girls’ room: part II

click HERE to read the initial plans

click HERE to see my “inspiration photos”

click HERE to read part one of the construction tale

tuesday was probably the most eventful day of construction. and not because of anything we did. the day started with finishing the rough electrical work—all the wires fished through the walls, and finally jeremy was done in the attic. yay!

it was time to sheetrock the end walls of the bunk bed unit…

and begin spackling… there was a LOT of spackling. the mister’s first “real” job was as a finisher, so fortunately he has the skills to handle stuff like this:

a hot mess of a ceiling that’s patched together where three walls, a closet and a superfluous sheet of sheetrock were all torn down. go baby go! make that ceiling look purdy!

there was also the original electrical panel in the closet of the pink room. we installed a new service and panel in the family room years ago, so it was time for the old one to finally be ripped out.

(he says maybe we can sell this? anyone?)

and the hole patched…

see how dark it is in this picture? because this is where things got super exciting. as he was taping and spackling his little heart out there was a big BOOM and all our power went out.

grreeeeaaatt.

instant icy fingers clutching your heart—especially when you’ve just been doing some electrical work.

so in a way, we were almost relieved to look out back and see this:

that would be a HUMONGOUS tree from the woods behind our house, laying across our power lines. it was rapidly getting dark, as it does on these short winter days, and jeremy was smack in the middle of spackling an entire room.

cause nothin’ says FUN like losing power when you’re in the middle of construction. true story.

so we did the smartest thing we could think of: he used the force to finish what he could in the rapidly fading light. and then, well: when the going gets tough, the tough go to IKEA. amirite?

(that was for you megan)

bonus: it was kids eat free night. and we got kids. SCORE!

so after getting our swedish meatball on we scoured the store for all the important stuffs we needed for the girls’ room.
 
things like:

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knoppa—gotta love a white flat sheet for $3.99. that’s a LOT of fabric for a small, small price. i think we bought 8.

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virserum--lots of cheap picture frames for the walls.

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kvartal—the ingenious hanging system.

and hands down our best score of the night (besides the FREE KIDS DINNER woot woot!)

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alvine trad—4 twin duvet covers for $6.99 EACH.

i also picked up what is soon to become the latest fad in construction apparel.

behold: the construction slipper!

that’s right, i’m like the hugh hefner of home improvement. wielding tools in the comfort of my slippered tootsies.

(plus, you know you’re a true ikea addict when you’re wearing IKEA. oh, wait…i’ve done that before)

that wasn’t it though. we bought lots more. and spent a solid hour trying to solve our dresser problem. we needed to get the most bang for our buck—four girls in one room requires a TON of storage space. and the plan was to fill what was the closet of the pink room with dressers.

but, you know, without spending like $1000.

back and forth we went—maybe kitchen cabinets? too expensive. malm dressers? cheap enough, but too contemporary. birkeland dressers? sooo pretty, but way to expensive.

the solution we ended up with—well, we pretty much love it. and you’re going to have to wait to find out what it is. mwahahahahahah!

so, where was i? by the end of day 4 we were in hardcore construction mode.
we were sparkly shiny happy people doing construction with much, much more to do and no electric.

moving on to wednesday…

by the light of day jeremy could see that his ninja spackling skills left much to be desired. :(
so while i finished laying the floor he spackled and spackled some more (and if i type spackle one more time i might scream)

and then some really exciting stuff started:

the bunk beds are getting framed!

final decisions were made on heights and sizes, and by the end of the day we had this:

which seems like as good a place to stop as any, because it was also my brother and sister-in-law’s third anniversary. so we wrapped it up early that night and headed off to a family dinner.

where i totally wore my sweatpants. and laughed too much and too loud, because i was wayyyy overtired.

and there we are—five days in, sparkly shiny happy people doing construction with much, much more to do and no electric. (it finally came back on. but they left the tree in our yard. boo.)

oh, and while we were at dinner poor little ms. e got suuuper sleepy. the kind of sleepy that makes you think something is not.quite.right. and your mommy senses are tingling. and so when she woke up at 2am with a 103.5 temperature…well, i wasn’t surprised.

so i guess that makes us sparkly shiny happy people doing construction with much, much more to do and no electric and a very sick baby.