Binkies and Briefcases

You Ugly, yeah, yeah, You UGLY! (cheer courtesy of My Brother And Me, via Nickelodeon circa 1994)

I’m talking about you, “family room.”

Meet my latest project, the family room.

It would be the family room anyway, if the space was remotely usable or pleasant to be in.

Right now it is just a junk room, and a REALLY ugly one at that. Brace yourselves. I’m about to air our very messy little secret.

It’s bad, you guys. Really, really, really, bad. Like humiliating. Like an episode of Diet Hoarders; People Who Aren’t Actually Hoarders, Just Have One Awful Space With Too Much Junk. (In my defense, albeit a weak one, the piles on the sofa aren’t normally there and no longer exist, I took this picture right after we moved all of my crafting and sewing supplies down here.)

It’s sad, really, because this room has so much potential. The fireplace, the extra square footage we could be using, the potential for a craft area not located in the middle of the dining room…not to mention that my poor husband actually works here on the days he is working from home.

Dark scary hallway to oblivion…

Super messy entryway off the garage, currently filled with construction stuff from our bathroom remodel (I was standing in the doorway of the bathroom to take this photo) plus a gigantic chalkboard that they were giving away for free at the church yard sale.

We have a split foyer house, so we pretty much spend all of our time upstairs where the kitchen, living room, and bedrooms are located, and completely ignore the fact that we have an entire additional floor.

Until now we’ve just been telling ourselves that we’ll get to it eventually when we can afford a complete overhaul, as in new drywall, new electrical, and everything. I can’t live with that plan any more if this needs to be my creative space because I cannot possibly create anything worthwhile in a space with this kind of negative energy. Plus, it will probably be 5 years or more before we get around to that remodel and who knows if we will even still want to live here at that point. We’d have to at least give this area a facelift to be able to sell the house for a decent price in the future. Might as well do it now so we can reap the benefits as well, right? That’s what the nesting side of me is saying.

It’s ok, though, I have a plan.

There really is a lot of potential here. It’s a little easier to tell in the photo that was in the mls listing when we bought this place, see?

Right now the plan involves a lot of purging, painting the paneling, ripping out the carpet, and installing super cheap laminate from Ollie’s or Ikea. I was at Ollie’s yesterday and they had brand name (Pergo & Mohawk) flooring for as low as 68 cents/square foot.

Eddie is not thrilled with the plan & I don’t really blame him because he already has TONS of projects to do around here, but I told him I am doing this 100% by myself. I’m pretty sure he won’t trust me to install the floor alone (although I am totally confident I could, especially if I buy extra flooring to make up for the learning curve 😉 but I can definitely paint and take up the carpet during nap times.

As a matter of fact, I started yesterday. Just me, a good quality low voc primer (If I wasn’t pregnant with two little ones in the house I would be using some hard core products to tackle this task, but the Olympic interior latex primer is working really well so far.) and an hour of sleeping children got one wall primed. One wall at a time and it will be done eventually, right?

It’s going to be a long, slow process. I hope you’ll stick with me on the journey because it’s a pretty huge undertaking and I’m going to need your moral support! I will keep you updated along the way.

In other news, I’m happy to report that the downstairs bathroom (just to the right of the wall in this photo) now has a new working toilet and will hopefully have a sink by the end of this weekend! That means the big reveal will be coming soon!! 🙂

Everybody loves saving money, right?

Here are the best deals that I found this week.

You can get free dinner tonight at Chick Fil A because it is Cow Appreciation Day. Just download the printable mask from their website.

Tomorrow (7/9) from 8am-noon Old Navy will be having a grab bag sale in the store. You pay $20 and get a mystery bag filled with $100-$125 worth of clothes in your size. The consensus on their Facebook page seems to be that you can use a Groupon, so if you got the Groupon that was out a few weeks ago, you will only pay $10. It’s kind of risky because you can’t see the clothes until after you buy them, but I think I’m going to try it.

Canvas People are having their free 8×10 photo canvas sale again! You just pay the $14.95 for shipping. That’s expensive shipping, but an amazing deal on a photo canvas. You can also get discounted upgrades on larger sizes at checkout.

Also, we were pleasantly surprised to learn last week that our Regal Cinema has $5 movie tickets all day on Tuesdays. Eddie took Nicholas to see Cars 2 and was happy to learn that it only cost $10 for the two of them to see it. Apparently only participating Regal Cinemas are doing this, but call and ask yours if they are! Seeing new releases in the theater can get expensive!

Finally, Dress Barn is having 50% off a lot of their online merchandise, plus you get an extra $10 off if you buy two dresses.

I’m still on the lookout for a winter coat that will cover my 9 month pregnant belly come December, so let me know if you find any good deals on one!