Fixing Up Our Fixer Upper

13 years after buying our fixer-upper, we are finally fixing it up! In order to get beautiful rooms like this, we had to change our lifestyle a bit.

First, we had to fill the other rooms in our house with stuff from the room being fixed up. The first room was the bathroom. I found myself fishing around in a basket in the kitchen every night for my toothbrush and floss. When we worked on the master bedroom, my underwear ended up in a suitcase in the kitchen. We've decided that "remodeled" should be looked upon as a character building time. Arnie has learned more about bathrooms than he ever wanted to know. His time and energy was worthwhile, I tell you. The bathroom is beautiful. No more powder blue fixtures. Now, everything is modern. And looks fantastic. Arnie is a talented character.

Next, we had to put the room back together. This is the only real work the kids and I did in the bathroom fix was holding panels for gluing and wood during sawing. We did shop for new towels and the shower curtain. We are excellent decorators. A new character trait for both kids. Robby chose neutral colors and Katie chose squares for our shower curtain.

We did get our chance to work in the bedroom, though. Robby, Katie and I prepared the room and painted a lot of the walls. They each got to use the electric screwdriver which was very exciting. Very character building. Then, I put each of them in a closet to paint. Since we rarely get our closet doors closed, we thought paint would make our room look neater. Hopefully if you come over, we will get the doors closed so that it looks like we live well, but I doubt it. Arnie and I had to touch up the closets after the kids went to bed. My new argument for updating the house is that the kids need to practice their painting skills. We'll see if it works. Arnie is pretty burned out on all this updating. It certainly pays off in beautiful rooms, but leaves him exhausted and not very nutritionally satisfied!