My House Sends Me Fortunes! #DIY #rehab

Our lovely bedroom?!

Seriously.  Easter Sunday/ my birthday this year, we came back from dinner with the relatives to find a flood in the bedroom.   Our carpet was soaked through the hard wood floors to the basement and beyond.   One of the last California King waterbeds in existence had irreparably exploded.   There, on the sodden carpet, a little slip of white paper was lying in a puddle.   I turned it over and it read...  "It's time to try something new."   

The last time we did a major sprucing up on the living room/dining room, we moved the entertainment center out from the wall so we could paint and found another fortune.   It said "Redecorating is in your future".   Never say the universe doesn't have a sense of humor!   We do keep a cup of cookie fortunes on the kitchen sill, but how these eerily appropriate little missives find their way onto our floors at just the right moment is one of life's great mysteries.

They say the pen is mightier than the sword.   I say the pencil is mightier than the bed.   Yes, our beloved waterbed was slayed by a PENCIL!!!!    We're not placing blame, but the kids liked to climb in the warm, so called "wumpy bed" and do homework and art works.   One fateful day at the end of March, a pencil ended up wedged down the side and forgotten, point up.   It punctured a sizable hole and worked it's way all the way in to the mattress with disastrous results.




After we dismantled the bed and pulled up all the carpet, we decided we might as well rehab the whole room, including busting out the plaster and lathe and insulating the drafty outer wall, new flooring, electrical wiring to a switch vs. pull chain, and maybe even a pocket door!   In your face, fortune.   I'll show YOU "try something new."

When we bought our home, I was very pregnant with our soon to be 10 year old, so we repainted a bit with eco friendly, no VOC paint, but kept the DIY to a minimum.   Since then we've sanded wood floors, and replaced the roof, siding, windows, hot water heater, 4 ceilings and more on our 100+ year old home.   But, we'd never done anything with our bedroom.   There was a giant waterbed taking up 9/10 of the room, that could not be easily moved.

So, apologies for being a bit behind over here!   The past 17 days, we've been knee deep in a DIY gut rehab and sleeping on a fold out futon in the living room.   It's a slow processes as the weeks also included a network shoot in South Carolina, interviews with Yo Yo Ma and 3 of the creative masterminds behind Chicago Children's Theatre's The Elephant and the Whale (Frank Maugeri, Leslie Buxbaum Danzig and David Catlan) and numerous concerts and plays to review.

We're half way done dry walling and we've still got the floor to buy and install, paint to pick and a new bed to buy.   If anyone wants to talk mattresses, bedroom furniture, paint, flooring or ceiling fans to review, or has suggestions on where to buy, we're in the market for... well everything bedroom.    

Stay tuned.   We'll be updating on our insanity inducing DIY project.   I must say, though, we all got in on the action and the kids had a blast with the demolition.   There is something primally cathartic about smashing down walls with a sledge hammer!! 



We'll also be playing catch up and posting lots of fabulous giveaways and reviews.   So, as always, check back with ChiIL Mama like we vote in Chi, IL... early and often.




"...I want to be your sledgehammer

Why don't you call my name

You'd better call the sledgehammer3

Put your mind at rest

I'm going to be-the sledgehammer

This can be my testimony

I'm your sledgehammer

Let there be no doubt about it

Sledge sledge sledgehammer."    Peter Gabriel