Paul and I are planning to move, by which I mean not HOUSE (when we moved into this house we said with relief, “Now we can stay here and NEVER MOVE AGAIN”) but IN-HOUSE. What we want to do is this:
1. Move Elizabeth’s downstairs bedroom upstairs, to what is currently the computer room and office.
2. Move the office stuff and computers to what is currently our room.
3. Move our room to Will and Henry’s room.
4. Move Will and Henry’s room to Elizabeth’s room.
Does all this make you feel tired and headachey? Are you twitching and placing an order for two pounds of See’s? Good, then we are on the same page.
One of the great things about our house is that it is VERY FLEXIBLE. It was originally a 3-bedroom-1-bathroom raised ranch with an unfinished basement, but my dad added two bedrooms, a family room, and a bathroom downstairs. So now bedroomly-speaking (and remembering that one of them needs to be an office) we have one large bedroom, one medium bedroom, and three small bedrooms. This is EXCELLENT, especially if we were Sims who could go “Click! Bed is in this room now. Click! Change wall color. Click! Move dresser.”
Which we aren’t. And so I am exhausted just contemplating all the work that must take place between Point A (small bedrooms are Rob/Edward’s, Elizabeth’s, and office; medium bedroom is ours; large bedroom is Will/Henry’s) and Point B (small bedrooms are Rob/Edward’s, Will/Henry’s, Elizabeth’s; medium bedroom is office; large bedroom is ours).
Plus, we want to paint. OH LORD WHERE ART THOU??
We are taking it small at first. Paul said last night, “The first two tasks are to clean out behind the recliners in the living room, so we can put our bureaus there to make space in our room for when we’re ready to move the computers. And to clean off our bureaus, so we can move them to behind the recliners.” So we did. But oh dear, that is only the very tiniest tip of the iceberg. Because once we start this process for real, it will be a dizzying and exhausting series of moving and cleaning and PAINTING OMG I HATE PAINTING.
I do kind of enjoy choosing paint colors, though, if I can keep from getting into a Fret Loop about it. The first room to paint is the office/computer room. What color, do you think? Our computer desks (which we would like to replace, but it won’t happen soon) are pale wood and brushed silver. We’ll also be adding one or two homework desks (not the kind made to hold a computer, but the old kind with a little drawer over the knees for pens and rulers, and then three drawers down one side), and my plan is to get them from consignment shops, so they’ll be wood, probably maple (the slightly orange kind, not the pale kind) or else dark pine.
Oh My Goodness! I LOVE projects like these! I so wish I could come paint for you because it is one of my favorite things in life…to paint walls. And my husband will no doubt EXIT THE PREMESIS if I paint another room a new color in our own house.
I vote for an office in Swistle-blue. Because I think wood of all colors looks beautiful against this blue, and I also think white looks beautiful against it. So if you go with Swistle blue you can get new desks for the computers and paint the consignment desks a coordinating brown – or even white and they will look great. And the color of those new computer desks is not limited by your wall color choice.
Seriously. I love this stuff. Wish I could come just do it for you!
Bethtastic- OH I wish it TOO!
Swistle blue! Great idea! And then you can decorate with white accents. I love blue and white.
Our study is a robin’s egg blue, just a bit darker than Swistle blue. It’s been that color for about five years and I’m still pleased with it.
Just curious, why do you have the boys divided up a big with a little? Does it reducing fighting?
aughhghghg. I hear you! We have a house improvement list that involves painting. I DESPISE painting. Not so much the actual painting, but the cleaning up of the paint and the prep work.
Sounds interesting though! Can you do before and after pics?
StephLove- Yes: unfortunately Rob and William don’t get along well. It would make more sense to do a room of big boys and a room of little boys, but dividing it up reduces the relentless, relentless fighting.
This sounds like an LSAT problem…Bobby must sit next to Judy but Judy can’t sit next to Darren…I need chocolate to contemplate it.
Are you putting in new curtains or bedding? It is much easier to match paint to curtains than it is to find new curtains to match your paint.
I like neutral colors on walls (warm whites, gray-beiges) because I like to switch things up all the time, and its much easier to put up new curtains than repaint a wall every time I see something new I like.
Before and after pictures?
I know it’s overwhelming but I also love these kind of projects!! Green is supposedly calming as a wall color. :)
I love that Swistle Blue is now a color.
I HATE HATE HATE painting. One of my 2011 projects is to paint our (teeny tiny) bathroom and the very THOUGHT of it FILLS ME WITH DREAD even though it will take, like, AN HOUR.
Oh, fun! You must document every step of the process – or start a new blog ‘Swistle DIY’. Once you get going on the painting, you’ll probably get pretty quick at it (says the woman who just paid people to paint several rooms in her house because she so despises painting).
I love this stuff too!!! Especially choosing paint colors and other decorations. Sometimes, it can feel more difficult to try to come up with a paint color that works with the existing (often mismatched in my case) furniture, but I find that it also makes the process more focused. Instead of starting off with ALL the possible colors in the WORLD, you start off smaller with what goes with blank and blank.
If you can’t decide and Paul doesn’t care, can we have a vote on paint colors?? Oh and before and after pictures!! Haha, I’m getting too excited about this.
Good luck with everything!! And don’t forget, one thing at a time
I like how these kinds of projects FEEL when they are done, but I too get overwhelmed thinking about starting. I think the key is to build up momentum, and then once you have momentum, USE IT. Once I’m “on a roll”, I can get SO MUCH DONE.
Remember to take some before pictures! Good luck!
I love color on my walls, so I think you should choose a color palette. Like, do colors from the Fiestaware dishes. Peacock blue for the office, purple for Elizabeth, yellow or green for the boys… a light brown/gray color is great too. Our kitchen is “worn glove” and ALL OTHER COLORS look great next to it.
I hate painting too. I LOVE the IDEA of painting, but I hate the actual painting. I think Swistle Blue would be a great color for an office.
DH and I are pondering the same sort of situation. Just the THOUGHT of painting and rearranging rooms has put me back into my “it’s all GOOD” procrastination shell. Ugh.
Oh, the full house rearrange is coming for us too. Bud is moving to the bedroom upstairs (this has been in the works since before Liv, so uh….it is time.) The girls are moving in to the smaller bedroom that Hub and I currently have and we are taking the big room back.
Hub just finished painting my office, and I gave him my old blackberry to take to Home Depot to match the paint. It is a dark red, and I love it. Looks great with my mahogany desk, against my black monitors and the silver of my phone/laptop etc. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.
I feel like the office is a good place to experiment with color, since it isn’t like an entertaining room or anything. You could do anything with it really.
I am in the camp of SHOW US PICTURES as well!
The Martha Stewart paint chips at home depot have little symbols on them indicating colors that coordinate with each other. Pick one color you like and follow that symbol to narrow down your selection. Plus, you can get the color swatch matched and buy the cheaper Behr paint instead of the MS paint.
My husband and I just painted our bedroom “Spring Melt”, a lovely blueish/greenish/grayish color.
I’m painting now, too, and I hate it. For color: I’m in a light gray type of paint love right now. I’ve got several swatches and a few sections of different shades of gray on my wall right now…trying to make a decision. I’ve been spending a lot of time on http://www.younghouselove.com lately looking at house project ideas. I love it –you should check it out if you are in search of inspiration.
Laura
You know, I’m as thrifty as the next person, but if I were you I’d look around for professional painters. We had our kitchen redone and hired painters and WOW–they got it taped and painted in an amazing amount of time. AND they did a better job than I would have done in the first place. It wasn’t that expensive, either, when you figure what the paint would have cost on its own.
All I’m saying is that if that’s the part you’re dreading, it might be worth hiring it out.
YES, that would make me fret. I’m an easily overwhelmed person, so I break the project into five minute increments (that’s how easily I overwhelm–anything more than that and freak out). I’ve never been able to do this with painting, though. Since your dad is so great with the building of extra rooms, perhaps he would also like to paint? (PS can we trade dads? All mine does is read the newspaper and occupy the bathroom for mysteriously long periods of time)
Sarah- OMG I COULD DO THAT. Do you think they’d be willing to do one room at a time, or I wonder if that would add $1M to the cost?
The painters would probably be willing to do one room at a time. You can probably negotiate with them to give you a total job bid instead of an hourly bid, which would save some money. Good luck!
The first color that comes to mind is Oyster bay by Sherwin Williams — it’s what we have in our office and guest room, and it looks great will all kinds of woods, and awesome with both black and white up against it (frames, lamps, trim, etc).
I wish I could come help. I LOVE a home project!
I meant to add that it is a blue, in what I believe is the Swistle Family of Blues.
It does sound like a lot of work, but I bet you feel like you have a brand new house after it’s all done. That’s something fun to look forward to.
I really want you to paint your office light grey, but that is mostly based on the computer desks.
we have used professional painters three times, and each time I have gotten bids by room, not by hour. Its totally worth it, especially for larger jobs. They tape off, put tarps over everything, and do a much cleaner, neater job. They are usually very quick, too. I had our living room/dining room, kitchen, playroom and master bedroom done a few years ago, and it took them only two days.
I have no advice, just sympathy. We are in the process of moving only 2 bedrooms – one of which isn’t currently occupied! – but we’ve managed to spread the clutter from those rooms into every single other room in the house. I’m not having fun.
Good luck. I don’t envy you. Hubby & I are not planning any moving/remodeling projects until our almost 8 month old is ready to move out of our room (when she is ready to move out of her crib as we aren’t moving that sucker). Then who knows what we’ll do. I don’t look forward to doing any painting because we never have more fights than when we are painting.
Oh man, not to be a downer & add to your fretting, but we did something very similar in March of 2010 and it was TERRIBLE. I am shuddering at the memories!
I mean, the results in the end were fantastic & we’re really glad we did it, but during the process I realized that moving in-house is actually WORSE than actually moving. Namely because when you move OUT and then into a new place, the new place is empty. When you move in-house, NOT A SINGLE ROOM IS EMPTY. So you have stuff to move into one room, but that room isn’t empty yet because you need to move that stuff to another room that’s not empty yet. And on and on in a big circle of not-emptiness.
So we ended up using our living & dining rooms as staging areas and now you have NO ROOM IN THE HOUSE EXCEPT THE BATHROOM that’s normal. Excuse me, was I shouting? Clearly I have some post-traumatic stress.
One thing we did right was to move all the beds first. Of course, that sometimes meant the dressers were in the kitchen, but at least when we were totally exhausted at the end of the first day (it took us 3 days to get all the stuff moved & *we didn’t paint*) everyone has a place to sleep – this is KEY!
Actually, even better, we sent the kids to spend a couple of nights with my parents, but at least we had a place to sleep amongst the chaos. My kids are little (barely 3 & 4.5 at the time) so having them underfoot would have been exponentially more difficult (plus, I could throw away/donate stuff/toys while they were gone & they never noticed).
One thing we did *wrong* is not anticipating that moving almost every room in the house around meant we maybe needed some, you know, BOXES. Or at least “moving receptacles.” I ended up using a bunch of spare laundry baskets & crates & random boxes, but it’s worth considering in advance what you’re going to put the stuff in that you move up & down the stairs (or even just from room to room).
All that said, we are really happy with the results & we got rid of a TON of stuff in the process (just like you do when you actually move), so it’s been great all around (now that I’ve recovered & can lift my arms over my head).
I second the recommendation for hiring painters. John and I approach projects like that very differently, so for the sake of Not Getting Divorced, it is best that we hire professionals. When we moved into our house, we managed to convince our painter to give us the multi room price and then do the rooms a little staggered in time as long as we committed to do them all with him- might be worth a shot.
We are usually do-it-yourself painters because come on, it’s PAINTING not construction. We should be able to do SOMETHING ourselves, we figure. However, when our huge living room needed to be painted, we figured it would take us weeks (we had to cover a dark maroon and did I mention the room is huge?) and we wouldn’t be able to use the main part of our house for the whole time. So we hired a friend of a friend who had her own painting business. We paid her $15/hr plus supplies and it was done in 3 days. TOTALLY WORTH IT.
I don’t have any recommendations on paint color, just sympathy. When I got pregnant with my second we got rid of our dinning room (which we never used as our kitchen is large and contains our big table), moved our office to the old dinning room, painted the office, and made it the baby’s room. In the process we had to figure out storage and all of that rot. What a pain. Not planning on moving intra-house again until my kids go to college. Ugh.
I have a quick suggestion: Glidden Mid-Day Mocha. It is a nice neutral color, but not in a boring way. It is a very pale brown, I guess, but does not tend toward the purplish like so many tans do. We painted our new old living room this color, and I’m sitting here right now looking at the walls, which are very satisfyingly a definite actual color, but not anything brash. We have total hand-me-down furniture, nothing matches – pine floor, oak trim, maple piano, IKEA shelves – but the wall color looks nice with all of it.
There, that wasn’t quick at all.
I have to paint 8 other rooms, while contending with aforementioned mismatch decor and a husband who dislikes EVERY COLOR IN THE BOOK. And I am so very tired of off-white. So keep us posted on what you choose.
We did the big house rearrange this summer. It seemed so impossible at first, but it’s done and we loooove it.
I strongly recommend picking curtains/area rugs/bedding, some jumping off point and then pulling the wall color from there, as opposed to picking a lovely paint color and then being unable to find above mentioned things to coordinate well with it, as I have done on SEVERAL occasions in the past. Also, I think you should plan (for the future) to fill the office with built-in desk units. They don’t have to be fancy or expensive, you could get nice cabinets at IKEA or any HomeImpr. place, but it will make for a much more cohesive feel & look, whereas 4 seperate desks, even if they were all identical, could look choppy. Chances are this would also allow you to build some tall storage unit type cabinets into the design, which I imagine you could use for something!
If you are going to hire a professional painter, I would suggest moving all of your stuff before the painting. After everything is in its new rooms, have the painters come and paint all of the rooms at once. They will cover your furniture and/or move it away from the wall so they can paint. If you paint first, then you have to worry about messing up the walls when you move your furniture.
On reading back, all these hire-it-out responses made me sad for you because it makes it seem SO AWFUL so I wanted to help a little =)
When we moved in November I (yes, just I, with a bit of help from my sister) painted our entire house. Primered and painted three bedrooms, the kitchen, dining room, utility room, and two baths in a span of one week. Granted there was no furniture yet (But I also didn’t have electricity yet so that kind of evened it out) but it was done. I was exhausted and runing on fumes and covered in paint everyday for 7 days. But it got done!
It’s one of those things where when you get started you are okay with it, it’s just the getting started part. So you can do it! And you’ll be so much more happier when you are done!
(Of course if you can hire it out I recommend it-but if you are like me and alittle on the poor side then just remember…you can do it!)
Now paint on kimosabi!!
Your background color! Or a more slate-y version of your background color. Peaceful.
I am just chiming in in favor of hiring out the painting. Get a few estimates. It’s worth every penny.
I vote for getting a painter. We did it and not only did the painting get done and look terrific but it was done on a much better schedule than if we had tried to do it.
Post pictures so we can see what you’re working with!
It is great to hire painters if you can, but it IS an added expense on a tight budget. Plus, your oldest is almost 12 right? That’s a fine age to be working on a project like this – for both your older boys. They can probably do most of it with a little direction and help setting up & cleaning up.
Are Rob/Edward feeling left out, or thankful not to be involved? ;-)
I mean, come on – you’re moving 4 rooms, why not make it 5?
I kid, I kid.
So exciting! Post pics with paint possibilities please! We are plotting (okay, I’M plotting) a major repainting of our ground floor. I need ideas!
Go Swistle Blue!
Sounds like a nightmare, but you will be so happy you did it. We went through moving/painting hell last summer, and it’s completely worth it now.
I too hope you’ll post lots of before and after photos. This all sounds complicated but fun to me, though it’s probably because I’m not the one moving the furniture.
Benjamin Moore’s Waynesborough Taupe. I just painted my office this color and love it and so does everyone who sees it. It’s sometimes brown sometimes grey. It’s a neutral but it’s still rich and beautiful.
1) Pine is really REALLY soft. So only use it if you don’t mind serious dings in it.
2) We’re about to empty Chicken’s room, repaint, and put in new furniture. Just this one task is making me feel like calling in sick. Or pregnant. I feel for you. GAH!
3) When we painted our house 2ish years ago, we found Lowes paint went much further than Home Depot paint. Like, MUCH MUCH further. And we were only painting over generic contractors new home white paint, not deep colors.
my head hurts FOR you. GAH. i have no help, just sympathy. slash pity. and suggestions of more 2lb boxes of See’s.