Dining and office updates

During the planning phase of the kitchen refresh, we tested out a number of colors.  I usually do some narrowing of the field, then Alex looks things over and we discuss and I harass family members for help etc. These six samples were the result of two rounds of sample acquisition and I am so glad we took the time to live with them a bit before taking the plunges.

Alex was kind enough to stop at HD for the paint and it's been kind of hanging out around our place since September, to be honest.  We chose the middle of the top row for the kitchen, and the far left of the lower row for the dining room and potentially other areas.  I put up swatches of the two around the rooms we thought might coordinate, and we decided that the dining room and office could both be yellow to help them feel larger and keep us energized.

We decided to add some wall shelving and to downsize furniture wise in both of these rooms, and plotted out a course of attack.  We had a lovely baker's rack in the dining room that held plants, teas, and serving dishes, but it took up over 16 inches of floor space depth wise, and was 3 feet long.  Our dining table is non-negotiable in this room, and hutch holds our wine glasses, adult beverages, and heavy jars of canned foods, so we decided the rack was the best option to leave.  Craigslist turned up no buyer, so it was picked up by the kind folks at the Brown Elephant, a resale shop we love (ok, Jenn loves, Alex cringes when he is drug into) that benefits a great medical group.

The office contained a desk our movers called "Big Bertha" and took all four seriously strong men to move it.  I loved it for storage capacity, but finally had to admit there was just not room for it in our 11X12 office that serves as Nyobi's entrance and contains the exterior door as well as access to the furnace in our utility space and our fuse box is in the middle of a wall. I would spend hours organizing the workspace, only to find it buried a day or two later and we just couldn't justify the space occupied (44 inches wide, 24 deep) for how little it was being used.  We had some wall-mountable cabinets stacked on top of the desk and decided to pull the trigger and hang them with the exit of the desk.

I list these kind of related projects together because this is really what Alex has to work with.  I insisted we do all of these basically at the same time, my brain insisted we paint the walls before hanging these new shelving options, but we had to dispose of the desk before that could happen.  We spent several hours disassembling drawer mounts for potential reuse, and smaller subsections from the large frame.  We had also ordered a really cool little circular saw for small cutting jobs, and it made short work of cutting some of the non-cutting surfaces, and made friends with our beautiful shop vac.  After these pieces were removed, we stacked up the pieces on our deck, hillbilly style, and got to work prepping for paint.

To the left is the first wall in our dining room - without anything else going on it is BRIGHT and sunny in daylight.  The baker's rack had been living in the corner next to the window for reference.  The two photos to the right are of the office (at night), obviously the curtains will be changed out and we have some additional plans for the middle of the room that don't involve the remnants of a desk Alex describes as having been "constructed through use of occult forces." 







A lot more has been happening, but this is the kind of non-exciting, unglamorous preparation that goes into our decisions and we wanted to put it out there that our place is often in disarray while we work on things.  Painting is not high on Alex's list of fun activities, but it is such a game-changer on space and we are on a mission to get the lame flipper gray out of here and on with our lives.