A Good Weekend

This winter has been really hard. It's almost the end of march and I have at least 3 feet of snow piled up in my yard. There's a good 6-10 inches of packed snow between my car tires and the surface of the driveway. Every outdoor surface is slick with snow, ice, or that bumpy ice that you get when everything turns slushy for a day then re-freezes overnight. I should really post some pictures of my yard and such for full effect, but alas, I never think to do this.

For several weeks now we've been using our weekends mostly to feel sorry for ourselves: hanging around at home, grabbing junk food, occasionally cleaning the house from top to bottom, stuff like that. The puppy hasn't been too pleased with our lack of enthusiasm on our days off and we weren't making any progress on our DIY projects.

Then two things happened: Daylight Savings Time and ApartmentTherapy.com.

The days are slowly getting longer and soon we'll be back to the land of the midnight sun. But this didn't really set in until this weekend. Last night I looked outside at a nice, sunny evening only to realize it was almost 8:00 PM! Last time I checked 8:00 PM meant pitch black darkness and subzero temperatures! We will likely have a semi-snowy summer, but at least we'll have some typical Alaskan daylight to enjoy.

Apartmenttherapy.com is the most amazing website I've discovered since http://icanhascheezburger.com/. Everyday there's at least 10 posts I want to read or just look at the pictures of well-designed, organized, and useful spaces that most people could afford to incorporate (at least in part) to their homes. Last week I found this post and this picture:

It's a walk-in closet converted into a home office. In case you didn't know, our spare room consisted of a $20 desk and filing cabinet (Craigslist), a funky blue dresser (Craigslist), a blue sleeper sofa from our old apartment (Craigslist), and a pile of boxes filled with our books, plus a walk in closet filled with linens, luggage, and sports gear. Not pretty.

So on Saturday I listed our furniture on Craigslist and sold everything but the couch in about 2 hours. Then we headed to Home Depot. 2 1/2 hours later we had purchased: replacement spindles for the ones on our banister our friend's dog ate, a large white slab of melamine, spare boards cut to length, hardware, and paint supplies.

Then I spent Sunday staining and installing the banister spindles (success!), repainting the trim in the spare room (success!), and clearing out the spare room closet (now the whole room is a huge mess). Then I installed the melamine in the closet as a desktop. Leigh and I tested different shelving configurations with the cheap shelving that came with the house. Nothing was quite right.

Then Leigh dropped a bomb on me: let's scrap this and just order what we really want from Ikea! OK, so I'd just spent $50 and my whole Sunday on this project, but it looked like a project I'd attempt in college when I had no money. I'm a grown up. This is my spare room. I want to enjoy working in this space. This is where I'll spend many hours when my career gets harder and I'm working from home late at night or on weekends. It's also our guest room and I want our guests to feel like they're in a well-designed space.

So we spent $185 on a desk and shelving from Ikea (for the work space and for our bedroom) plus $105 in shipping. OK, I know that's a lot for shipping. But consider that Alaskan retailers only ship the most basic merchandise for us to purchase (hence us buying ugly melamine for a desktop as there was nothing much to choose from!) and charge us a premium for those items. Basically we could get a piece of shit desk from Target for $80+ and cheap shelves for $15-25 each. Instead we ordered exactly what we wanted: well-designed, easy to install items for the same amount (retail plus shipping) we'd spend on lesser items here. I can live with that. Estimated delivery date is April 10.

In the mean time I have to tear out all the crap I put up in the closet and find a new home for it. We're going to repaint our bedroom and the inside of the closet a nice taupe color too. Also, we're having our upstairs measured for new carpet on Monday!!! That won't be installed until May or so, but soon enough we'll have a completely functional multipurpose room and a more organized bedroom. I promise to post pictures when the time comes.

Working on the house definitely makes me feel more accomplished and happier despite this endless winter. Now if we could just get rid of all this snow!