Weekend Warriors...

Yet again, my entire weekend was devoted to home improvement projects, with varying degrees of success. Saturday, I went over to our new place to work with Mom, who's been concentrating on painting our bedroom, which she finished earlier today. I don't have any pictures yet, because I decided to wait until next week when I plan to clean the floor in there and get our rug and end tables in place, in preparation for the arrival of our bed on moving day in just two weeks.

I'm loving the deep turquoise I picked for the accent wall behind the bed, but I'm on the fence about the khaki color I chose for the other three walls, which looks unexpectedly peachy in the natural light pouring in from our east-facing windows. I'm hoping that once we get our curtains hung over them, the additional darkness will tone down the color and it will look more brown than orange. Fingers crossed!

Yesterday, I spent several hours using a tiny travel steamer to remove the wrinkles in our living room curtains, which are holdovers from the creases that were made in the fabric when it was packaged for sale. I could only get about a panel and half finished before I had to turn the machine off, wait for it to cool down, and refill it, so it was somewhat of a frustrating exercise. When I was finished, however, they looked fantastic.

Imagine my horror, then, when we turned on the lights once it started getting dark, and I discovered that all of the wrinkles I had systematically removed had come right back! Rage isn't even a strong enough word to capture my emotions at that moment. Now we'll have to take them back down off the wall and iron them. I think I'm willing to live with the wrinkles for the moment -- I have more important things to worry about.

I also started washing our linens this weekend so that we'll have clean sheets and towels waiting for us when we move in. It's not glamorous work, but it has to be done. It's amazing how many small details need to be attended to in for a place to be livable. Like shelf-liner, another task that I started to conquer today. We didn't have enough for me to line all of our kitchen cabinets, but I made some headway and got the rest of the cabinets measured so we'd know how much more we needed. It feels like a silly thing to be working on when we have so many major projects going on (like painting the bedrooms and bathrooms), but all of our pots, pans, and food are going to have to go somewhere in two weeks, and I'd rather they not scratch up our lovely cabinets. Especially not after I've invested so much time in cleaning them inside and out.

Justin worked on a variety of small projects as well today, ranging from removing the old hardware in our bathroom to accommodate the new towel bars we have on the way, to working with Mom to drill holes in the back of our entertainment center to hide all the cables in advance of our cable installation this week, to replacing the outlet covers on the walls that have already been painted. As he screwed the stainless steel outlet covers into place in the bedroom, he said to me, "We are going to be comfortable in our new home!" 

What I think he was trying to express was an appreciation for the attention to detail we're bringing to furnishing our new home. It's the little things, like fancy outlet covers and immaculately cleaned cabinets that make this place feel like a real home, not just a place where we're living until the next best option becomes available. Even though it exhausts me, I'm proud of the work we've done, and I'm grateful to my mom for all the help she's been giving us to help turn our house into a home. Our move is getting closer every day, and I'm happy to having such a beautiful space awaiting us.