Wow. Is it Friday yet??

It’s been a wildly productive week for me here…but unfortunately not on NOH, as you’ve probably noticed. It wasn’t that I wasn’t thinking of stuff to write…I just really didn’t have the time.

We’re in the middle of two projects here. One involves my internet marketing company because I’m in the middle of launching a new fairly involved information product to the world.

And the other project is our living room…which is nearly as dramatic as the first project.

But I guess I should first mention why we’ve decided to go into all this in the living room right now. For starters, we were contacted by IKEA Family Live which is a home magazine inspired by people using IKEA products. I would dare to guess that about 70% of the furniture in our home is IKEA, including our kitchen and bathrooms. And I would be lying if I said the prospect of having a photo crew here in 3 weeks to shoot the house doesn’t totally freak me out. But we are exremely flattered that we’re being considered and even if I will be a complete nut until we find out and even more so if we are selected, it would just be a really cool opportunity!

But in addition to that potential deadline, Stefan’s parents are coming this weekend. And if they want to visit their granddaughter, we’ve decided they must be put to work. No not really but they are really handy and seem to like having something to do while they’re with us. And we absolutely will not refuse free labor.

Stefan’s dad totally rocked our mudroom door last time they were here and got it all insulated for the winter…and managed to make it close as well without us having to totally reconstruct the door or call out the troops. We were apparently a little absent minded when we built our aquaponics bed next to it and the door has been ajar by about 6 inches for the last few months. Not a problem during the summer but with colder weather setting it, it was getting really drafty in there!

Anywho, in addition to all this, the living room has been in a state that Stefan considers unlivable for the last two years. My mom and I suddenly decided to redecorate one afternoon shortly Mackenzie was born and he walked in on the unfinished product. I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me for that. Who knew that a guy would care so much about home decor?

Over the last 2 years, we have talked many times about redoing the room. We’ve got a few elements in the room that were giving us trouble, though. For one, we have a HUGE DVD collection. That should maybe even read addiction. It’s gotten a little better lately but it’s still got to be somewhere around 800 DVD’s and it’s growing all the time. So obviously we needed a place to store all of those.

And now we’ve decided it is finally time to retire our big old TV and join the flat-screen revolution. We actually have had a flat-screen for a few years which was bought to go in our guest house. And then we realized we don’t have that many guests so we decided to put it in our bedroom. And then we noticed that we never really use it in there either (except right after Mack was born). So now we’re finally going to bring it into daily use as it deserves to be used.

So here’s what the living room currently looks like:

So this is the view you have when you stand at the living room door. What Stefan really hates about the room is the fact that you have to walk all the way to the end of the couch to get into the room. And there’s a lot of bare wall space behind the couch which I keep saying could be filled with photos, but he’s just not into the arrangement.

I don’t find it so bad (it’s definitely not perfect) and I like the fact that the couch is not under the windows on the outside walls. Because they get cold in the winter. But we also have a new powerhouse heater in here and it’s never cold in the room so it could work. Plus if we insulate the windows (and eventually get the second set of inner windows like we want to do), it will make even less difference.

And looking at the photo, I have to say it looks pretty “lieblos” (without love) as the German’s would say. There used to be junk in most of the cubbies of the TV stand, but a lot of the stuff we don’t need anymore. Hence the stand is outta here. And the shelf in the corner was our DVD shelf. We actually had two but with the rearranging of the furniture the second one didn’t really fit anymore so we had the DVD’s we liked in here and the others were boxed up. But that was also impractical. So now all the DVD’s are in 5 monster folders and we’ll just flip through the disks to find something to watch. Not as impressive to look at but certainly a major space saver. And it’s preventing us from building a huge, intricate drawer system along the wall which was an option we discussed (and really don’t have the time to build anyway). But alphabetizing the DVD’s, sticking them folders and packing the cases took me something like 8 mind-numbing hours over a couple of days. You cannot imagine how happy it makes me that that part of the project is done.

That yellow leather chair is also history. It would have gotten tossed with the leather sofa and love seat years ago…but Ayla convinced us that she needed it. But since she never lays on it anymore and has her own blankie on the sofa so she can lay with her daddy, I guess that will just have to do. She generally prefers the floor anyway since it’s much cooler.

So that’s what is going out…and here is what is coming in:

The bottom is open because we want to put the amp & media center PC on sliders which will then be covered with the same drawer fronts as above…and we haven’t built the sliders yet. But now we have a good reason to. The iron will stay in the bedroom along with the cat…who may or may not decide to visit us in the living room to assess the new layout. It all depends how deeply Ayla is sleeping. 😉

The surround sound system will also be setup in the living room and the big stand up speakers we have in the living room will go elsewhere…probably towards the kitchen but they don’t have a specific new home just yet.We’re planning to hook them up to Stefan’s turntables whenever he decides where he wants them so he can start using them again.

So the plan is to move the old stuff out tonight once Stefan gets home from work (and his parents arrive). And then tomorrow we will beg Kurt (Stefan’s dad) to start putting the Gap Seal into the cracks of our floorboards. We hope that this will not only cut down on the dust coming up from under our floors (we have sand insulation under our floors on the main level) and also keep the room a lot warmer during the winter. We have a small area rug in here and that already made a massive improvement. So I’ll let you know how that works and more about the product as we get it installed.

Saturday will be the final switchero which means I will hopefully have some new living room photos to share on Monday! And a report of how much happier we are in the room. Once that’s all finished up, we can finally do some much needed decorating and start hanging photos. Selecting the photos to hang will be difficult, though!

By the way, if you live in the Main Kinzig Kreis area and would like the shelf or the TV stand, let me know. I’m going to put it on Freecycle soon. And the TV will also be sold off if anyone wants it. It still works great but we’re just not going to have a place to put it anymore.