A Work In Progress

I missed Kim's party last week because we were on a family vacation to Disney World!  We had the best time with our 2 daughters and son-in-laws, and our 4 grandchildren.  I plan to do a few posts about our trip once I organize my photos a bit.  

But now, on to my current Boring to Better!  {or as you will see, working towards better}

In our house, things don't change around too much.  I'm not one to rearrange furniture, or even move my accessories around too much.  And it's funny, because when I was growing up, my favorite thing to do was to rearrange my bedroom.

I think I have changed because my married life is the exact opposite of the life I had growing up.

I lived in 3 houses as a child.  2 in the same town, and the other a big traumatic move for me in the 8th grade.  That's it.  My grandparents lived in the same house their whole lives.  So I think moving things around was a lot of fun when everything in my life pretty much stayed the same.

Well, I married a corporate guy, and we have moved A LOT.  In fact, this is our 9th house in 33 years of marriage.  And that doesn't count a few apartments along the way or the fact that we lived in one house for 11 years.  {our previous home}  Just about the time  I would get the last room wallpapered and the last accessory in place we would get the call to be on the move again.

Now the only reason I told you {or bored you} with that story is to explain where I am going week by week with my before and afters.  As I have said before, we have been in our current home for 3 years, and I am basically taking you room by room to see the changes we have made.  The changes are usually the biggies ~ paint, new flooring, new window coverings.  I don't do a lot of explaining about the "stuff" in the room.  I hope once I work my way through the house I can go back and do a little tweaking of the little things and have a few more "before and afters."

  Once I get the room "done", I don't usually do much to it.  But every now and then there is a room that just bugs me, and I can't get it to look the way I want, or I don't even know WHAT I want and that is what is going on in our library.

The previous owners used this room as an office, and that's about all it is good for because it is small.

This is the room after we moved in ~ we called it our basement, because we had the movers put the exercise equipment in there until we figured out what we were going to do with it.  You can see the faux painting and the awful tile on the fireplace in this picture.  {and my moving mess:-) }

You can see the wall color better if you click on the picture to enlarge it.  The windows had 2"blinds and you can just make out the bottom of the ceiling fan.

 So, the first thing we tried was painting it red, which I like OK.  We put new stone on the fireplace and replaced the carpet.

 Added plantation shutters and my Ballard black desk.  This picture below shows you how small the room is ~ that's it ~ wall to wall.  Cozy I guess.  And with the desk, it was kind of an office.  But we don't need an office, we need a library.  I love books and have a lot of them.

 The boxes are stacked up to hide the computer stuff on that wall.  I am sorry the pictures are so dark, when I took them I didn't know I would be sharing them on my blog someday:-)

 So, we gave the desk to our daughter and when our new kitchen table arrived we put the old one in here.  I thought I would skirt it to the floor  {picture a beautiful yellow and red toile :-) }and have romantic dinners by the fire and play games with the grandchildren and so on.  Yeah, right.  {I seldom cook !}

 I had to buy a little table to put the computer junk on and I hate the way it looks.  So that has to change....

SO, this post really is moving on toward the better I hope.  I am in the process of changing it yet again and I am hoping that it will at least function for me the way it should.  I really do think you have to use the room the way it works for your life and not just how it would "look" the best.  Probably the best look for this room is the first way I had it with a small desk and a little reading chair.  But it just doesn't suit our lives.


 I bought a bookcase, and am going to bring my old loveseat out of the garage and turn this room into a library.  In my perfect house all of the books would be in the same room in the house, and in this house I have to store them in at least 4 other rooms, but I think I will be able to get all of my fiction in this room and have a little space to grow and that thrills me.


So stay tuned for even a little better!


Linking to Kim's Boring to Better Party.
And, as I am working on being inspired to get this room right, I am linking to Vanessa's Inspiration Fridays.