IKEA and Expensive Tastes

Last weekend Marci, Aaron, Priya and Shivanee came over to paint my living room area and I LOVE IT! The color is great. As it was going up I was afraid it was going to be a baby boy blue but after the second coat went on and dried it transformed into the Pensive Sky that I wanted. And after the third coat of white gloss on the dental molding, it popped. Now my only concern is that my Spa Linen tufted ottoman I ordered from Ballard Design won’t match it. I don’t want it to be matchy-matchy but I want the two blue colors to coordinate. My wall color seems to change from gray to blue so it will be almost impossible to pick out something that matches its color exactly.

I placed my Ballard Design order on July 2nd and still both my rug and my ottoman are ‘in process.’ The Spa Linen fabric for my ottoman was backordered and I guess they’re still waiting on it. And I don’t know why it’s taking so long for my rug. If I don’t hear that things are being shipped by the end of the month I’m going to call and complain and hopefully get a discount.

I’m going to go to IKEA this weekend and I found, what I think, are some dressers that will work perfectly for my entertainment stand. I wasn’t going to buy much from IKEA for my place since it’s my adult place and I want quality pieces. But as it always turns out, I have expensive tastes but am too cheap to pay for the pieces I want so have to make due with ‘reproductions.’

My bedroom is pretty much finished. I just need to rearrange some accessories and hang artwork and curtains. And I need to shorten my roman blinds in there so the little cord doesn’t have to pull so much weight each time I open and close my blinds.

For the time being I’ve given up on having an Open House in August. I’m just not going to have enough finished to be happy enough to bring people in and show off my place. A easy project I need to do is to sew my curtains for my living room. That would make a world of difference except I need to buy like 20 yards of white linen and I’m having trouble paying for the good stuff…again. I’m going to have to buy that fabric online as well since when I was at JoAnn’s this past weekend they don’t have bolts of fabric in that long of lengths.

I took a walk today to wander around décor stores. I stopped in the Red Barn Mercantile which is on S. Columbus Street. I’d never been in there before and it has a lot of cute things. They have accessories that are included in what I want to get for my condo, but they all seemed to be the same size…small…and I’m going to need objects of varying sizes.

Post Office and State Farm

So I took a little break from the condo this past weekend which included the 4th of July. Well it wasn’t an entire break. I repainted my entire bedroom and crown molding on Friday before going home. But all I have left to do now in my bedroom is clean up around my molding and find a decent curtain rod to hang my curtains, which are now finished.

My mail has started to trickle in. On June 1st I went online and completed the change of address form for the Post Office to start delivering my mail to Martha on the 12th. Well once I submitted it I stopped getting mail at the townhouse. So I called the Post Office about week later and told them about this. I had a pleasant man who said that my courier mustn’t have paid attention and started to forward my mail. So the man on the phone was going to tell him about it.

Well after moving into my condo I wasn’t getting any mail. Just KariSue’s (former owner). So I called the Post Office again and got a woman who wasn’t quite as pleasant. I told her about how on the 1st I put in to get my mail forwarded on the 12th, but I hadn’t been getting any mail anywhere. She said in a smart remark “Well what were we supposed to do with it?’ and I told her that the way it works is that until the 12th, you keep delivering my mail at my old address then starting on the 12th, the mail should have been forwarded. I don’t think that got any real response.

So at one home day during lunch to meet with a painter, my mailman came and delivered my mail. I told him all about it and he said to give it until the beginning of July to get all my mail. And he also said he would tell my regular postman, apparently he was just filling in.

I think I’m getting my mail now though. I just thought I would miss all the confusion by doing it in advance online but that didn’t help at all.

My State Farm papers got forwarded to me. You would think that when I call to buy some homeowner’s insurance, the insurance company would be smart enough to update my records to send my mail to that address, but they weren’t. Marci also got some of my State Farm mail. They changed my address to her new apartment address.

So I had to call them and tell them that they had it all screwed up, especially because they had the place of residence as 3300 Commonwealth Avenue or something like that. That is neither of our addresses nor did either of us ever live there. (I think that is an address I gave them when doing my insurance ‘homework’ for the city.) So I made sure that in the end, she had Marci’s address for Marci, and my address for me.

Painters and Home Depot

Well after we got all my furniture moved in I saw that my living room wall color was the same as my couches and that just would not work for me. So I decided I would hire some painters for $300-$500 to just take care of it while I was at work some day. I called several people listed in my community newsletter and ended up making 7 appointments for contractors to come by to see my place. The first proposal I got was for $1,722!!!! I thought it must have been a fluke when I got my second estimate for $875. Well it turns out the $875 was the fluke. I told Shivanee about this and she said she would just do it someday while I was at work. But I didn’t want to have to ask the same people to help me paint who already helped me on my bedroom and bathroom, but those were the ones who offered. So next weekend Aaron, Priya, Shivanee, Marci and I are going to paint my living room a Pensive Sky color. I already got 4 colors from Home Depot and have them tested on my walls and I bought a 5 gallon bucket of paint on Sunday, the last day of their sale. Woo hoo.

Speaking of Home Depot though, I went three times this past weekend. When I bought my 5 gallon bucket of paint I thought someone would help me to my car since I am just a little girl, but no one did. And when I got to my car I lifted the bucket a little bit to see if I could do it and it was heavy! So I stood there helpless looking hoping one of the men walking by would ask if I needed help, but no on did. So I bear hugged that bucket of paint and lifted with my legs and got it in my trunk not without smashing my fingers though.

Later on Sunday I was going patch some paint in my bedroom that didn’t match but first I was going to buy a sisal rug and some bamboo roman shades for my bedroom. I thought I would have all my shopping completed by lunch time and then have all afternoon to paint and do other things. Well I ended up going to 6 or 8 different places just looking for 72” wide blinds. I didn’t know they were so specific and I couldn’t believe World Market and Pier One didn’t have any bamboo blinds. I ended up going to Next Day Blinds and got some estimates on them but they were around $200. So I ended up going back to Home Depot and got my rug and blinds from there and used Sam’s father’s 10% off coupon. I also roped Jim, one of the store’s associates, to help me carry the stuff to my car. I also made sure to complain to him that earlier in the day no one helped me get the 5 gallon bucket of paint into my car.
I met Jim the weekend of my move-in. Me and the fam were at Home Depot and we had Jim saw some boards for us and help us pick out screws, etc. But I officially made him my friend this past weekend.

Anyway I finally got home and had Marci come over to help me unload my car. Marci got a semi-concussion when she was trying to help me get my rug under my bed and the box spring fell and hit her on the head. But she’s still alive. The blinds caused trouble as well because for whatever reason my window frame is metal and it’s hard to screw into. So we have the blinds semi-thoroughly installed. It seems pretty sturdy though. Next I painted the walls where the paint colors didn’t match but just ended up making the situation worse. I originally mixed two paint colors together, Restful and Dusty Olive, to get my desired color and it seems like when we went to trim my molding we somehow used lighter paint. So now half of my wall is lighter than the other so I have to go back in and paint the whole room again, with the room full of furniture.
I was so proud of myself too because I didn’t spill or splatter paint on anything and I did a quick and easy job and was relieved I got it done so nicely. Obviously I was wrong and now I’m pretty sure when I go to paint it again I will spill on my new rug most likely.

Later I started to sew my curtains for my room just to find out I don’t have as much fabric as I originally thought so now I have to sew with smaller seams than I wanted. And it turns out my curtain rod is too short by like 2 inches and I need two packs of curtain hooks rather than one.

I just want to get one room completed but nothing seems to be going smoothly.