Later:

So obviously we aren’t at the end of this whole kitchen reno, but definitely some progress! I am feeling so bad that it’s really hard to write a lot, but here is a photo heavy version of what we did:

This is the wall between the kitchen and the living room that we had removed. We had power run to the peninsula (that we converted to an island) and we moved the lightswitch over to the wall at your left. Also, when we took out some of the ceiling to rewire, Scott was brilliant and had our contractor run speakers and connected them to the house’s system so that I can play my iPod.

We took out the flooring, and we are getting new laminate laid throughout this weekend. I’ll be back with photos of that as soon as I feel up to it.

Here is a view from the left side (the playroom) where we installed switches for the light and the speakers.

Kind of a bad view of my sconces, but take my word for it they are cool looking. They just aren’t the easiest things to photograph…

This is after drywall and texturing, we haven’t repainted yet because I needed to come home and I can’t be here while they are touching up. When I feel better we will get that done, hopefully in a month or so.

Here are some of my plans:

And generally de-clutter. So there you have it! What do you think? I cannot wait to get that ancient ugly oven out of my kitchen! You’ll notice we use our own microwave.  I’m convinced it’s older than the house itself. If you are an antiques dealer or simply feel like dragging it away for fun, please don’t hesitate to call me…

Inventory List:

I’ll tell you a little secret about the people who complain to me about not getting any sleep…

They are great moms.

So think of this post as my ultimate opinion, and ignore everything else I have ever said or ever might say on the subject:

I don’t care how well your kid sleeps, it doesn’t reflect on your parenting. I am so sorry you’re not sleeping, because that is completely awful (and terrifying to me because I know how it feels) but I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong, and whatever way you find to deal is the right way for you and your family right now. You know that you are trying your best, so don’t let the world (or me) make you think you are doing something wrong. Take what helps from the information you can gather and continue to try new things. I’m sure there will be a day where you get to sleep again. I just sure don’t know when it is. I wish I could write a book that would solve it all for everyone, but I’m starting to think that the big sleep dilemma is like marraige- complex and deeply personal.

I am pretty flexible about most things with Ben. My philosophy with my in-laws and the sitters and all of that is (or attempts to be), “I don’t know, do what feels comfortable to you. He will be fine.” That all goes out the window when it comes down to sleep. I am dead serious about sleep. Scott and I have been all over the map feeling out this sleeping thing with Ben. I would have loved to co-sleep, but Ben and I just aren’t having it. I can’t sleep soundly because I’m worried he will suffocate or crawl/roll off the bed, and he just gets pissed until we put him back in his crib. He slept in three to four hour blocks right when he came home from the hospital, at least at night. He would nurse all day like crazy, and then every three to four hours at night. He nursed twice a night for a bit, then once, and then by five months we dropped his last nighttime feeding, which was at 4am and stopped swaddling him. By then he was already a great sleeper 80% of the time, and the other 20% we did a mix of letting him cry in small ten to fifteen minute intervals, and trying to solve his problems without feeding him. I called this the ABF policy (to myself): Anything But Food. Hold him, sing to him, rock him, bounce him, change him as a total last resort (as it tended to wake him up) but no feeding. We did nighttime routines starting at two months, giving him a bath and nursing and then bed. When he got sick or started teething we began feeding him at night again, especially after I finished nursing at 8 months and Scott wanted to try something else. When we fed him at night, he continued to wake up for the rest of the week, more and more consistently. When we stopped, it was one ugly night and then things would slowly settle back into full nights of sleep. So we went back to no nighttime feedings. It has been seventeen months of trial and error, just like everything else. I try to remember that he is just a baby, at the same time I try to remember that he might be a little hungry once he’s been awake for awhile, but he can make it through the night.

The tricky thing is trying to tell where the line is between what we are doing, and what Ben brings to the table with his personality. It’s just an ongoing conversation between Scott and I, always changing with time, and trying to feel out our boy and what works for him at whatever age. Pretty sure that’s what we’re all doing as parents.

I have many friends with happy, vibrant, energetic, smart and loved kids who don’t sleep well at night. Their poor moms are just beside themselves to figure it out and everything I say I want to swallow back up. It sounds too much like advice, and I really don’t have any. I can tell them what I did, but that worked for Ben, not for their babies. So if I could speak to all of you beautiful women at once, I would say…

Keep on complaining, and if I am close enough I will bring you a big coffee in the morning.

All my love to all of you brave mamas, getting by, living on the fumes of energy long spent. Fight the good fight.

My friend Kelly got, in my opinion, record breaking heartburn. The nausea was there, but manageable on a full stomach. She just had to eat a little bit all day long and stay distracted. But the heartburn, that was the Get Me the Hell Out of Here card. My friend Kris had gestational diabetes. She could survive completely on oranges and spent more time in the doctor’s office than out. She seemed fine with being pregnant, but below the surface, her body was not as thrilled and often pitched fits and spiked her blood sugar, causing problems. I remember my friend Krystal’s stories about her toddler coming in to see her throwing up in the bathroom. From what I remember, at first he was concerned, and then sympathetic, and later just got used to it and it became normal life. My friend Sarah is a professional pregnant woman and nursing infant mother. She makes it look easy. The most I remember about her first trimesters are her reports of feeling teary and snappy. Toward the end she gets early contractions (not fun) and fatigue all the way up to delivery. Another had migraines, another pre-eclampsia (completely terrifying) and, well, you get the point.

I picture us all around a table sharing our cards: “Heartburn? Me, too! I thought I was going to have to go to six stores to get enough Tums!” We lay them down in order of severity, some with a touch of nausea but a truckload of headaches and cramping. Others win with a flush and say they just can’t imagine doing it again. I have friends who had very mild symptoms and loved being pregnant, and others who barely made it to the finish line, but of course not one of us wouldn’t do it again to have our babies. It’s completely worth it and despite the pain, that’s why perfectly rational women do it again. I could go on about the insane exhiliration of creating a person and how all this pales in comparison to that feeling of accomplishment, love and out and out joy. But that’s not what this post is about.

Apparently, my personal version of “morning sickness” is getting the flu for about ten weeks straight. At five weeks I’m thinking this is going to be easy. I feel a little queasy, a little dizzy, and definitely tired. Basically the Cliff’s Notes of pregnancy. Then week six, everything goes straight to hell in a handbasket. I am seriously living de ja vu with this next little one. Week five, I just need to stay full and distracted, and not ride in a car. Take an extra nap. Week six, I have the flu and it never goes away. Morning to evening, and all night long, I’m just sick. I make myself eat, and make myself drink. I feel better for a few hours, and feel two steps from death for a few hours. Everything is okay UNLESS I am standing up. Then its tick tock until I feel too sick and have to lay down. Clearly this makes bathing sort of difficult. Dealing with food and poop are both really hard. I frighten myself when I look in the mirror. Brushing my teeth often results in retching. It’s just like having the flu, only last time it went on and on. It started lightening up around week 13, more stints of feeling better, for longer. But still every morning I was nauseous until somewhere around week 16, sometimes throwing up without warning. I hit the wall once. I busted up laughing it was so surreal. That really makes you want to go out in public and chance it, right?

I battle my emotions. The other night I spent about an hour crying and hiccuping while I flooded Scott with my heartaches. They are all real and valid and not going anywhere, I usually just don’t feel the need to cry about them. We all have our stuff that’s just the cons of our particular way in life and I’m here to say the pros far outweigh them for me. Usually they are small and shelved and my beautiful life dances on in front of them. But when my hormones rage, they search for and find these perfectly valid reasons to have a complete breakdown. They take these things, perpetually sad things, down off the shelf where I keep them and shake some fists at the universe. I seriously feel like I’m fifteen again and just want to sob, “it’s not fair” over and over. The non-pregnant me would say, “Of course it’s not fair. It just is what it is. Everyone has these battles they fight in life. This isn’t heaven, we are all of us doing the very best we know how to do.” I battle feelings of guilt over being sick. There is some background to this, mainly an ancient history of my body being prone to getting sick when I’m depressed and having to argue with others over whether I was actually sick or just pouting. I have developed this tendency to defend myself or worse, question my abilities to tough it out alone and it just creates useless guilt. I have to shut my mouth when I want to gush to Scott about how much I need this and appreciate this and is he mad at me and all kinds of craziness. This is his kid, too, and it’s temporary. Get yourself together and go to bed.

This time, I’m doing it differently, I told myself. It’s going to be better. I am not going to try to be a hero, I am going to ask my doctor for medicine, and God bless my brilliant husband who went out and hired a sitter for the afternoons so that he could actually keep a job going. I’m going to have my one cup of coffee and savor the extra energy. Well, the medicine didn’t work, and this morning I couldn’t pull it together to even have coffee and needed to be horizontal while our sweet sitter was still in school so Scott came home for two hours to bridge the gap. I left a message for my doctor, and I am hoping he has another anti-nausea med that might work. Although, it’s more than the nausea. It’s the splitting headache, the heartburn, the muscle pain, and skin pain. It’s that all over feeling of wretchedness that for me feels like par for the make-a-baby course. These are my cards. This is the last hand I will be dealt, and we will get through the next six weeks and comical puking shenanigans and it will all be so worth it when this little person arrives on the scene. I will try to resist recounting my tales of woe to them. I resolve to tell them more often how beautiful it was to want them so badly for so long and then have their tiny little selves handed to me. I will tell them how blissful it was to watch them sleep in a bundle next to me in bed, well fed and plump little cheeks fattening up more every day. How they smelled absolutely divine and how their little bird breathing and tiny yawns would leave us all silently captivated. The morning sickness will leave for good but the captivation part never seems to fade.

So what wall am I talking about? This one, here on the right:

There’s nothing on it, so we won’t be losing storage at all. We are turning that peninsula into an island, and turning it so that people sitting at the breakfast bar will be facing into the kitchen,as is typical. The entire wall will be gone, everything that is now blue, completely open to the living room. We are ripping out all the floors and will be installing wood laminate flooring throughout (with the exception of the bathrooms and laundry, and the bedrooms that we just recarpeted). Currently, we have a beautiful brand new dishwasher sitting in our garage because this yellow bamboo flooring was installed around the appliances, essentially locking them in place. So those have to come out before we can replace that or the stove. So the sooner the better!

Here is a sample of the floors we are putting down. This one gives you a good idea of the color up close. Nice and warm and matches our granite nicely.

But here you can see that it actually looks pretty modern and dark when it’s down on the floor. Depends on the lighting.

And this will hopefully give you an idea of the texture. It has that rippled thing goin on, plus a little fake distressing and “grain” for less slippy toddler feet. Plus I didn’t want it to be too shiny and formal looking. Lived in family home is more where I’m headed.

Kitchen hardware is sloooowly going up. I actually found these at Walmart while picking up some household stuff one day. The brand is Alison. The ones we originally ordered looked too small.

We hung some things on the walls before a big BBQ we had with friends about a week and a half ago. It was a race to accomplish something and make everything look a bit more lived in before company came:

This is to the side in the dining room, above a buffet that we have there… temporarily? We’ll see.

I kind of butchered a tip I found on Pinterest for hanging frames. Basically you are supposed to give each frame it’s own piece of paper, poke through the places where a nail will be, and then assemble the collage on the wall. Then you hammer nails into the holes, remove the paper, and hang your frames. Well, I didn’t have enough scrap paper… or patience for that matter, so I assembled a sort of catalogue collage. It worked well enough but I think most of that was luck.

Whatever. It’s on the wall! Hahaha. Done is done.

Due to prego nausea, you are getting all these photos straight off the camera. I apologize for it but again, done is done! Still need to fill some empty frames but I love the way it looks when the entry light is on. I matched the spray paint to a few other projects I threw together:

A little table I found (short, light, Ben can tip it but it’s not heavy and dangerous) only $35. Wish I had found it at Goodwill for $5! But it’s great and does the trick. We needed some more surfaces in the living room and I wanted them to be easy to move around. That key got sprayed white but I haven’t decided where to hang it yet.

Here’s the finished table:

Besides the frames, I also sprayed a little clock that we have had forever, and put it on the other side of the room. Still need to get to those chair legs someday. Unless it turns out that they go nicely with the floors.

So since I will be away from my computer next week, the next thing you will see is a wall-free “after” post! Excited? I am! I am making sure to take lots of before photos, so that you can really take in the effect. It won’t be touched up yet, but it will definitely give you that wide-open, “for goodness sake you’ll have to keep a clean kitchen” feel. Then there will come some glass doors for a couple of cabinets and etcetera etcetera. I also desperately need a butter dish and some dish towels. Working on that currently. Hope you locals are enjoying the summer weather!

So is peeing in the backyard.

We have been airing out diaper rashes, hence the break from fashion norms.

He also finds it really hard to let go of his junk for a few seconds when two hands are required for a task. I hear this is a common inconvenience for others his age with similar equipment.

We love our outdoor space and it’s great to let him run around out there with rocks and dirt. I can’t wait to clear things out and mow so that the surface is a bit more even for him. Right now he stays mostly on the tile. He still has a blast and plays by himself for ages out there, I just sit and read. It’s great for playdates too, I can sit and chat with friends and the kids just go nuts. I would love some more seating out there, but that is way in the future. At this point, especially with a group of kids, we are up on our feet most of the time anyway. Keeping an eye on what is being tasted and eaten.

We are so, so happy here. I never thought I would actually love living in Santa Maria, but I love it. I actually think it’s beautiful out here in Orcutt, and having everything close has been such a bigger deal than I thought it would be. Plus, the drive back up to the beach doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t feel isolated from my old life, I feel like I’ve just made it bigger and better. And this little guy is thrilled, and that is the cherry on top.

He looks so much like his father there. I just love them both so much, they are two of the kindest and sweetest hearts I have ever known. Always laughing and cuddling. I wish you could all see how Scott lets him “help” on projects around the house. I just found our tape measure in the toy box this morning.

All the photos from my phone:

Holidays with the Schmalbachs:

We did one of those recordable stories for them for Christmas, it turned out cute. Plus, most people don’t know it, but Scott is a fantastic storyteller! Go figure. Playdate at the park:

Moving and finding out we were pregnant:

Ben’s first bubble bath, playing naked in puddles with rocks, eating crackers, cuddling, playing.

A wonderful lazy Sunday:

Morning light in our new house. Fat lip falling over his own feet. The beautiful sky over our front yard. The beautiful ocean sunset in front of my fancy dinner table. Playing with letters, eating bananas, and hanging stuff up on our beautiful walls.

All RIGHT we are caught up, people. I will try to post about some house projects soon. Hope you are good! Just finished Friends with Benefits and it was actually good! Justin Timberlake, yummy yum. He has a cute butt just like my husband. With dimples and everything. Okay you probably didn’t need to know that but I don’t care. It’s cute. I love it. Goodnight, y’all!

And yet… yet now it all feels so normal. Such a part of my environment. I come home to discuss finances with my husband, and my small son listens for trucks that drive by so he can yell, “vrooomvroom!” at us with agitated wonder. Don’t we hear that? Why aren’t we as excited as he is? Come on, guys, vroom vroom! I do stare at him sometimes, amazed that he is here, that he has grown so much so fast.

But at the same time, I feel young, sexy and in love. Not every moment of every day, but if Ben is with a sitter, suddenly it’s Self and I and we are nineteen again listening to really sappy R&B and longing to lay on our bed swinging our feet. Today I was reminiscing about that unbridled hormone rush of my teens and how it was such a love/hate conundrum. On the one hand, it felt amazing to be so infatuated with someone that their physical presence alone was like electricity crackling right next to you. On the other hand, who can live like that all the time? Being always on the edge of that fight or flight get-it-on moment, so that it consumes all of your time and energy is exhausting, and makes you so self absorbed. It was an exhilirating experience, and I am so glad that I have it in my precious store of memories, and also so glad that it is just a memory.

Given, say, a week of no responsibilities… in Mexico… those consuming feelings are bound to take over. Still, they are comfortable, not anxious. I can enjoy the pleasant pick up and not be afraid that my heart will break when my husband falls asleep early or goes back to work. Ah, the simple pleasures of adulthood that we take for granted. I am grateful that I still feel like both of those selves. The one that plans dinner, gets up in the middle of the night and says Bye Bye to poopies with my son as we flush them down the toilet. I also long to lay on my bed doodling in a journal while I listen to love songs. I love knowing I look good, feeling good after a work out, putting on a new pair of heels. I love it when I earn a look that reminds me that I’ve still got it. The opportunities are more rare these days, but that makes them all the sweeter.

My favorite part is when I earn that look from my husband when I’m in my pajamas, slouching in front of my laptop, hair gone crazy. That is when I feel like all of my Selves have merged and he loves all of them.

Master bedroom before:

Master bedroom… er, later:

Plans for this room include:

• Hang curtains.
• A new light/fan.
• A desk and a chaise.
• A wall-mounted TV (we generously donated ours to the guest bedroom for now)
• A new rug (we have one but I don’t think it matches well. It will get kicked to another spot).
• New bedding. I take my bedding very seriously, and it has to be perfect. I really miss my silk Pottery Barn duvet (murdered by cat).
• Hang boat print and sconces, paint furniture and hang more art.

Guest bedroom before:

And, admittedly not all that different… guest bedroom later:

Really, just some clearing out and a non-vacuumed brand new carpet. That grey box is to the master bath jets. Which need fixing. Maybe when I touch up those patches I will paint over it? I also plan to hide it behind furniture, of course. Namely, a crib. Plans for this room include:

• Possible rearranging of furniture a few times. Very heavy furniture. Yuck.
• Buying organizing bins, boxes, or baskets for the huge closet shelves.
• Organizing those.
• Labeling those.
• Hanging curtains (on the slider)
• Hanging wooden blinds (on the window)
• Getting rid of those random cables.
• Hanging art.
• Above all, finding a way for it to mesh as a transitional room- for both baby #2 and our guests.

Ben’s bedroom before:

And Ben’s room, later:

Plans for this room:

• Hang his letters on the left of the slider.
• Paint frames and hang photos and art.
• Stain and paint a growth chart (that looks like a huge ruler, so cute, I found it on Pinterest!)
• Buy/mount shelves for toys
• Organize closet- shelving? Expedit?
• Hem and iron curtains

And a close-up shot of the carpet:

The color is a warm chocolate brown, so don’t trust the weird tint on this last one, but I wanted to give you an idea of the texture. Yes, that’s furniture in the guest bed but this place is chaos right now and I fear seeing it in a photo might push me over the edge into Overwhelmed Crazy Pregnant Lady Land.

Fun? A little too crazy being in my head? Don’t worry, these are long term plans. I’d be happy if half of them got done before baby got here. We also have to change out all the lightswitches and outlets. Yippee! Ben’s room is done, so that’s one checked off the list!

Another one of these…

And definitely some more of this…

Of course I am nowhere near that happy round smiling stage quite yet. Nope, I am announcing quite a bit too early, because today is day #1 of “Quality Time Spent Lying Down” and I would like to complain about it to someone. And since we are such dear friends, I thought it should be you. So, rewind just a minute and pretend it is New Year’s Eve again:

There we were, exhausted from moving, full of company and opening bottles of champagne to celebrate:

Craziness. Not even plates on the outlets. We had been trying (as I told you) for about four-ish? Five-ish? months and no luck, which was fine, as we were doing that crazy thing called moving with a toddler. So, right before we made the big move, I walked in to see my Doc and asked him for some of my usual- a cocktail we call Clomid. I am all about plans (despite spending two years getting pregnant last time) and figured it would take me about three cycles to get pregnant, like it did last time, and that would put us at say, March or April. Pleeeeenty of time to get settled into the new house before I revisited the bowels of hell that was my morning sickness with Ben. So he was nice enough to call me in a script, after reminding me that fourish fiveish months is really not that long, yada yada. And I was all running my mouth about last time and he went with it. Very nice of him. A week later, here we were, guzzling champagne, me at about week 3 of my cycle (which if you dont know, means I was a week off from my period and should not be feeling anything at all other than tired from moving).

About ten minutes after that photo was taken (although now that I look at it, maybe that very minute- and what is my hair doing? Poofalicious…) I started feeling really, really tired. Like, take a nap on cement if you have to, hate everything that makes noise or requires you to keep your eyes open tired. Uh oh. I know that feeling. Impossible! Feeling completely confident that I was just being crazy as usual, I trudged out to grab a test Sarah had given me that was still in my car. I mentioned to my sweet neighbor, who has two kids Ben’s age, that I was having those scary hallmark feelings, and she reminded me that my life was a bit exhausting all on it’s own. Aha! You’re right, I thought. My life is exhausting. I’m not pregnant. I took a test anyway, though. And I was as shocked as any of you, that a week after talking to my doctor, here we were, pregnant as anything, eau naturale.

Ben seems to be having an appropriate response: “WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY??!! ANOTHER BABY?!”

As scared as I was to actually begin this journey again, it’s all fine now that it’s happening. I’m glad to be feeling a little sick, because that means everything is progressing nicely. I flipped through photos in Ben’s baby book, and it turns out, we still have all the toys he needed. As we are moving, I am setting things aside- the diaper bag, the breastfeeding pillow, nursing tops. This is exactly the time I conceived Ben, two years ago, so I am expecting my due date to be right around his- which was September 10th. I am so excited about this, and ready, and deliriously happy. People have a lot of feelings about disclosing pregnancy, but they are usually so specific to their personal perspectives that it is impossible to please everybody. I want all my friends to know that I am feeling sick, but please come see me, I’m not contagious! I want them to understand when I need to back out of something unexpectedly, or why I just look so tired when they are talking to me. I want to celebrate starting now! Secrets just frustrate me and it seems so unnecessary in this case. I don’t have a job that I need to protect, or anything like that. As for miscarraige, I had one before Ben and as hard as it was to spread the news then, it is a whole different ball game this time around. I’m not as sensitive to the feelings of failure and loss I had back then. It’s not a universal truth or anything, but for me, I have Ben now and that really does help. Anyway, I will need support if that happens again, and this is the fastest way to get it, I figure. Plus it feels good to write these things out.

If you haven’t been by our new place, get in touch! I would love to have you over! Excuse the constant chaos and I may or may not have pajamas on, but I am excited to see everyone. Just yesterday we had a play date and my sweet friend Katy told me that the trees in my backyard have the same disease hers did. I never would have known! I am so very excited to do this all again. I love Ben so much and he is such a wonderful person, I can’t wait to meet the next addition to our family.

I feel a little better now and should really get some lunch in before Scott leaves for the course. My love to all of you and I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Here is a before of the living room:

And pulled out a bit wider, is what it looks like this morning:

Okay, so the jury is still out about the layout of this room. I have plans to put some chairs and our buffet table near the couches to divide that space from the sitting area, but we shall see. I might just combine everything. The ottomans actually belong to the chairs but they are visiting the couches. I have plans to paint the legs of the chairs and couches to match the ottomans.

Now, lets talk about the sconces. I picked them up at an estate sale for $10 each! I had the painters spray the wood mounts white to match all of our white trim and the beams. We have three, one is mounted on the facing wall to your right, next to the TV, with it’s own switch. I’m not sure if I’m in love with them in our room quite yet. Maybe a grey patterned rug? A matchy pillow? White and grey frames around them? They need to feel more included. What do you think? I am sort of holding off on too much until I see what everything looks like with the new wood floors. And our new cute chairs:

Here is the playroom this morning:

I love that it’s so clearly Ben’s domain and is sort of allowed to be messy and crazy and in an ideal world this would keep the living/dining room clean…er. Here are my plans:

I want to make a crown moulding border around the left side of the room and mount activity boards, books, etc and make it sort of like a stationary activity all in itself. I found this idea on Pinterest, but I can’t find the example now, it must have been taken down. I can’t wait to see what it looks like finished. Above that will be shelves, artwork, etc and I need a little kids table for snacks and coloring. I have one chair, haha. It’s a start! This room will definitely have to grow with the kids as they get older. The walls are Desert Rock by Dunn Edwards.

On to the guest bath! Here are some before photos:

Some demolition by my handsome husband (and the painting crew took down the wallpaper)

And this is what it looks like this morning, with new paint (Glen Falls by Dunn Edwards) mirror, medicine cabinet and shower curtain. I have hardware for the doors waiting in the kitchen, and we still need to put up a towel ring, shelves and artwork and a towel rack and hook for Ben’s baby towels. But it’s coming along!

I realized I didn’t take a photo of the shower curtain, but you can see just a peek of it in this photo of the hallway leading to the laundry room and garage door. ALL the knobs and door hardware need to be replaced, as well as outlet and switch plates. I am definitely planning on some photo collages for that wall as well as the one you see as you head down from the living room.

Here is a before of our bathroom:

And the walk in shower:

And here it is now:

This paint color is also Glen Falls. The mirrors aren’t that yellow, they are more a light gold. Obviously all the hardware needs changing, and faucets, etc. And we hung the mirrors a little crooked but I have that figured out I think. I want to hang some shelves and art above the bath and get a chair with some matching fabric for that space between the bath and the shower. Not to mention towel racks, etc. I love using this bathroom, it’s absolutely incredible! And the closet is all painted as well, but the carpet is on order right now:

Okay, next post probably won’t be until next week, and that will be of the bedrooms and any other updates we accomplished. I’ve shown you some cleaner areas, but we have boxes and stuff everywhere. And everything will take on a whole new level of chaos when we take out the wall in February. Yikes!