Because Mr. Farmless Farmhouse has commandeered my dining room as his office. And the Farmless Farmchild has claimed the living room as her haven of collecting.
I have had to come up with some sort of Smoke Screen, if you will, to hide the Office of Shame from those who pass through our front door and may not know yet. You should really win someone over with your charm and wit before exposing them to the kind of crazy in your home.
This is where my idea was born. For a quick fix, we placed four IKEA Billy Bookcases in the doorway to the dining room/office, which also and unfortunately gave Farmless Farmchild even more space to expand her hoard of toys, puzzles, books and trinkets. She definitely has a collecting monkey on her back!
I purchased two amazing sets of French doors, many moons ago, to install in the doorway of each of these rooms. My dream is for guests, someday, to enter into our Foyer to find lovely inviting rooms beckoning through the pretty frosted squares of glass in these beautiful French doors. "Come sit a while, doesn't this look like a peaceful relaxing retreat?"
First problem here is: There is nothing peaceful or enticing happening in those rooms. Their occupants enjoy them, but they cause me great stress. You see, I am easily overwhelmed by chaos but the two most important people in my life seem to THRIVE in it! And it's three against one. Yes, I said three. We must not forget the four legged inhabitant who has a hoard of bones and toys that rival any Petco!
Second problem: I do not feel confident enough in my handy woman skills to install these doors. I know the basic mechanics; however, all my projects escalate into Mt. Everest. In addition to this, since the owners of these rooms have filled them to capacity, I don't think there is enough room to accommodate the opening of the doors.
I had to really mull this one over for a while. Lots of screen shots, compiling ideas, sketching scrapping plans, sketching again. Thinking of a good cost effective way to mask the chaos for my comfort and keep the other occupants happy.
A little fact you may not know about me is that I love a good bargain! I love the hunt mostly! I like to think I got a really great deal and I'm doing these projects "on a dime". The sad fact is, I purchase stuff, it doesn't work, I sell it for a dime, try something else, I find a new deal, tire of that item. See where I'm going with this? It's a vicious cycle. And a big factor in the major meltdown that refueled my blogging. The blogging means I have to face public failure if I don't follow through. I'm really not into public shaming. I'm not into shaming at all. So far, it has worked. Sort of. I have made big strides in four of my major projects but none have quite hit the finished point. YET! The greater the effort, the greater the reward, right?
Back to the dining room doorway: Luckily the whole "Mud Room Entry-way" has become very trendy. Let's hope it stays trendy until we can afford a major project we have been wanting to accomplish since purchasing our home. That's just a lil teaser for another day.
Now the wheels are turning. How can I make a really awesome entryway, on a budget, that will have my guests and visitors saying, "Wow! This place is lovely, I never want to leave!"?
And, how can I do this, and not waste all the money we have poured into Billy Bookcases and Pottery Barn Cameron storage systems? Those were thrifted, of course! But now we have enough for a showroom and they aren't really meeting our needs, or what I envisioned in my head.
Now we are getting to the part where you will start to understand why all these projects are raging at once. Well, two or three of them at least. We needed two of the Billy Bookcases being used in the dinning room doorway, to flank the Loft Window Seat upstairs. It took me forever to decide between bookcases on the sides or just a long window seat. Then sensibility won out. You ALWAYS need more storage! Am I right? Okay, that decision made.
I left part of the story out until this point. We also have two half Billy Bookcases in our garage, that were too short to use on the window seat. Ooops. My bad? Or is it?!?
My original Hall tree idea had us using the Cameron bases as the bench seat and the bookcases going up the sides or behind. Wrong, no go. (Looking back, we could have cut down the Billy's and placed them on top of the Cameron bases, but that came to me too late.) Okay, Cameron in the middle for the seat and Billys on the sides. Bead-board back. Wrong! The gap between the bookcases was 1 inch too narrow for the Cameron! "Oh for crying out loud!" "Is anything ever easy?" "Why is everything I do, so difficult!" I somehow find myself saying this in the middle of EVERY project I do. Please tell me I'm not the only one?
Wait! The two short Billys in the garage collecting dust housing our supply of sparkling water. Yep, it's a thing. Go ahead, judge me. "Let's cut those down, and we can make a bench seat, just the right size, and have cubes at the top for more storage!" I said.
"You want to cut them?" Mr. Farmless asked, in his best "Lucy, this is a baaaad idea" tone.
Crap! Now he's triggered my self doubt. See what a stinking mess indecision can make?
This is when that little voice in my head started to squeak. "Do it!" "Do it, I say!" "Or you will never finish this project and you will feel like a big doo doo head!" Yep, the voice in my head is a school yard bully with the vocabulary of a 10 year old. But she is just the cheerleader I needed!
"Yes!" "Cut it!" "If we mess it up, I don't care!" "It's not the end of the world." And cut it we did! Well, actually, I measured and marked, Mr. Farmless did the cutting. I'm afraid of the Crocodile - a small powerful circular saw.
But, I'm a really awesome wife! It was dark and cold, he was super tired, so I told him to cut it right in the middle of the kitchen. How many wives would do that, huh? Note to self, don't do that again. It was an exorbitant amount of dust.
We worked on projects that entire day. We didn't finish that part until almost 9 pm., but, it was completely worth it! I'm still tweaking and adjusting this project in my head. I've decided we'll take an evening off and pick it up tomorrow just in case I think of some really cool way to improve the final product. So I'm going to leave you here... and that's what they call it a Cliff Hanger ;)
