Our very own multi-purpose room

Our old apartment was 550 square feet and our new place is 1050 square feet. Nearly doubled! With all that extra space comes rooms we didn't have before, notably a dining room and a second bedroom. Dining rooms are for dining, which we do a fair bit of (although it would be more honest to call it "eating" or perhaps "shoveling" around here). Spare bedrooms are for house guests, which we have once in a blue moon, and children, of which we don't have any. So the question presented itself: What should we do with our second bedroom?

This is what the previous owners did: 

Things we dislike: Purple walls, off-white trim.
Things we don't have: Baby

The obvious first solution was to use the space as an office. As it turns out though, our entryway is awkwardly large and absolutely needs a piece of substantial furniture in it so it doesn't feel wasted. Enter our giant rolltop desk, printer, and other office-y things (I'll post photos of this space once it's not covered in office paraphernalia, paint chips, and other assorted detritus). 

At first, we put our bed in the second bedroom while we set up our real bedroom. I loved sleeping in that room, mostly due to the ceiling fan and the woods out the window. The closet is cedar-lined as well, which seems very fancy to me. Who does that? (Answer: The same people who painted the entire house in different colors of off-white. I guess they weren't all bad.) The room isn't well suited to be our bedroom, though, because it's kind of a hallway - it has one door that leads to the entryway and one that leads to the hallway/bathroom/kitchen. The bedroom at the back of the house seemed better to me, so sleeping there full-time was not our solution. 

He's also a law student.
Photo credit to someone on facebook

We cleared everything out and Brendan (on the right) helped me paint it one day while Drew was at work. Brendan is very tall (helpful for the high parts), very funny (helpful for the part where we spend hours together), and very kind for offering to help his dinky sister in law paint things. He also came to Ikea with me one day, which turned into quite an adventure and ended with him getting stuck in the trunk. Story for another day.

From santorini.com

Drew requested a blue room, so I searched for a blue that wasn't too dark and wasn't too "baby blue" either. The woman who helped me pick the living room color wasn't working the day I went to the hardware store to choose the blue. In response to my request for help, the hardware store guy said "Don't worry about it. People put too much stock in color choices. Just pick a blue and paint the wall with it." Thanks, dude. Really. Very helpful. I'm not very good at controlling my facial expressions, so I think he knows I don't appreciate him very much. Whoops. All by myself, I chose "Santorini Blue," which looks nothing like the blue commonly associated with Santorini.

The blue is much more New England-y than Mediterranean, which is probably good because we're in New England. Here's the room with fresh, white trim and Santorini Blue on the walls: 

Once the room was painted, we had to resume figuring out what to put in it. Too many books leads to a bookshelf on one wall:

Hitler and WWI books, banished from the living room

One of my favorite girlfriends from law school, Kate, kindly offered us her futon. Her mother told her in no uncertain terms not to bring it home after law school, so I'd like to think that we all won. Really though, Drew and I won because Kate stayed with us this weekend (upcoming post: Painting the dining room during a hurricane), we put her to work, and we got to hang out before she left Beantown (sad). 

Once the futon was installed, I decided that we had enough walls painted and enough furniture in its proper place around the house to start hanging stuff on the walls. Exciting because now we won't have blank walls! Stressful because now I'm going to put holes in the walls that will probably be off kilter and cause me headaches! I decided to start big with a photo collage above the futon. We had one of these in our bedroom at our old apartment and it was less than perfect. We nailed a bunch of photo hangers up and hung things on the wall, which resulted in lots of uneven spacing. This time, I decided to be a wee bit more precise. 

There were lots of ideas using butcher paper (which some people just have laying around, apparently), but I went old school and used notebook paper, which I cut to the size of each frame and stuck to the wall. I marked where the nails needed to go, hammered them in (sorry neighbors!) and tore off the paper. 

It worked like a charm! 

If you ever come visit us, this is where you'll stay. Until then, it's a nice place to sit and look out the window and/or read books about Nazis. Hooray!

The Bathroom, a.k.a. A Bandaid Until We Can Renovate

This is the realtor's photo, so it makes the space look nicer than it is.

Of all the rooms in the beige palace, the one that offended me most was (hilariously) not painted off-white. Nope. The bathroom was painted yellow with a purple sponge paint overlay. I couldn't get a good photo of the purple sponge paint part of the bathroom, so you'll have to take my word for it. On the left is what the room looked like in the previous occupants' hands.

This is how it looked when we moved in.

Note the abnormally tall sink - 39 inches tall! I actually have to stand on my toes to wash my face. Embarrassing to admit on the internet, but true. Also note the abnormally short toilet. Next to that sink, it's pretty ridiculous. It's also low-flow, which is good for the environment but means we need to purchase a plunger (our old apartment had a toilet that flushed with the strength of a black hole. It was amazing and didn't clog one time in the three years we lived there). The floors are old linoleum and the bathtub may have actually been painted at some point. It's finish is chipping and bubbling in places in a very non-bathtub kind of way. Curiouser and curiouser... The lighting is also terrible. Thus, the award for room in most need of renovation goes to: THE BATHROOM. There is not one thing about this room I wouldn't change if I had a million dollars (or a couple thousand and a contractor, or several hundred and some DIY skills).

Close up on the gross moldy linoleum.

Even though I'd love nothing more than to rip out that linoleum, kick the sink to the curb, and buy a new bathtub, now is not the time. We can't structurally fix this room right now, but that doesn't have to mean we live with it the way it is, right? Right.

Bandaid time!

We painted the walls with "Rodeo" (a light, warm gray), bought a new shower curtain at Target, painted the trim and sink "Simply White," and hung blue towels (not because they match terribly well, but because that's the color we have).

Ta-da!

Much better! 

Until we have the money and/or skills to deal with this permanently, I'm pretty happy with the transformation!

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!

The Living Room

First, a note about color. I am from the Southwest, where everything is colorful. I love wearing colorful clothes, having colorful things around me, and one of my favorite things about this part of Boston is that it's full of houses like this one -->

(photo credit to Erika Diaz)

All the "painted ladies" were a bit out of our price range, however, so we moved into the BEIGE PALACE, where every room is a different color of not-white-not-yellow-not-brown. It's like a painted lady, but really, really boring. Even the trim is painted different colors. I'm not sure what was wrong with these people. At any rate, in a climate where it is rainy or wintery almost all the time, a girl needs some color in her life. Apart from the weird kitchen and the weirder bathroom (more on that later), painting the entire house, top to bottom, was the first priority.

The first room we tackled was the living room. Here it is before we painted it:

Drew realizing the doors don't close all the way

The entry way is to the right

From the dining room into the living room

Note the beige everywhere. It makes me want to take a snooze right there on the wood floor. But those french doors! Swoon. The doors are beautiful and add character BUT, they make the room super awkward. The left door covers the room's only light switch and makes an entire corner of the room virtually unusable. We took off the doors and, until the furniture arranging fairy gives us advice as to how to make the room work with the doors on, they're staying off.

The night the movers deposited us and our stuff in the house, we painted the entire living room (including trim and ceiling). It was raining and we were exhausted and hungry, so you can bet it was not the most fun evening we've ever had. But the finished product makes it seem worthwhile.

The walls are Benjamin Moore "Spiced Pumpkin" and the trim is "Simply White."

We had a little trouble with paint bubbling up in the corner - I think it had something to do with all the moisture in the air. Our choices were either to chip off the bubbled paint and start over, or to put a bookshelf in the corner so no one will ever notice (guess which option we chose???)

Then came the part where we had to arrange the furniture. I have never been good at arranging furniture. In my last apartment, my friend Jason put the couch on an angle, totally revolutionizing my life, but I escaped without having to learn how to arrange furniture. In the apartment before that (a Manhattan bowling alley - with exposed brick!), the furniture was awkward because no one helped me arrange it. In the apartment before that (a Manhattan bowling alley - without exposed brick!), my roommate and I had such an astoundingly large futon that there was really only one way to arrange things. The point, then, is that I am incapable of doing this myself. Enter the reinforcements! My dear friend Michelle and her boyfriend Jon came over briefly to see the place and I cajoled them into helping me move the couch into the living room. Both of them immediately said the couch should go in front of the three windows. I balked. My back towards the window? So the bogeyman/burglars/pizza delivery man can sneak up on me? Even so, we tried it. Far be it from me to turn down design advice from people who know what they're doing. And you know what? I think it works! (Sidenote: Please do not judge the piles of stuff in the entry way and the dining room. We're moving in one room at a time. It's driving me nuts, but we want to paint everything and can't do it any other way).

View from the dining room 

The first photo captures the couch in all of its under-the-windows glory. The table with the vase on it needs help (it's got one foot off the carpet and is a little tilty) but we'll figure it out. The bookshelf in the corner between the windows has our "fiction" library on it.

View from the entry way

The photo to the left shows the television and what is now known as "the awkward chair." I wanted the room to facilitate television-watching because, let's be honest, that's what we do in our living room most of the time. BUT, I don't want the living room to be "all about the TV" either because that makes me feel like a couch potato. I think I saw something on HGTV about "conversation clusters" and I want one of those. If there's a way to do it without the awkward chair being so awkward, I'd love to hear about it...

Never mind the messy other rooms...

Between the entryway and the dining room is the "nonfiction but not Nazis or World War I" bookshelf, which is covering up the bubbly paint like a charm.

Speaking of books and bookshelves, if there's such a thing as having too many books, we have WAY too many books. Not only do we have two giant bookshelves shoved full of books, but all the boxes in view in the dining room are full of the "nonfiction about Nazis or World War I" genre. Drew has even more in his office, which he has to clean out soon. We are literally drowning in books. We need more bookshelves and/or to start patronizing libraries. At any rate, the Nazi books are not not in the living room because I got tired of staring at HITLER and THE THIRD REICH all the time, so the Nazis have been kicked out of the living room. 

That's all for now! Next up: The bedroom!

Update on cookies, graduation, the bar exam, and questingboston's new lease on life!

Hello faithful readers! Kday and I apologize for the lapse in posting. We'd like to imagine that you have all been sitting in front of your computer screens, pining for a post about something delicious, and feeling empty inside. We know that virtually none of you care, but let's keep the dream alive, shall we?

First, an update on the cookie quest... We continued questing and eating cookies and spending time together, but stopped posting because we got overwhelmed with all things last-semester-of-law-school related. I don't remember where we went, but none of the cookies were as good as that first delectable cookie from Clear Flour Bread. They win the prize and you should go there post haste.

Then we graduated from law school! It was all very exciting and involved silly hats. Kday was a party pooper and removed her entire juris doctor ensemble prior to the photo, but I have to give her credit for her foresight. We all looked ridiculous and that velvet is really hot.

After that, Kday promptly left Boston to embark on her new adventure questing for BLTs in Michigan and/or lawyering it up. She moved into a historic building that I can't wait to see photos of (ahem, kday - photos plz).

After graduation, we took the dreaded bar exam. Aaand it was horrid. I consider myself a relatively collected human - I held it together during exams most years but this bar exam thing was rough on the psyche. Let's just say I'm glad I'm still married. We're crossing our fingers that we passed and I'm sure everyone we know is also crossing their fingers so they don't have to hear us talk about it ever again. We don't blame you.

That pretty much brings us to the present. Now - the future of our little blog. Kday is in the mitten and I'm still in the Bay State, making future joint questing infrequent at best. The distance is one thing, but we also have jobs now and can't just run around eating desserts all day. Furthermore, questingbostonandgrandrapids is a little unwieldy. With Kday's gracious permission, I'm going to be the main blogger from here on out.

Here it is!

If you haven't guessed already, the new quest is HOME OWNERSHIP. Drew (remember Drew?) and I close on a condo in Boston tomorrow morning. It's on the 1st floor of a triple-decker and it's in need of some TLC. Now, there are lots of home ownership blogs out there but this one will be different. First, it will be different because Drew and I are cooler than the other bloggers (obvi). Second, it will be different because the other bloggers seem to know what they're doing. We don't. We have grand plans for this little place and will be carrying them out with help from the great folks at youtube, the orange-apron-clad people at Home Depot, and hopefully a healthy dose of luck.


So that's that. After we close, the first project is painting all the walls and trim, which are currently all the same shade of blah cream except the bathroom, which is a yellow-and-purple sponge painting disaster. Until then, please cross your fingers for a smooth closing!