slider because it doesn’t slide! The new door will swing in. I’m leaning toward this door. Here’s the old door. Ya gotta love the reflection of my messy kitchen!I took off the molding on the sides, but hmm somebody thought it was a good idea to run a counter top right over the door frame.I got rid of some of it, but the rest is still to come. I was totally surprised to see tile under there!I promised Smart Jr that she could take out the half wall, but my smart husband thought it would be best to take all the wiring out first. Fair enough.Then we let her go to town with the sledge hammer. Check out her first experience with a sledge hammer HERE. Even our littlest DIYer got involved. He wore those same safety goggles out to hibachi last week. It was hilarious. But he felt much safer when the flames shot up. FYI – he picked out his own outfit. I swear.In the end Lars finished the job. Where was I? Sitting on my butt with a heating pad on my aching back. Gee, I can’t figure out why my back is always bothering me. And this is what the half wall looks like now. Do you think maybe it’s time for us to blow the leaves???We are loving the open feeling in the kitchen and family room right now, but it’s just not practical to leave a drop down like that. But for now, it’s cool!The room didn’t stay empty for very long. Nope. We took the family to IKEA for a fancy Saturday night dinner. Funny story — we were talking about getting yogurt/ice cream after we ate and I had to remind the kids that they ONLY have vanilla. My son was pretty pissed and we debated for a good 10 minutes why IKEA can’t offer more than one flavor. The funny part — For the first time in the 25+ years I’ve been going to IKEA, in 4 countries, they had TWO flavors of yogurt this weekend. Yup! Vanilla and espresso. What the??? I had the espresso of course. Anyway, this was us at checkout. Both of the carts are ours. Plus 3 kitchen cabinets. We bought everything on my list, plus a disco ball, mirror, curtains, and duvet cover, and 2 pink KALLAX shelves for Lulu’s room. I’m loving the whole Ikea Family thing, because 3 of those items were on sale this month. With all that stuff it’s a good thing I brought the pickup truck. And the Lars. 12 of the boxes were BESTA bookshelves for the family room.After putting together 3 shelves I started to freak out. They were soooo skinny with shelves only 22″ wide. I didn’t like how much room was going to be between each cabinet and I hated that the shelves were not as deep as the sides. I really wanted BILLY bookshelves but they don’t come in 15″ depth anymore. It makes me so sad. So these 15″ depth BESTA’s were the next best option, but they cost more, are narrower and have the damned recessed shelves. I decided to take the other 3 back. I fooled around with trim and don’t think this looks terrible, but the spacing would actually have to be wider than that.After freaking out all day I decided to just build the rest of the damn shelves and make do. I mean really, how long can I put off finishing this room? I am going to group them in 3 groups of two and I am going to learn to love it.I woke up this morning thinking the room looks so much more balanced now. The fireplace actually seems like it’s in the center of the room. Not having the half wall helps a lot too. So all in all good progress this weekend. Now hopefully I can keep up the momentum all week.