No more scary room!

When Russ and I first moved into our house, we discovered many things that frightened us. The three layers of kitchen floor that were held together by a glue so old it had turned into a solid-black-almost-tar-like substance for example. Or the plaster and lath that we discovered behind our kitchen walls. But nothing scared us as much as the room that we, for a full year, actually called the scary room.

This picture honestly doesn't do it justice. You can't see, for example, the weird pattern on the wall paper that was clearly put up before either of us were born. Nor can you see the wooden bar stretching across the length of the room that was used to hang clothes on. And you certainly can't see the writing we discovered underneath the wallpaper once we pulled it off. Writing that didn't make sense. At all.

So, for a year, it became the "scary room", aka, the room to dump stuff in when we didn't know where else to put it.

We had grand plans: to paint, put up a closet.....see, our house was built in 1921. They apparently didn't need as many closets back then because in our three bedroom house we have one teeny-tiny closet and a second one that is even smaller and has shelving in it. Needless to say, we've had clothes strewn and draped everywhere.

Well, this summer marks a year that we've been in our house and it was time to Get The Job Done. With some help from a contractor, the walls were skim coated, sanded and painted. Major first step. (And a big sigh of relief that I still liked the color I picked out a year ago!) Then came the closet. We went online, designed it ourselves, bought all the pieces and brought them upstairs. They sat there for a little while, while we went about our curriculum work and Russ did his coursework. Then Russ started assembling, and of course, as with any house project, it ended up being a bit more complicated than we had thought. However, after a slight, very small, barely noticeable fit of nervousness by me (August 1?!? When did it become August 1!?!? We only have three and a half more weeks until school! Aack!) Russ pushed through and got it done. And, if I do say so myself, it looks pretty darn good.