it's only taken three years

Is three years a long time? To finally start to make a house home-y, that is? I bought my little 790-ish square foot 1950's house in July 2007. Just now, over three years later, am I beginning to put things up on the walls. Just in time to sell think about selling it. What can I say? I am the queen of procastination. I own the crown.

In the past several weeks I've done some work in the living room, building a simple console table (the boards were cut months ago but I just did something with them a few weeks back) from plans at Ana White's amazing site, painting and slightly grunge-ifying a small bookshelf, and doing the same to a pair of molding-like wall shelves. The bookshelf and wall shelves are seen in their Value Village state in this post. I thought I had taken close-up pictures of the finished bookshelf and shelves but apparently I didn't. The bookshelf I painted with an oops can of Behr exterior paint in a rusty red and the wall shelves I painted using leftovers from my kitchen cabinets, which are Behr's Creamy White. I then mixed Burnt Umber acrylic craft paint with water until I had a solution I liked and brushed it on with a dry sponge brush. I let it sit for a few minutes and then wiped it off with clean rags made from an old t-shirt. I had to experiment a little with the leave-it-alone times before wiping it off but I'm happy with the results. I'll try and get pictures close up another day.

Ignore the awful colouring of this photo (the walls are Behr's Gobi Desert, not a caramel coffee), the lovely popcorn ceiling, and the beautiful end table in need of sanding and staining and instead be awed by the fact that I hung those shelves and framed and arranged all those pictures in a few hours this afternoon. Maybe it shouldn't have taken that long but I had issues with the last drywall plug (of course - three went in perfectly and then one decided to be a pain in the ass) and hanging the lower shelf.  And I was choosing pictures and finding frames as I went along. I was also in dire need of a nap, which I did not get.

Looking at this picture, the shelves seem high. I'm not sure if it's the crop of the photo or what because they look much better proportioned in real life.

I'm thinking of moving the swing-arm lamp downstairs to the rec room and instead hanging a pendant of some sort in that corner and then putting a lamp on the end table between the chairs to add a little height in that area. We will see. I do have a few thrift store lamps in need of some TLC.

I also did some work on the opposite side of the room but that's a photo for another day. And the entire room is still a work in progress. I really like how it's starting to look. Like I said, just in time to get it ready to sell. Sigh. Maybe I'll be more on the ball in my next house.