DeCRAPification

With our master bathroom reno on hold for now...(More freakin shopping for granite counter tops)...We decided instead to replace the 20+ year old carpeting in the 2 guest bedrooms areas. 

The whole house actually needs new carpeting but we need to do this in small bites rather than go whole hog.  I can't begin to imagine how it would work to replace the whole house all at once.

I personally would love to go with hardwoods.  Yes, they're more expensive but once it's done, it's done.  SM thinks I'm nuts though and points to our entryway as visual proof that hardwood floors are NOT the way to go with 3 dogs running through the house.  As usual, he's right.

Technically one room is already a guest bedroom.  A nicely decorated, simple room.  Easy enough to deal with.  It's already painted and will just need the furniture moved out and the old carpeting pulled up prior to the new install. 

The other bedroom is (you guessed it) a room full of crap.  Every home has one doesn't it?  It might be in the basement or the garage but there's always a crap room. 

In our case this room is full of SM's business crap.  Office crap like spare computers, boxes of paperwork, files, binders, books, file cabinets, printers...on and on it goes.  Years ago, SM used to have a small business with an office space and employees.  Then he downsized and closed the office and went to work for someone else.  So he put all of his business crap in a storage facility and paid the monthly rent.  One day, I pointed out to him that it was silly to be paying rent to store all of his business crap when we had a perfectly good empty room that he could use here at the house. 

So we closed the rental space and shoved all his crap in the spare room and there it's been ever since.  That was 5 years ago.  Nothing has been removed, just shifted, and even a few things added to the existing crap.

So with the need for new carpeting, the time has come to deCRAPify the crap room. 
We spent most of this past Saturday hauling the crap to other parts of the house to empty the room.  A blank canvas if you will.  This room has never had the walls or ceiling painted since we've lived here.  We knew it was a teenage girls room prior to us moving in, hence the intense blue walls you see in the picture below.

I told SM that since this was his room, he got to pick the color.  He picked a lighter, blueish gray. 

(*I personally think that SM should move his actual office area into this room.  It's a bit quieter than the room he's in now which is right off the front entry.  Besides, with the vaulted ceiling and great big window I think it makes the room feel larger even though the square footage is the same.  SM's not sure.  He said he'll think about it.)

After moving everything out we pulled the carpet and pad and applied a fresh coat of paint to the ceiling and the walls.  Today, I hope to apply a fresh coat of wood stain on the windows, doors and baseboard trim.

And then we wait for the carpeting install and a decision from SM as to either move his office in here or leave it in the room he's in right now. 

And then comes the truly dreadful part of this process.  Sifting through the mountain of crap to see what stays, what gets donated and what gets tossed.  Or burned.  I hope to motivate SM into embracing the "deCRAPification" process by getting some nice IKEA shelving to better help organize the crap that he decides needs to stay.

Wish us luck.  This could take all Summer.