Kids Rooms | But I Smile Anyway...

Decorating – Phase 4/5 … and Completion!

It’s been a week and a day… (but who’s counting…?!) and finally my children are sleeping in their own bedrooms!

So Phase 4 was getting furniture moved around, and building flat pack furniture…

So one bed was moved into the other, but it was not possible to sleep in due to all the stuff still in the room! Luckily the bunk bed that we had invested in 5 years ago had a pull out single bed under it, so they spent yet another night in their shared bedroom.

Yesterday we managed to get delivery of both the wardrobes and assembled one of them.

Note to all: building flat pack furniture with your spouse or partner can be a volatile activity. It can either strengthen your bond or create rifts!

We had our squabbles, but we managed to put the wardrobe together… well, it was going smoothly until the end, when the sliding doors appeared to have an issue… the doors weren’t staying in! After much huffing and puffing on Hubby Dearest’s part, and calls to the company, we sort of gave up. My in-laws had a family friend round doing some work, and he is a bit of a Jack of all trades, so I rushed off to show him the apparently faulty part.

Alas, he had left for home moments before I arrived! And the Trade shops in the area didn’t have these parts in stock either!

I was so frustrated! We had made the whole thing… were we going to fall at the final hurdle?

Then Hubby Dearest called me to say he had fixed it! I can tell you sheepishly, that I hadn’t read a little note on the part which allowed you to adjust the wheel height, which solved the whole issue!

The offending cupboard!

We then decided it was best to sleep… it had been a tiring day!

Today, it was the turn of the second cupboard… which was even more complex, with many parts!

First, we had to dismantle the old one, and dispose of it… you should see the pile of refuse we have now for collection next week!

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I was a total teacher and sorted the parts, and even labelled the screws and things, so I was able to reach for the correct things as I needed them! Masking tape is a great thing!

While building this one we got a notification that the desks would be arriving today too! Excellent! I wasn’t expecting them until next week, so this meant we could get things done much quicker!

So, the cupboard took nearly 5 hours to get right, and then we couldn’t agree on the layout of either room! We want the kids to get maximum use out of the space they have, but we both have very different ideas! Still, he won for Lil Man’s room, and I won for Lil Princess’s layout!

I disappeared for 45 minutes to town to pick up some new bits for the rooms, extension leads, lampshades, duvet covers, hangers etc… then rushed back to give the new bed clothes a wash!

It was impossible for me to wait until tomorrow so I decided to start the desks and it took me an hour to do the first one. After a bite (or 3!) of pizza, I scuttled off to make the second one and did it within half an hour with mo instructions! Go Me! I am the Flat Pack Queen!

Then I started unpacking things, setting the bookshelves straight, putting clothes away in their new homes, all that stuff…

And here we have them, the finished rooms! All that is remaining is new curtains and rugs!

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Oh and a mirror. Lil Princess needs a mirror to look at herself apparently!!

I am so tired, bruised beyond belief, (but then that is because I am so clumsy… it was inevitable!) it was 11pm before the kids finally went to sleep!

I need a shower, a drink, a massage, a holiday!

Until tomorrow my lovely Peeps! I know it’s not finished yet…so much stuff to still rehome, but for tonight I will pretend that we are done!

Decorating – Phase 2/3

I think we cracked it!

The paint has gone on, and even if I do say so myself, it is looking pretty good!

But there have been a few little slips…

It was becoming a bit of a comic farce… cream on white, so to cover, white on cream, but got white on cream, so targeted that white with cream, and managed to get cream on white again… it was like a never ending story!

My excuse… I am an artist, I am allowed to paint beyond the lines. I’m used to thinking outside the box, not being tied to these constraints! The lines are where I make them! (Yes, I know that excuse doesn’t really cut it when decorating, but then I never claimed to be a good decorator!)

But finally, we managed! Ok so there are wobbly lines instead of straight edges, and a few drops of paint on carpet, where the masking tape and sheets slipped, but who cares! WE DID IT!

Though the room adventure is by no means over! We had to separate the bunk beds to create two singles, which we did, but boy do my shoulders ache from that! The kids are still in one room yet though… there are at least 3 other huge chapters to get through before we can get them into their own rooms.

First thing is we have to order new furniture. The small cupboard, visible in the above photos, is falling apart, and is not splittable between two rooms! So we need to order two wardrobes, and two desks too. We have started the hunt, but everytime we think we’ve cracked it, another problem arises! I have created a to-scale plan and cut out accurate bits of paper to represent furniture, to see where things can go, without blocking exits, or to make sure cupboard doors will open, you know the score!

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Then I have to clear the smaller room… I started this job today. Going throught the boxes of books and miscellaneous items in the study, deciding which to keep, and which to get rid of. Whilst doing this I ended up rearranging the dining room, to accomodate one set of shelves, so we can have some books down there! Bear in mind these are nothing to do with the pile of Children’s books that I have to separate between the children’s shelves!

Hands up… I an a children’s book addict…(There is one more box that isn’t even in the photo too!)

So the study boxes have been sorted, kind of. I need to look at the Children’s books tomorrow, and then use the plastic boxes to sort my stationery, and arts and crafts items into… I will need to take a photo of those when it’s all done.. but there is lots… again! These boxes will then be labelled and go in the attic, within easy reach, so when I need something, I can grab it easily!

Then the third big job, another which I love to hate, is putting together flat pack furniture… Whenever we order it, and it arrives!

Until the wardrobes arrive, I can’t put the bed in the small room, we will need room to manouver the wardrobe pieces initially, before attempting to put the bed in. Oh, and don’t mention moving the bed. I don’t know how we will get it out of the door and into the next door room! We’ll deal with that when the time comes!

Curtains. Need to get the curtain poles up, and new bedding too! Never ending…

Oh, and I managed to do another little bit of DIY too! I changed a toilet seat! Ok, I know it’s no biggie, but did you know that plastic nuts can fuse into metal bolts, rendering them immoveable? Well, I didn’t! This has never happened before, but when I went to change the upstairs toilet seat, the nuts wouldn’t budge! I tried everything, oil, WD40, pure brute force. This seat was stuck!

In the end I resorted to YouTube to see if I could find some solution!

The first was to heat a pallet knife red hot, then burn the plastic. I didn’t fancy mingling burnt plastic fumes with the paint fumes already floating around the house!

The other option was to use a hacksaw blade to cut through the bolt. I requested a blade from Hubby Dearest, when he went to the DIY store to buy all the paints. He thougth I was talking out of my backside, so got some special Silicone WD40 instead. Guess what? It didn’t work!

I had to go and buy some top up paint so I took the opportunity to pick up the blades myself, and when I was feeling like a spare part, as I was making such a mess of the paint that I left it to the ‘expert’, my sister in law, I decided to try the hacksaw trick, and it did work! So, my toilet seat is now new, unsplintered and has great bathroom rules for all to follow on it too!