The Great Renovation, Part 1

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

As I've mentioned before, my grandmother recently moved from her home of 50 years into an Assisted Living facility with special dementia care. Upon leaving, she left David and I in the house to stay for at least two years so that we can raise the baby somewhere safe while saving up money to eventually get our own place somewhere other than Springfield. I love Springfield in that "face only a mother could love" way that some people love their ugly, mangy cats, but that doesn't mean I want to raise my son here, heh.

This has left us with roughly two months to do crazy renovations here before the baby comes, the first of which (obviously) is gutting out the den to turn it into the nursery. Five generations of my family have now lived in this house, and the den used to be my mother's childhood bedroom. Before that, it was my great grandfathers bedroom when he came to live with my grandparents many, many, many years ago. David and I (with help from my wonderful family) will be stripping off two layers of paint, a layer of blue and pink psychedelic floral wallpaper (<3 Mom!), another layer of paint AND (as it turns out) another layer of ancient, super-thin wallpaper that belonged to my great grandfather. No one knew it was still under there, so it caused a rush of surprise nostalgia for my mother. She says her earliest memory is of staring at that wallpaper (it's really intricate, full of vintage asian village scenes- rice paddies, chinese red pine trees, grass huts and elaborate old sampans), so it was a thrill to uncover it after so many years. My mother even wrote the first poem she'd written in almost 30 years about it! Amazing, amazing.

A little peak at the old wallpaper

Before we knew the gender of the baby (before the baby even had a "gender," really) Davey and I had decided on an outer space theme for the nursery, which we imagined would be colorful, bright and bold. We started to get discouraged, though, after a little while of only finding cutesy pastel sleepy moon and stars patterns everywhere we went, and began to think we might have to take a different approach. My mother though, being the absolute saint that she is, somehow found this, the most amazing crib set ever. It's all bold, primary colors and has ALL of the planets, not just the moon, with their names under them and little space aliens peppered all across it. The base paint we picked out is Disney paint, a really bright blue called "Galactic Sky." We plan to paint planets and stars all over it in a billion different colors as well as sticking this mobile in the window. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm so jazzed and enthusiastic about doing it that I doubt it will take much time at all.

I'm honestly shocked at how easy it is to cook up a tremendously awesome, literal dream nursery without having to spend a lot of money. All you have to do is be patient, and on the lookout constantly. For example we have this amazing crib, one of those solid wood convertible ones that turns into a daybed for when the child is a toddler and then AGAIN to a full sized bed for when he's older. It normally would be laughably out of our price range, but because my mother happened to find a factory return with no mattress at an outlet store we snagged it for $150!!!! We've been so *lucky* lately, it's the only way I can describe it. It just seems like everything keeps happening the way it's meant to, you know?

Cosmic Creepers (our cat, for those who don't remember) is pretty confused and upset with us at this point, since the den had somehow become his room prior to all of this, unofficially. He had a totally sweet window to guard with a perfectly sized bookcase under it that he could lounge on the top of. The window overlooked the backyard, which is full of squirrels and all different varieties of birds this time of year, all of which he desperately loved to croak and squeak at. Now that he's locked out of "his room" he rebels by crawling all over the old den furniture that's now, for the time being, stuffed into the living room. This is what I woke up to this morning:


Cosmo the Couch King

I'll try to keep you guys updated on the room as it progresses. Also, if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears for them!