The Next 6 Weeks

So, the holidays are over and decorations are put away, I'm mostly over the flu, and we're going to be having our first house guests in our new house at the end of February. What does this all mean?

To do list time!

We have got a whole heck of a lot that we want to get done in the next six weeks, especially after slacking off a bit on the home renovations the last few months of 2012. And because we had to go down the rabbit's hole with our never ending downstairs bathroom renovation, we're a lot further behind than we wanted to be in other areas of our house. So here's what we're hoping to tackle in the very near future, by room.

Guest bedroom:

• move unpacked boxes lining the wall to storage
• finish priming and painting closet and room doors white
• fix headboard and mount it to the wall (the headboard I made in the above picture is just propped against the wall, and the weight of it has made some of my wood puttied joints crack. I'm going to need to do some repair work on it and mount it properly so it doesn't happen again)
• hang curtains
• order supplies, make wall art and hang it
• paint three bookshelves and bedside apothecary table white
• assemble floor lamp
• get chair covers, arrange furniture
• wash bedding, make bed

To-Scale Room Planning: Guest Bedroom

Last week, I shared how I've been planning out what we want to do with the color schemes for the different rooms in our new house. Now, I'm going to take the planning a step further!

I've a very visual person. So I like to see how things are going to fit into a room before I actually implement it. Even when I was a kid, when planning on how to rearrange my bedroom, I would measure my furniture and cut out everything to scale on construction paper, so I could arrange it all on a piece of graph paper. Yep, I was a planning dork even as a child!

These days though, I do this type of thing digitally.

In Adobe Illustrator (although this would also work in Microsoft Word or Publisher) I will set up a document that is the same size as my room dimensions. One inch = one foot. Then I can measure my existing furniture (or use measurements for new furniture I'm dreaming about online) and make to-scale shapes that represent the furniture I want to include in the room. From there it's easy to move things around with my mouse and see where they will all fit. Much easier than pushing heavy furniture back and forth across a room, and also, it's something I can do before we move into our house!

Here is an example of what I've mocked up for our guest bedroom, with the room dimensions and all of the furniture to scale:

Once I've got the room laid out the way I like it, it's fun to take it even another step further! I can mock up the walls of the room using elements from my color scheme board. I don't have any of the great room design programs they use on HGTV, but I can still work with basic shapes and photos I've found online in Illustrator to get a decent mock up representation.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I will do more of a 3D mock up, showing three walls of a room at once. But doing 2D versions, showing one wall at a time is much easier, so that's what I've been doing lately.

Here is what I have mocked up so far for what I'm thinking the room is going to look like. Imagine you're standing in the doorway, looking into the room from the hall.

There's the bed, storage bench at the end of the bed, bedside table, floor lamp, the window...it's all there in 2D and color! I even added real lamps and pillows I found online. It makes room planning so much easier for me, to do these types of mock ups. Paint chips, photos of furniture and fabric scraps are nowhere near as useful, especially for how visual of a person I am. :)

Next, imagine you turn to your left 90 degrees, to look at the next wall.

There's the two chairs for our guests to use if they like, the bookshelf, and the door to the closet. Like I said last week, I'm going for a posh beach house feel for this room, hence the beach canvas prints. Eventually I'd like to add white beadboard wainscoting too further enhance the beach house feel.

Now, turning another 90 degrees to your left, we have the wall that is along the hallway, and the door to the hall. Two more bookshelves, and another floor lamp, and room for the closet door to open on the right complete this room's mock up, since I don't currently have anything on the last wall, to the side of the bed.

So now that I have a plan for how my furniture is going to be arranged, what colors I'm going to use in the room, and what types of accessories I'm thinking about, I can put together a list. And you better believe I love lists, even more than making digital layouts!

But this list is important. Working with my mock ups, I can now write up a list of all of the things that need to be done in the room, assign estimated costs to them, and then prioritize them on what order I'm going to implement them. This is going to be a big help when it comes down to our budget, since I won't be able to just snap my fingers and have a magically complete room. No, there's going to be some saving up, some painting and DIY'ing, and slowly, things will come together. But it's going to be even easier now that I've got my plans all mocked up and planned out!

Here's my current list for this room, in case anyone is curious. These are all in prioritized order, and not counting the popcorn ceiling scraping (that's under an overall house budget on a different list), the estimated total for this room is $622.87. That's because a lot of the furniture is stuff we already have, just being updated in one way or another. The main costs are new lighting and bedding (Did you see that HEATHER! We're getting new guest bedroom bedding just for you!!!).

Get popcorn ceilings scraped
Prep all woodwork
Prime walls and all woodwork
Paint ceiling white
Paint walls storm cloud grey
Paint woodwork and doors white
Make wood headboard and add moulding
Paint headboard
Paint apothecary table
Buy 2 floor lamps
Buy 1 table lamp
Buy sunburst mirror (or make?)
Buy teal sheets
Buy white comforter
Make/find white curtains
Update/find brushed nickel curtain rod
White chair slipcovers
Paint 3 bookshelves
Make wood end of bed bench
Paint wood bench
Make or buy 5 throw pillows
Canvas wrap art
Make/find frames for DIY shell art

So, that's one room down! Assuming I don't change my mind or anything (totally could happen!). I've also added an "Actual Cost" column next to my "Estimated Cost" column on my list, which will be interesting to fill in. Hopefully everything will come in under budget, or at budget. And this is probably going to be one of the cheapest/easiest/shortest to-do list rooms in our house.

Do you have any efficient ways you like to plan out how you're going to re-arrange your furniture, or add new decor to rooms in your house?