Whole House Update – the saga of things snowballing around here

Checks notes: Ok… at this point the snowball effect going on around here has pretty much impacted the whole house lol so I thought I should do a house update with photos and a bit of a recap. It all started with my deciding our television just had to move to a different wall in our living room. (I made the mistake of proclaiming that it just could not go anywhere else in that space and my silly brain took that as a challenge…) I can’t blame it all on that though as I’d been silently just DYING to ditch our guest bedroom and give Lodi a den instead.

I’ve learned a couple of lessons over the years working on this house.

LESSON #1 You can really only plan so far ahead and you really need to be open minded about it. I go into every situation now totally fluid. When plans meet reality it can be REALLY surprising what does work (that you never considered) and what doesn’t work at all (that absolutely should have).

LESSON #2 There’s a lot to be said with being able to start with an entirely empty room. It unshackles our brains from all suggestions and helps us be as creative as we can. Everything must go! Every piece of furniture, artwork, everything must go and the room needs a full deep clean and touch up throughout. A brand new room inspires brand new ideas!

So, its really fortunate I have my office as its given me plenty of space (totally out of the way of our daily lives) to store stuff in the interim!

Our living room was sparkling and empty besides the sofa when we started bringing things back into it.

And it transformed remarkably from what it used to be.

First big change was with streaming TV now we no longer need an entertainment center. Lodi and I shared the look of dawning realization… If you have a TV than you NEED an entertainment center! It’s always been this way! They’re like peas and carrots! Not anymore!

Whole House Update

All our TV needs now is an outlet and wifi.

Our “entertainment center” got to return to what is was actually built to be in our kitchen: A lovely claw foot buffet that remains one of my very favorite pieces that I inherited from my paternal Grandma.

From the living room the last boxes in my office were full of books that no longer had a home. It was a few weeks actually before one night my brain told me it had been working on the problem and then boom: a solution.

Our stairwell in the living room that goes up to our master bedroom has a natural shelf which now showcases all of the books that I’ve designed over the years.

That certainly had not at all been a part of my plan.

I totally love it!

My office was finally “empty” and ready to store stuff again so we moved on to the guest bedroom. (Really relieved that most of the guest bedroom’s artwork and stuff and things could slide right under my futon… They’re still there waiting to head to the basement eventually.)

This is where I’m proving just how well I’ve learned Lesson #1 about planning because I simply didn’t have a plan at this point because it felt futile.

I just knew that the guest bedroom had to start over completely and most of everything probably wasn’t going to be returning.

Leaving a lot of stuff!

It turned out that I had a perfect spot in my office for my grandpa’s ladder which hangs my bro’s baby blanket and an afghan my mom made. And the pine trunk my grandparents made for me also fit just fine there too as a “coffee table” in front of my futon.

Of course all of those things totally belong with me in my room so that worked out but again, it happened naturally, there was no plan lol.

(Looking at those items in particular though it was pretty obvious where they belonged…)

With the guest bedroom empty we purged the bed and an old rocking chair but after that I was surprised again on how things worked out as I had also expected that we would be purging the desk and the bedside table as well.

But the minute I saw that little white bedside table sitting in our entryway I didn’t even hesitate. I swapped it out with the end table in the living room that I’d grown very tired of because of a sticky drawer.

I love it. It fits so much better here and it has a drawer that WORKS!

And she’s gonna be a nice little project for me as she needs to be repainted. I also think some new hardware is in order and I might even add a stencil.

Whole House Update

I had expected Lodi to keep the dresser in the guest bedroom (now his den) and ditch the desk.

I was wrong on both counts.

It also turned out that Lodi wasn’t married to his lamp that was in the guest bedroom (the one that looks like a branch) or his little dresser from the basement so they both went to the garage.

To my shock both of the end tables from the basement fit like a glove with his sofa in his new den. Lodi brought his two lamps up as well while I had fully expected all four of those pieces to stay in the basement.

Another surprise to me was that neither the coffee table nor the rug from the basement worked up here at all!

With the dresser gone Lodi still needed something to act as an entertainment center and it just so happened the corner cabinet in the basement is an ACTUAL entertainment center. (Who knew?) And it worked so much better than the big dresser that had dominated the closet before!

Of course I had fully expected that corner cabinet to stay in the basement lol.

So that big red dresser sat, obnoxiously in our way, in the entryway facing the other big antique dresser before Lodi asked me to help him take it out… but I hesitated.

The other old beauty had broken drawers that we constantly had to fight with because we NEED them for storage so… we swapped them too!

The non functioning dresser got kicked out to the garage and we now have a working dresser in the entryway.

Another surprise to me.

Lodi reclaimed his lamp from our master bathroom. Its a really cool modern touch table lamp that wasn’t right up there at all. So I got to pick out a new one for our master that fit the space.

I hadn’t at all expected to have to ADD furniture to the basement but Lodi’s den was apparently a lot bigger than I realized because it easily fit his two end tables, his big sofa, his corner cabinet and both lamps like a dang glove.

So, now the basement needed at least two end tables and two lamps… which, somehow after all of this, is EXACTLY what we have out in the garage! That end table I replaced from the living room has a matching mate and they’ll be really nice for either side of the bed in the basement.

Whole House Update

Its amazing how things work out sometimes.

This was a TON of work over the course of months and months (and we’re still not done of course) but the many small (and big) swaps of furniture, artwork, etc. touched almost every room in our house, cost us practically nothing and really improved so much of our home.

Our spaces turned out more lovely than I could have hoped but that’s never my first priority.

The big change here for us is that our house WORKS so much better for us now. Just getting rid of the tiny irritant of that damned sticky drawer in the living room has been stupidly amazing.

I had NO IDEA just how much it had annoyed me!

Now every time I use my new perfectly functioning drawer I get a little thrill, it is so silly but it really is about the little things… Life’s hard enough to not have to fight with your end table too!