shred or recycle?

My office is in that much-worse-before-it-gets-better stage.

There's piles of odds and ends with no place to go, things to get rid of...

And I have two plastic tub things I've been using for my recycle and shredding.

KOW: Simple Daybed, Take III

IT'S FINISHED! {Insert happy dance!}

For the most part, anyway.

My dad helped me drill pilot holes for the bolts and helped me put in some dowel pins while the daybed was still in my parents' garage.

In case you're like me and you don't know what dowel pins are, this is what they look like:

Again, if you're like me, you've seen many of them before but never knew they had a name other than "wooden peg thing Ikea uses."

KOW: Simple Daybed, Take II

I've begun to realize that having the KOW daybed at my parents' house during construction isn't quite as convenient as I had hoped.

Yes, it keeps the mess and tools out of my garage... but it also means I have to drive down there if I want to work on it. Ah well.

I puttied. I'm not sure if that's a word.

I put painter's putty stuff in the exposed nail holes and made an attempt to smooth out some of the cracks and weird spots that weren't remedied with the sander.

I've never had instruction on how to putty so I winged it. My fingers were covered with it by the time I was finished and I'm pretty sure I had some on my face that no one told me about. Whatever. The holes are holes no more. Some of them are just slight indentations instead.

The putty had to set before I could sand and start the painting process.

I primed and primed. And primed some more. I just used some of the KILZ primer I had left from painting my living room and kitchen.

KOW: Simple Daybed, Take I

I decided that it was time to start the Simple Daybed from Knock Off Wood.

It's the next "big" change for my office-ish room and I just couldn't wait any longer.

Last Saturday I went out with my mom to buy the lumber... and I'm glad she was with me! There were too many choices and I was quickly overwhelmed trying to figure out what would be the best/cheapest wood to buy. Once I calmed down we were able to pick through the lumber to find the straightest and smoothest boards we could.

Saturday afternoon my dad showed me how to use some of his power tools and between the two of us we got most of the lumber cut down to size. I let him use the ripping thing. It made him too nervous for me to use it since that's what sliced his thumb last year. He cut the 1x12's down to 1x6's and 1x3's. (1x12's were slightly cheaper than buying two 1x6's.) I cut the lengths for the rails, spacers, headers, footers, and other things... and I only made one mistake.

I hope.

ColorSmart

I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine. A very dear friend.

Blog-World-Friends and Real-World-Friends, meet Behr ColorSmart.

Behr ColorSmart lets you browse colors and then shows you what colors would complement your chosen color(s). Once you have your colors picked out you can "paint" one of their sample rooms or you can upload your own photo to "paint". It's pretty slick.

I used it to help pick paint colors for my kitchen and living room... and now I'm back to it with my office-ish room.

I'm still playing around with different colors for the furniture (browns?) and the walls (light blues or greens?).

I found this brown using ColorSmart. It's Behr's Belgian Sweet.

Ikea Strikes Again

My mom and I stopped at Ikea on our way home from the Puyallup Dog Show last weekend {Sunny, my mom's pup, was entered and got Winner's Dog on Saturday for 2 points-- we didn't enter Taylor, but they are both entered in Portland this weekend}. I had a list of what I wanted and we tried not to dawdle too much but it was still exhausting and slightly overwhelming. There's just so much stuff!

One of the main things I wanted to get were some boxes to store my DVDs in my TV media cabinet thing. Since my office-ish room has been on my mind lately {and I finally have a vision for the room} I also wanted to get some boxes for office supplies, craft supplies, etc to get a start on organizing all the random stuff I've been throwing in there.

I got lots of Kassett boxes. Enough to make my poor thumb numb from putting them together. {If you're not familiar with these Ikea boxes... they are packaged flat --except for the lids-- and you have to assemble them with little nuts and bolts. I like them because they come in lots of different sizes and they are reasonably priced.}

The Vision

I am another step (or maybe even two or three... it depends on how you measure the steps) closer to achieving my "vision" for my office-ish room.

Oh wait... have I mentioned my vision??

I mentioned my inspirations in this post... the YHL mood board for a very similar room plus KOW's simple daybed were the starting points of my epiphany.

I slept on it and awoke with a wonderful vision of the room my office-ish space could one day become.

And I'm EXCITED!

I spent a good amount of time making up the floor plan of the room and then figuring out how I could fit in all that I wanted. (I'm very demanding.)