RouletteWeekend

I said I was going to be productive yesterday and with the help of my sister and Will, I succeeded. We had the second storage pod delivered the day before yesterday. We opened it yesterday and managed to get it unloaded in just a few hours. The not so fun part was that pretty much every single box had to go upstairs.

I told you we had emptied the attic completely when we thought we were moving so I was able to organize as we unloaded. Well, as my sister and Will unloaded and brought things up to the top of the steps. From there, I put the boxes in some semblance of organized chaos. Back corner- Christmas, front corner- personal effects of those living and dead, back wall- holiday dishes, whole left side of the attic- all things collectible or sell-able from the label on the box. And then all the quilting fabric, upwards of 24 totes and all of our boxes from our first move that had not been unpacked yet, went back into the attic off our bedroom. Oh, and a whole bedroom full of photos that we had taken down, shoved in closets, and found in random boxes on the “move out.”

So today is another day of work. I am painting the living room or what these people call “the den.” I literally don’t know what the difference is, but when I say, “I’m going to paint the living room today,” after the perplexed look, I get, “and which room are you referring to when you say that?” Because according to my mother in law, I already painted the living room, which I thought was the formal sitting room, but apparently that room that was never lived in was the living room and this room that she sits in all day in front of the fireplace is the den.

I’ll never understand rich people language.

That’s probably why the kitchen is my favorite room in the house. It serves a purpose and it doesn’t have a fancy name. A kitchen in a cabin and a kitchen in a mansion are still just a kitchen, which incidentally, I am not painting.

So today I paint “the den” and I’m going to pull all the cool and weird pictures, photos, hanging wall art that I can find upstairs and I’m going to make a crazy “gallery” room in the living room. Small pictures, large pictures, old family photos, old paintings, landscapes, drawings, etc. It’s going to look like an estate sale sneezed in that room.

I hope that it makes her happy since a lot of it will be pictures she’s familiar with or had forgotten about and then every now and then, there will be a weird piece from Will and my collection. We’ve had a gallery wall in our other places we’ve lived together in. This one is just slightly going to go to hell with the joke since it will be a whole room. But the room has this great crown molding on top and these chair rails (or whatever you call them) down below so it’s almost like the walls are already “framed” and waiting for something cool to happen to them.

So painting is first on the list. Getting all my books back on the bookshelves we brought in yesterday are next on the list. Hanging the photos will be 3rd and then I bought some peel and stick wallpaper for an accent wall in the hallway off the kitchen to display (and store) all of the cast iron. Between the mother in law and I, we have dozens of pieces and I like cooking with cast iron, but I don’t like having it all stacked under a cabinet, so that seemed like a cool way to get it organized while still making it useful.

I probably should start a Pinterest board. Maybe I could call it “Ruining the Neighborhood” or “Undecorated” because honestly, I don’t really know if these things are going to look good. I just know that I think it will be cool. And I’m so tired of being miserable in this house, I’m hoping that a little bit of eclectic decorating will bring me some joy, while also, bringing the mother in law some peace since it’s some of her stuff AND she still gets to wake up in her own house, in her own bed, in her own bedroom.