That’s it. I’m moving out.

Do you remember that time I switched my office and my guest room (3 months ago)?

  
1st photo: old office. 2nd photo: new office

Ben and I outgrew our office space, so we flipped the office and guest room. We figured almost double the square footage should be enough to contain the both of us.

Well, after 3 months in our new shared office, we underestimated ourselves.

We are the King and Queen of complete and total chaos. I mean, look LOOK at this mess!

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I know. It’s awful. It’s disgraceful. It’s flat-out embarrassing.

In our defense, Ben recently got a new job allowing him to work from home every day.

We didn’t know about this new job when we moved offices, otherwise we would probably have given him his own office in the first place.

Boffice_mess_hoh_2

Obviously this “shared office” situation is NOT working for us.

So I decided it was high time for me to move out.

I mean, seriously. How creative can one be in this chaos?

I can’t even get a chair in there.

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After a few weeks of threatening, I finally have started moving out of our shared office.

And guess where I’m moving?

Right back into the “old” office/current guest room.

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I’m pretty sure this is like the 25th time I’ve carried loads and loads of laundry baskets full of decor and craft supplies up and down the stairs. Maybe this time will stick.

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The guest room is a total bore fest right now. Gross color on the walls. Unattractive bedding and furniture (we are “borrowing” the bed, bedding, and dresser from my brother-in-law while he doesn’t need it).

Since the big move-out, the guest room has been looking a lot more like this the past week though:

guest_mess_hoh_1

This room has turned into the downstairs catch-all including furniture of K’s that I’m trying to sell.

MY LIFE IS TOTAL CHAOS. It is driving me bonkers!

Okay, whew that was a whole lotta back-story to get to this big finale…

Step one of the big
“Move Allison’s office {again}, this time back to her previous office/current guest room”
hoopla is to transform this closet in the guest room:..

guest_mess_hoh_2

…into a closet with shelving. I can’t move loads of crap if I have nowhere to put it all.

After two full days of buying, cutting, priming, nailing, and painting sheets of MDF, I now have a nice big storage closet:

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Pretty great, hua?

See that space to the left of the open closet door? That area will eventually have a built in desk with cabinets above – the perfect place for me to work, craft, and do “officey” things like sharpen pencils, store sharpies, and write thank-you notes.

But for now, the past few days I’ve been building me some shelves.

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And now I get to do the back-breaking labor of carrying all that crap back downstairs again for the 75th time.

But at least I’ve got some great shelves to store it all on.

I will give you a play-by-play tutorial soon (hopefully tomorrow if I can get it written) about building the shelves so you can build some too if you want.

One more time –

Before & Currently:
guest_mess_hoh_2  guest_shelves_hoh_1

I hope I can bang out a few posts tonight and tomorrow. I’ve gotten so much done around here! I haven’t even had a free second to tell you about it.

Happy Friday everyone!

Here’s the tutorial for installing the shelves in the closet.


     

Quest for cuter glitter {presentation is everything, right?}

When I shared my office filp-flop with you a few weeks ago, I showed off my cute glitter collection and storage basket.

Truth be told, I don’t really use glitter all that often, but I do love looking at baskets of pretty glitter. :)

Well, there was one two things that stuck out like a big ol’ fat sore thumb; those honkin’ big containers of sparkly white glitter.

I knew on my eternal quest for absolute cuteness that I could do so much better than those big eye sores. And a quick trip to my local Dollar Tree proved just the solution.

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The dollar store has these fun big sugar shaker jars that I’ve been eying forever, but never could think of an excuse to buy them. Well, my glitter dilemma was just the excuse I needed!

(I also recently saw these sugar shakers at my local grocery store as well for just under $2 each).

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Transplanting the glitter to its new home was as easy as removing both lids and pouring the glitter into the new container. Rocket Science right here folks.

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I’d say my quest for cuteness was a success on the glitter front.

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Yes, there are starving people and world wars to worry about, but I’m wasting my days pouring glitter from one jar to the next. (I obviously have too much time on my hands.)

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But seriously, can a basket full of glitter be any cuter? I think not.

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And now with Christmas hot on my heels, I think this glitter may actually get some use this month.

Before and after:
  Glitter_storage_hoh_7

Trust me, there’s a cute solution for almost any problem; and the dollar store’s generally the answer.

I may not be the craftiest person on the planet, but darn it, my glitter basket looks cute.


     

flippin’ sweet (flipping the office and guest room)

The past few days have been cra-aaaaa-zy around here. I’m so sore and tired. My joints are aching.

Wanna know why? Well, too bad, I’m telling you anyway. :)

Besides deciding to start a rigorous running program (I’m serious, don’t laugh!) Ben and I spent the last few days flip-flopping the office and the guest room. For a point of reference, here’s our floor plan with each room marked.

Before the ol’ flip-a-roonie, the office was “bedroom 5″ and the guest room was “bedroom 4″.

HoH_master_floorplan_1st_floor_bed5  HoH_master_floorplan_2nd_floor_bed4

Before we started, our office (bedroom 5) looked like this:

Okay, okay, that’s on a good day. Most of the time the office really has looked like this:

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and this…
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Aaaand this.
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There are names for this. Hoarder comes to mind. Slob. Pack-rat. Um, ya.

…which is why we wanted to flip rooms with the guest bedroom (bedroom 4). You see, the guest bedroom is a lot bigger than the office, which is obviously our biggest issue with sharing an office – we just flat-out don’t have enough space for all the crap.

And it’s also on the 2nd floor instead of the first, so visitors can’t glimpse inside it as easily as they can on the 1st floor. (Most guests don’t go upstairs, but they do go to the bathroom which is right next to the current office, allowing a horrified peek inside the office.)

Only problem with doing a big flip? If you thought the orange office was uninviting, the guest room is far worse.

We’ve affectionately named the guest room, “the smurf blue room”. Can you guess why?

guest_office_flip_hoh_06

I pretty much quit going into the office as much as possible because the orange was so horrible to look at. I just couldn’t work in there. But now, smurf blue? There’s an even smaller chance I’ll go into that room!

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I’ve been wanting to flip rooms for awhile, but besides the daunting task of carrying an overflowing office full of crap upstairs, and the guest furniture downstairs, I also knew there was no-way-in-hades I’d agree to move rooms until we painted the smurf room first.

By some fate that can only be described as a miracle, I actually talked Ben into painting again. And so it began. The great guest room/office flip.

Doesn’t he look so thrilled to be painting?
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Ben and I have a pretty good system worked out. He rolls, I cut.

Fortunately we had a 3rd helper to make the job go quicker.

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After about a day we were totally finished puttying, painting, cutting, rolling, and edging.

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This kind of overhaul really tears apart the entire house though. Here’s the piles of crap we had to maneuver around for the past few days. Matter of fact, we are still maneuvering around all this crap.

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Why do things have to get worse before they get better? Check out or b-o-r-i-n-g bathroom off the gameroom (bath 3).

It usually looks like this (extra boring, I know):

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But the past few days it’s been spiced up:

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I’m sure Silhouette would freak if they knew I was storing my Cameo next to the sink. ::bag over head::

And while I’m talking about random stupid crap totally unrelated to painting, can I just point out the main reason this room was never even considered for either kid?

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Hello sneak-out-route! Please don’t tell me you never crawled out a window and jumped off a 1st story roof. This is just asking to be snuck sneaked out of. So ya, hopefully my kids won’t ever read this post and figure this out. Because my Travis, he’s a monkey and would probably jump off the roof tomorrow (at 9 years old) if I let him.

So, back to the post. Where was I? Oh, painting. Right. In case you are wondering about the color, I chose it in about 5 minutes off the Martha Stewart paint card. I wanted something similar to my gray in my living room, but even lighter and super neutral.

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So, are you dying to see the big reveal? Ya, me too! I wish it were done! ha. But for now, I’ll at least show you the not-as-messy “progress” report. Here goes nothing.

progress:
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before:
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progress:
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before:
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progress:
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before:
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progress:
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before:
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progress:
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before:
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One of the new additions is this hutch that I just stuck on top of my current ikea desk. So far it has worked out great and I’m really diggin’ it.

guest_office_flip_hoh_26

It is suppose to go on top of my son’s dresser, but I got sick of cleaning piles and piles of legos off it, so I took it away and moved his dresser into his closet. He loves it because now he has more floor space for even more lego messes. The hutch has sat in the guest room unused for a few months, so I decided to try it out on the desk, and I love it!

Here’s the dresser/hutch combo in Travis’s room before I took it all apart and moved it around. (I’ve never showed his room before, so this is a first!)

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I love having easy access to my craft supplies.

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As for the previous office/future guest room, it’s lookin’ like a fool with it’s pants on the ground still needs a lot of work. And a lot more moving.

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So there you have it. Besides a nice dinner, this is pretty much what Ben and I did for our 13th wedding anniversary – we painted and moved. Good times.

before:
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progress:
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I’ll update as I continue to get this mess cleared up and organized. I so want to paint the orange room now (previous office/new guest room), but I have been promising Kinsey I’ll paint her room *next*, so until her room is painted, I’m not painting any other rooms!

What did you do over the weekend? Hopefully something way more fun than painting and moving!

* linking to Thrifty Decor Chick’s house party


     
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