House Project "Reveal"

Since my latest house transformation project is done, I thought I'd tinker with the look of this blog. My tinkering is not over, but I feel I'm getting closer to what I want.

But now, on to the sewing / guest room transformation and the reveal!

My "before" pictures are of the room in sewing mode:

Drab and cluttered, right?  Normally I have my sewing machine out on the sewing table (where the gray kitty sits in the first picture), and to my right (I'm standing in a small closet) along the wall is my cutting table. I took this after we moved the piano, which used to sit where the small chest is. No wonder I felt claustrophobic when I tried to quilt.

And here are the "after" pictures, two of the sewing room and one in guest room mode:

Thanks to Molly for all her help. I couldn't have done this without her.

Thanks to Neville for adding the perfect touch to the bed.

In guest room mode, the sewing table folds up into a nice-looking cabinet and rolls to the right of the closet in place of the cutting table, which rolls back to our bedroom for the duration of the visit. The pretty green chair sits against the wall to the left, so that the sewing cabinet and chair provide places for guests to set their luggage.

I can't express how pleased I am with our results! I've never considered myself especially creative in  interior design, and neither does Kat. Believe me, our projects don't always turn out this nice.

One of the unexpected bonuses is that the shelves on either side of the Murphy bed provide enough space that we were able to get rid of one of the book cases in our office, opening up that space a little more. And I love, love, love having my beloved books in my creative work space.

There are some additional finishes we could do. It would be nice to have a smaller, more decorative lamp, and maybe an accent rug, a different ceiling fan, but we splurged on the chair ($80 at Kirkland's for the perfect green chair), and on good quality wood and paint. The others are things we can pick up as it fits in the budget.

So, we broke our pledge again of no house projects in January and February, and we used tax return money we were going to put toward the kitchen re-do scheduled for later this year, but I have no regrets. I feel that ultimately we bought light and space. Money well spent.

DIY Project - From Despair to Good Times

How is it that once a project is begun, the world comes crashing in?  Kat and I know to allot more time than we think is needed for any house project. We started the minor renovation of my sewing / guest room with a hard deadline of March 10, the date of the arrival of my sister and nieces for Spring Break. We had two mostly empty weekends to work with, and figured the project would take only one of those weekends with the cracks filled in during the week.

I’m sure you can guess the rest of the story.

On Saturday the ninth, we were frantically finishing up the room while trying to clean, shop for groceries, prep for meals, and all the other things that go with getting ready for guests. We made it, barely.

The unexpected problems that cropped up were, first, my getting a nasty cold and passing it on to Kat. We worked through it, but fatigue was definitely a factor. Then Kat was assigned a trainee at work, which meant much longer hours, and this on top of battling a cold virus. Then I had some issues pop up with volunteer work that needed attention. I fell into that middle-of-project funk when I despair that we’re improving anything and wonder why we made so much seemingly unnecessary work for ourselves.

But in the end we finished just in time for guests to enjoy (very satisfying!!) Today guests have gone home, and I need to clean before I take “after” pictures. I’ll be back soon to show off the project. I am VERY pleased with how it turned out.

Despair is gone, and now time to enjoy, and try hard to ward off the itch to tackle some other project anytime soon.

Making a Small Space Function

See that innocent looking tape measure? I left it on the dresser the other day.

"Why'd you have the tape measure out?" Kat asked when she got home from work.

Doh! I didn't want her to know I was scheming to get the piano out of my sewing room (and primary guest room). I've been feeling way too claustrophobic in there since I'd installed a cutting table. The room is only 9 1/2 feet by 10 feet, and in it fits my sewing table, ironing board, piano, murphy bed, cutting table, and a small chest of drawers. The cutting table folds up nicely, but when I'm using it, I have about a 4 by 4 space to move around in.

My idea was to get rid of the large dresser in our master, downsize my clothes to the small chest currently located in the sewing room, thus freeing space to put the piano in our bedroom. I didn't have everything thought through when Kat found the tape measure, and I didn't want to present my plan prematurely, but too late! She got it out of me -- and flipped upon hearing I wanted to jettison the not-very-old dresser.

Much arguing ensued, during which I dramatically proclaimed that now she could understand why I hadn't wanted to tell her anything until I had it all worked out.

After we both settled down, she thought things over and figured out a way to rearrange the room to make it work without losing the dresser. At first I wasn't too happy, "Why can't we just let go of things?" I said, but Kat is a natural organizer, so in the end I decided to trust her.

I can't believe it, but I love our new bedroom. We did remove a few things -- some book shelves and two pieces of kitty furniture -- but what really opened up the space was rearranging a few pieces of the bedroom furniture. Our piano fits, and the room seems somehow more spacious to me. More comfortable.

And what is more exciting is the sewing room. We pulled everything out and painted, then we centered the murphy bed on the wall; it had been off-center to accommodate the piano. Kat is building cabinets for the top of the murphy bed and shelves along either side so that the whole thing will look built-in (we hope). Our inspiration picture is here at  Houzz.com.

What is so cool is that we're making good use of vertical space. We'll be able to store pillows and bed linens in the cabinets over the murphy bed instead of in our small linen closet. The shelves will house the books that were in the master bedroom with plenty of room for baskets to hold my stash (as in quilting fabrics :-))

I've taken "before" pictures, but it may be a week or so before I have the "after" shots, so I'll wait to post them.

Wish us luck!

Boundaries and Guilt

I said no.

One of the bullet points of my personal mission statement is to "carefully consider requests to commit my time, accepting or declining as best fits my values and goals." Sounds unemotional and reasonable, but I can't adequately express how difficult living this is for me, and what negative emotions it stirs up! I could benefit from a can't-say-no support group.

But for once, I said no.

I was asked to serve on a new, and needed, parish committee by a person I like and respect. My first impulse was to say yes, but I forced myself to sit with the request and think it through. In this case, I could tell that my impulse to join came more from fear of disappointing this person than it did from wanting to commit time to the objectives of the committee, as worthy as those objectives are. It was a tough decision -- the need to please nearly consumes me -- but in the end, I DID say no.

Do I feel good about it? Not really. I'm struggling with guilt and the feeling that I've let this person down. This is why I end up with too much busy and not enough time spent on the things I value most.

As uncomfortable as these feelings are, I will live with them knowing that I made a good decision. Maybe with a little more practice, saying no won't be so hard.

The Last Box

Until a couple of days ago, this is what was left of my real estate life:

I've had it sitting next to my desk for over a month,  intending to sort through it. Finally I seized an empty morning and dug in. Client files I scanned then shredded, and the rest I either scanned then trashed, or gave away.  I did keep a few office supplies.

So it's all over. Still feels strange.

There are vestiges left -- equipment I purchased for the real estate business that I am glad I invested in, as I would never have sprung for these items otherwise (being what Gretchen Rubin and others call an under buyer). At the top of this list of useful equipment is my scanner:

Note the small footprint. Deceptive, because this little guy scans fast and in quantity. Shortly after I purchased it at the beginning of my real estate venture, I took it for a spin by tackling the clutter in our office closet.

We had an entire shelving unit full of binders, which were stuffed with college papers, memorabilia, and photos. I trashed some papers, but what I couldn't part with, I scanned into  labeled folders on my laptop, then backed it all up to an external hard drive. The pictures went into iPhoto, and the actual photos went into photo boxes. We opened up a ton of space, and the scanning was so easy!

I would never have bought this piece of office equipment had I not done real estate. Just too expensive, and I could never have justified it to myself, but it's been worth every penny for its organizing and decluttering abilities.

So thank you Real Estate Venture, for giving me the opportunity to learn new things, make new friends, have different experiences, and own a zippy scanner.

Blowing Deadlines and Re-Scripting Failure

Spread before me right now are all my tools for working toward goals and organizing time. These tools go from the general to the specific -- personal mission statement, 2013 resolutions, and project pages. Project pages are what I live from. I check them every morning to orient myself. In them I list the areas of my life that require attention -- writing, volunteer commitments, household, finances, quilting, relationships, health -- and for each area I have columns for goals, tasks (a catch-all to-do list), and next step(s). Having just one or two tasks per area in the next step column makes juggling everything so much more manageable.

But here's the thing.

My project pages are full of missed deadlines. Dates crossed out, sometimes multiple times, for a project or next step. I used to be down on myself for this seeming inability to keep self-made deadlines -- especially as I am obsessive about meeting any deadline set for me by someone else. I can see the likes of Stephen Covey and Tony Robbins shaking their heads and thinking that success is not likely here; one must be accountable to oneself, or at least find a buddy to aid accountability. And while there's truth in that, I've come to realize something important.

For years I've badgered myself about blown deadlines, and my inner nag had just about convinced me that I could not perform work that is self-directed, that I needed a boss to set external goals and deadlines. Yet if I look back over the last several years, I managed to write three novels -- revising each mulitple times -- start a blog, complete five quilts, maintain a clutter-free home full of heatlhy pets, contribute a lot to volunteer efforts, keep up with friends and family, and make a mildly successful stab at a different career before deciding it wasn't for me. Not bad for suffering from nagging doubts that I can't be successful because I fail at keeping self-imposed deadlines.

Somehow my methods work (for the most part), and it occurred to me that my goal-setting and project planning are my way of plotting my life. In the writing world, we speak of plotters vs pantsers, or those who create character charts and plot outlines before writing the narrative (Elizabeth George), verses those who enter the world of a character and write the narrative by the seat of their pants (Stephen King). Many of us fall on the spectrum between those two positions. I am a plotter, but often I diverge from my carefully outlined plot and go off by the seat of my pants until I get so tangled I need to stop and readjust the outline. I do this over and over.

So I plot my life with goals and tasks and target deadlines. This works for a while until interests and circumstances intrude, and off I go. Then I get bogged down and disoriented, and back I go to my mission statement and project pages, crossing out and readjusting and moving forward with a plan for a while. Messy, messy, but it works and I'm done trying to change myself or measure myself against the plot outline, declaring myself a failure for not having stuck with it. If I am not managing to accomplish some of my objectives, then I'll figure out why and re-write the goal and/or tasks related to the goal. No failure there, and so simple. My inner nag will have to find something else to yammer about.

Unexpected Expenses of the Young New Year

Today the sun is shining! But it's still too cold for me. Brrr.

Kat and I had decided to take a break from household maintenance projects at least for the months of January and February. But God laughs at our plans!! It's been so cold (for South Texas; I'm sure many would think our shivering at temps in the 30's and 40's is amusing), that we've wanted to make our feral kitties more comfortable.

Kat built a little door in the side of the garage that can be closed off at night when our furry friends are safely inside, then we bought some Purr Pads and a small heater. Those boys are nice and warm at night now (you can guess they're not very feral any more, if they ever were true ferals). Cost was around $100, but worth it for the peace of mind.

Unexpected expenses in other categories in the new year are a defunct hard drive in Kat's laptop ($160 to replace) and a $170 trip to the dentist for me. It was a routine cleaning, but I was due x-rays and a consult with the dentist. All is fine except that I have two teeth with recessed gumlines that need to be filled at a cost of $270. Sigh. That comes up in February.

Not so good, but on the other hand, where we can better control expenses -- such as dining in and keeping our grocery bill in check -- we've done well. I'm determined to NOT be like the king in the old nursery rhyme who sat in his counting house counting out his money. Being budget conscious is one thing, but in the past few years I've gotten obsessive and overly anxious about it. We'll do what we can to be prudent, and beyond that I will trust life (part of my personal mission statement).