The Bedroom, Part 1

There are lies and untruths and half truths all over the internet, and I aim to fact-check this blog so I'm not contributing to the mess. As it turns out, the color of the living room is Spiced Apple Cider, not Spiced Pumpkin. Yes, they are both delicious, New Englandy, autumnal things. Yes, they are nearly identical to one another. No, neither food item is actually the color that Benjamin Moore says they are (see swatches, below). Whatever. Spiced Apple Cider provides the backdrop for the nonfiction-but-not-Hitler-or-WWI book collection and the vase of tilted sticks.

Actual Spiced Apple Cider (from www.myrecipes.com)  

BM Spiced Apple Cider

Actual Spiced Pumpkin (HOW GROSS DOES THIS LOOK??) 

BM Spiced Pumpkin

Glad we got that sorted out. 

Now for an update on our latest house-related progress. I've been waiting to post until rooms are "done," which I realize is a huge mistake because none of the rooms will ever be "done." After we painted and arranged the living room, we tackled the "master" bedroom. I put that in quotes for two reasons. First, because of the weird gender implications of calling it the "master" bedroom and second, because it's no bigger than the other bedroom, has a smaller closet, and is the only room in the house where the windows haven't been replaced. The other bedroom even has a ceiling fan. Really, it's just the bedroom we've decided to sleep in. I forgot to take a "before" photograph of the room, but you can see the paint color here: 

Look! More off-white! With yellow undertones!

You can also see the old water damage beneath the window that we had to repair before painting. With Drew out of town, the first fix-it job in the new house fell to me. The guy at the hardware store told me to scrape off the old paint, prime the surface, smear compound all over the place, prime it again, and then paint it. He said it would look like nothing ever happened. Okay, Mr. Hardware Store Man. I can do all that. 

One evening, after staring the wall into submission, I stuck a 5-in-1 tool in a paint bubble and started prying. The scraping was sort of cathartic, in a way. There were paint chips everywhere (yes, I put down a drop cloth first). Then there was plaster dust. I was rather enjoying myself, but then I remembered that all the houses in New England are covered in lead paint and I was probably breathing lead paint dust. Gaahhhh!!! No, I wasn't wearing a mask. No, I didn't have the windows open (it was pouring rain). Yes, I do have many years of higher education and a pretty healthy dose of common sense (that I forgot to use). I did the only sensible thing and immediately googled "lead paint poisoning." I came across several very scary articles about what can happen if you inhale lead paint dust including the fact that it only takes 1/10,000th of a packet of sweetener worth of dust to poison an adult, that you will give birth to babies with tentacles, and that you will have intestinal distress forever. Worst. Thing. EVER. I immediately took a shower (to wash off the dust that was seeping through my skin into my bloodstream). Then I decided to just keep going. Most of the scraping was finished, the bedroom was covered in paint chips, and the hardware stores were closed. If I was going to poison myself, I had already done so, and I couldn't very well leave the bedroom a mess. Then I remembered the entire building had been gutted in the late eighties, when lead paint was illegal. Phew (ish). Here's a photo of the scraped and partially primed wall. 

I forgot to take a photo of the scraped wall because I was busy panicking.

Then I put compound everywhere:

Then I primed it again and, voila! Ready to paint. Drew came home and said "nice job on the wall." As though this even comes close to recognizing the painstaking scraping, priming, compound-smearing, obsessive googling, and worrying about how our future children will have tentacles. But whatever. 

Drew had to do the high parts because I'm a midget, and now the room is a pleasing shade of gray:

Speaking of "a pleasing shade of gray," if you've never tried to find the perfect gray to paint a room, quit while you're ahead. Just as there is such a thing as "warm whites" and "cool whites," there is such a thing as "warm grays" and "cool grays." Because the house doesn't get much light, I thought it was important to find a "warm gray" to paint the bedroom so that... I don't really know. I forgot that we mostly sleep in the bedroom and that the precise shade of gray was probably not that important. It seemed crucial at the time. Finally, I was too confused about everything and, without buying a paint sample, bought a gallon of Benjamin Moore "Willow Creek," which is a brownish-gray. This could have been a disaster, but we put it on the walls and it looks like a regular gray, but is much more cozy. WIN! 

Then came the matter of furniture arranging. As previously mentioned, neither of us have any skills in this department. The room has a closet on one wall, windows on two walls, and a door on the fourth wall. Accounting for needing to open the closet door and the door into the room, we had two walls that could accomodate the bed. One also has the door into the room on it, which would have made for an awkward entry and also deprived one person of a nightstand. Not ideal. The other wall has a window on it that is 26" from the floor, which is exactly the same height as our box spring and bed, sitting on the floor. I didn't really like the idea of sleeping with my head against a window, so we were at a loss. Then Drew made a bold suggestion: What if we put the bed on the diagonal between the two windows? Everyone can have a nightstand, no one will get stepped on by a burglar when he climbs through the window in the middle of the night, and it looks kind of cool. 

BOOM. Conundrum solved. Except for the part where your pillow falls on the floor while you're sleeping (more on that later). Also, that rug is from Ikea and was $20. And I don't think I have lead poisoning. All good things.

Next up - the bathroom!