All Kinds of Progress

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Before I launch into house projecty stuff, here's a baby bump picture for your viewing pleasure. Baby Speck is now 19 weeks and growing! I think this makes me look all-around smaller than I am in reality, so thanks camera.



When I left off, we were hoping to stain the table tops to match our dark floor. Hahaha. Fortunately, we did a test patch on the underside of the sideboard top. It was disastrous. I mean truly awful. I wish I had a picture for you to enjoy the awfulness, but alas, it's been attached to the base and that test patch will be forever out of sight.

So, after much discussion, research and initial reluctance, we decided to leave the tops as-is. They really are gorgeous the way they are, it's just that the natural birch wasn't the look we had our hearts set on. We've since come around and realized that in the end, this color scheme marries well with what's going on in the kitchen with the natural cherry cabinets and white corian counters; it provides some continuity between the two rooms.


After the non-staining afternoon, I was commenting how much I hated the gold trim on our otherwise gorgeous fireplace. I was musing about spray-painting it...someday. Mark, being awesome, grabbed a screwdriver and began prying off the gold, revealing the black underneath that matches the rest of the fireplace. There's some rubber-cement removal yet to do, as well as some serious dusting, but here's the in-progress-after (you can see the "before" in the background pics of my previous post).

And of course our darling 3 year old wearing her favorite-outfit-o-the-week.
The next day, we took a family excursion to look for things that were still needed to complete the room: a rug to go under the piano and curtain options. Miraculously, we found both!

Not bad Ikea, not bad.

I like bargains: 50% off + a 20% coupon = awesome! (It looks a bit more green in the pic than in reality)
And, because things are never quite perfect, we discovered that the table top had a slight heart-shaped  warp where the two pieces joined in the center. It wasn't horrible, but even I noticed it. So, what's a perfectionist to do (that would be Mark, not me) but set about de-warping the table. So, here's what's going on in our bedroom, right now:

Yep, we're vaporizing our wood. Nothing a little humidity, weight, and time can't cure...we hope.
Stay tuned for further developments...







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