Living Green

No the baby isn’t here yet.

No Tom didn’t get me a $300 pair of shoes.

No Tom didn’t turn into a vampire over night.

It’s this:

Outside our bedroom window

In case you can’t tell what ‘this’ is, I’ll explain.  We awoke this morning with a nice little swoosh sound.  I looked out our window from bed and said, “oh, that’s funny a little branch fell from our tree…”

Upon further inspection, we quickly realized it wasn’t little and it wasn’t just a branch.  Almost 1/2 of one of our backyard trees fell within a few feet of smashing into the nursery.  That would have been a funny story, I’m sure.

Perspective

Back story–sometime last year we had a limb from this same tree fall on our newly installed fence.  Not only did it wreck our fence, it also caused damage on two of the neighboring fences.  Luckily it was small enough for Tom to fix himself.  At that time, the tree guy told us the tree was rotted and should come down.  We a) didn’t want to spend the money, b) were completely consumed in other house projects, and c) hated to cut down such a huge tree.

Well however many months later, we got a nice little reminder/warning to deal with the trees.  There are two back there and while one is definitely rotted the other is just as old and may have some decay issues as well.  We decided to take down both the trees in the back and Tom negotiated for the guys to remove the tree in the front of our house for ‘free’.  They are hauling away all the debris and grinding the stumps.

Let’s all hold a moment of silence for our brother sister friend trees that are going to a better place today.

Work crew getting ready

So today on the 16th of February 2011, we are not only not being ‘green’, but we are almost being anti-green.  I say almost because Mother Nature surely wouldn’t rather our house be crushed by a dying tree.

I am looking out the kitchen window watching a guy climb up this decayed tree with a chainsaw hanging from his belt….at least he’s harnessed in.  Did I mention there are gale force winds out today?  I’ll pray for him.

Kids don't try this at home

Will I neglect this baby like I do this blog?

I don’t know what to update first.  I suppose we haven’t talked about the good old house lately.  It has nothing to do with the lack of work.  The work never stops.

We ended up changing the nursery location within the last month.  Did I tell you about that?  No?  Well let me begin from the end–which was the end of last year right about the time we were putting the finishing touches on the nursery.

After hosting some guests over the holidays, it became abundantly clear that we needed to move into the biggest room with the small bathroom and no closet.

We decided to bring in the new year by switching the rooms around–we moved into the biggest room, the nursery moved into our old room and the guest room moved into the old nursery.  Throughout the process there may have been some whining, painting, and IKEAing.  Sometimes you just have to live in a space to figure out what works.

We chose the blue/green color--it's actually the same as our kitchen wall

Painting over an old blue wall--we tried the glorified green frog tape this time and it didn't make one lick of difference on our bumpy plaster walls

We’ve been living in our ‘new’ room for a couple of weeks now and love it.  We just tested out the guests room with some guest and they love it too.  The bathroom situation makes a lot more sense now because the hall bath is the communal bath and we have our little teeny tiny bath in our room.

And call it serendipity, but all the nursery accessories match really well with the paint color in our old room.  It’s also the sunniest room in the house and the furthest away from our boisterous neighbors.  It’s calm and bright and all the things we wanted the nursery to be.  Pictures to come.

Starting to assemble our IKEA PAX closet

We each have our very own wardrobe now

For all the ladies out there

The pull out drawers are really nice and make it so easy to find your clothes

The baby’s due in the next few weeks and we’re far from complete, but we are where we are.  Tom wore many hats throughout the project since I was way too pregnant to help paint or do much else.  I was good at bossing and I still could tape.

Before we moved the bed in--Tom moved and shortened the light fixture from our other room

Bathroom perspective

I might have some updated belly shots to show.  We’ll see how I’m feeling:-)

Handyman Tom

I have a confession to make.

We schemed the system.

No illegal acts were done.

We do not feel bad for our actions.

Screwing In The Hang Track

One of the most frustrating parts of this old house is the lack of closets.  Period.  Within a month or two of moving in, we decided to get an organizer for our bedroom closet.  It was a coat closet in a bedroom and it was unusable.  Except for hanging coats of course.

Measuring How Much Space to Leave At Top

Now a year later, we were ready for an organizer in the soon-to-be nursery.  It’s a fairly good sized closet length wise, but is very narrow depth wise.  Not only that, but it has a divider right down the middle on the outside making it harder to use all the available space on the inside.

Clipping In the Brackets

Since we had such good luck designing our bedroom closet at the Container Store, we decided to start there again.  They give free design/consultations on your space.  We went in with measurements and left with a ‘floor’ plan for the closet.  Because their products come at a premium we decided to shop around.  Since they first came out with their innovative elfa design for closets and spaces, a lot of other businesses have ‘borrowed’ the concept(aka ripped them off and found ways to make the product cheaper).

Cut to Home Depot.

Clipping In The Shelving

Home Depot now carries(and we think has for a while) a very similar system to elfa called CLOSETMAID.  Since we had already installed the elfa design once, we knew a little more about the protocol and what supplies were necessary.

Martha Stewart Storage Cubby

In the end, we took the design from the Container Store and purchased the organizer from Home Depot with some slight variations.  We saved roughly $400!

Now, it’s worth mentioning that the Container Store makes all the custom cuts for you and bundles all the supplies together.  We think some of the individual components are a lot nicer too.  Home Depot will make some minor cuts on the wire shelves if you know the exact measurements, but that’s about it.  If you have a handy person around its doable, but I would say it would have been harder and a lot more trial and error for us if we had tried this the first time around with our closet since we weren’t as familiar with the system.

Hammering In Cardboard Backing

Tom had thought about building his own organizer, but we doubt he could have done it for much cheaper.  In fact, it might have been more since we didn’t have a lot of scrap wood lying around.  Also we purchased and installed the organizer and cubby in 1 day.  Talk about instant gratification.  There definitely was extensive background work done for this to come together so quickly, but we’re really happy with the final product.

Baby Side

1/2 the closet is dedicated to the little one and the other 1/2 is going to be for house things.

Complete Design

elfa’s slogan is, “Happiness is an organized closet.”

I couldn’t agree more.

The End.