Saturday, March 6, 2010

The Guest Room

In our house we've got two extra bedrooms. When we moved in, I turned one into my office (I was working from home at this point) and the other one into the guest bedroom. Once I quit my home business and got a full time job, I redid the office so that Kevin would have his own space. My plan when we got the house was that we would use the guest bedroom (which is almost as large as our bedroom) for any kids that we'd have.

However the guest bedroom is over the garage and as such is way unreliable in either keeping warm or keeping cool. We always have to have a surplus of blankets for any overnight visitors during the winter and during the summers the overhead fan is always on when someone is in that room. So I had to revise that plan and knew that when a kid was coming and we started to work on the nursery it would need to go into the current office and the office would need to start sharing a space with the guest bedroom. I guess the good part is that the guest bedroom can accommodate both uses without being too cramped.

Back in January when I would talk about preparing for the baby to Kevin, he would be anxious about doing anything too soon. But in the past few weeks he's actually been talking and interested in shopping for GV.  Every time we stop by Targ.et or Walm.art he always helps me check out the sales rack to find things for GV. So last weekend I made a list of everything I wanted to do with the office and guest bedroom to get them ready. The guest bedroom stuff will need to get done first.

Guest bedroom:
1. Get rid of the bed.
2. Put away bed rails (we're planning on getting a convertible crib so we'll need the bed rails again eventually).
3. Get rid of the headboard.
4. Get rid of the dresser.
5. Get rid of the nightstand.
6. Get rid of the current tacky $20 Ta.rget book shelves.
7. Replace the TV. The current TV is 27". We're thinking of mounting it to the ceiling or wall so it would needs to be an LCD.
8. Clean out my great-grandmother's armoire. We're moving it into GV's room. Right now it houses my candle making supplies, jewelry, dog supplies and some crafting items. I'm planning on moving all that stuff into the five-drawer cart that is currently in the closet. Yes, that cart will need to be cleaned out too.
9. Paint. I don't know what color yet, but the room doesn't get a lot of natural light.
10. Replace the carpet. When we first moved in, Dave went through a peeing-in-the-guest-bedroom phase and not all of the stains came out.
11. Figure out what to do with the PS2 and all the rock band/guitar hero stuff.
12. Move the office furniture into the room (a desk (or two) and 2 file cabinets). Also all the office supplies will need to get moved over.
13. Buy a sleeper sofa.
14. Install nice bookcases.

Progress:
1. Moved the bed and box spring out. Kevin is going to rent a Low.e's truck tomorrow and take it to the dump along with some bookshelves not worth giving away and the cuttings from the crepe myrtle out front.
2. Bed rails got moved into the attic today! Along with our Christmas decorations (don't judge!) and other odds and ends that needed to go up.
3. Listed the headboard on crai.gslist for $25 and sold it! Cool fact: That's how much I paid for it 10 years ago!
4. I bought the dresser 10 years ago at a scratch and dent outlet.
The side was broken and I never got it fixed.
Then over the years I managed to stain the top.
So I listed it for free on cra.igslist. Within 10 minutes of my posting this guy emailed me. He just got custody of his twins and need to get furniture for their room ASAP.
5. I listed the matching nightstand for free too.
One of the drawer pulls is missing and the leg was broken when I bought it.
Never fixed that either. I told the guy that wanted the dresser that I wanted to get rid of both pieces together. He said okay. By the time I finished talking to him (maybe 30 minutes after listing it) I had 15 more emails from people wanting the dresser and nightstand. I ended up having to pull the listing.
6. I listed the bookcase too. It's currently priced at $15. But no takers yet. If no one goes for it we're gonna put it in the attic and wait till the next neighborhood yard sale.
7. I listed the TV too ($50). No takers either.
8. Cleaned out the armoire and drawer cart. Now I need to sort everything out and get rid of stuff that we don't need.

Not bad for one day's work, eh?

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