What is the deal?? I honestly felt like late September – mid-October was our busiest stretch of days, but the last two weeks of supposed leisure in comparison have been bonkers. I’m trying to figure out if part of the issue is the time change and the shorter daylight hours. I’m stuck in the office during the lovely parts of the day, and then when we need to get everything else done, it’s pitch black outside and feels like midnight. Our evenings have been so full despite being under-scheduled, so something else has got to give.
M was out of town two days last week, and then we traveled as a family this past weekend, so that might be part of it too. Not having the weekend to catch up on the house and the grocery runs means that stuff gets delegated to the evenings. And we’re still trying to make time to work out, and I’ve started running at the gym, but that time seems more intrusive on our evening schedule than catching a run in the park on the way home from work ever did. These are the days when I wish I could just take a hiatus from the regular work week grind. I’m driving the first shift of F’s field trip this morning, so I’ve got a bonus forty minutes at home by myself. The sun is out, the street is busy with some repair work and the noise of school buses and deliveries at the deli. I’ve got coffee dripping in the kitchen below me and the smells and sounds and pace of the morning is intoxicating. Best to not dwell on that too much…
I thought I’d save up some of my photos and ideas and just do one big post on the bathroom progress, but that’s silly. Big posts are not my speed these days, and finding the time to take photographs with natural light is rare. So here’s a quick update on what we’ve done.
Two weekends ago I deep cleaned the whole room – starting at the ceiling and tops of walls, shower curtains down and laundered, hardware scrubbed, fixtures, lights, everything. Then, over the course of the next week, I painted three different blues in three different spots each around the room. So now the room looks like a giant patchwork quilt. I put white foamcore up on the ledge to hide the black so I could better judge the blues. I think we’ve found the one we want – Benjamin Moore’s Van Deusen Blue HC-156. It has a fair amount of gray in it while still looking blue, but it doesn’t go all the way to navy. More navy just looked too close to the blue-black we had in there on the top – I wanted more of a change than just flipping things. And some of the prettiest indigo blues looked really, really blue at nighttime – I want soothing in there, not Kentucky Wildcat Blue (unless we’re talking basketball).
Here are some grainy, late night photos of the cabinet. (The good blue is nearest the upper left hand corner of the cabinet, but this is an Instagram photo, not really true color.) It was on back order and was scheduled to be back in production on 11/11, shipping to the store a few weeks later. Instead it arrived on 11/11 to the store – and guess what? They wanted it picked up within three days. M was in Dallas and then we were headed out of town to visit with family, so I asked them to give us a little more time. They did, and M and I rearranged our Monday afternoon schedule to make this work. Unfortunately, the rains also came on Monday – huge downpours scheduled for several days in a row. And our muscle (a close friend) was available Monday night, but not after that for awhile.
Ugh. The store had the box wrapped with heavy duty plastic for transport in our open bed truck. There was a brief window of minimal rain from 5:00- 6:30 that evening, which was extra lucky because they had to bust the packaging open at the house to get the pieces in. This cabinet is large and HEAVY. It ended up taking about 4.5 hours to get it picked up and carried in – and then they decided to take the stair railings off so that they didn’t have to lift the cabinet above their heads to clear the railings. Around 9:00pm M slid the last drawer in. That was Monday night. No wonder we’re exhausted.
The cabinet is gorgeous, and still sitting empty. I’m working on how to fill it – and have a test roll of non slip drawer liners and some clear modular plastic inserts from the Container Store to hold our toiletries (and protect this piece from accidental spills). I’ll get some better photos this weekend when there’s more light.
Now – off to that field trip before I get too attached to this kind of morning schedule…
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