In other news, this little home is outta control. Because of aforementioned promises, we really have been taking things one step at a time. And as a result, things are moving slower than we’d normally allow. For the last few weeks, our skinny hallway is barely walkable (Jack’s little heart stresses at the thought of running past all the frames, mirrors and bike wheels) and our kitchen counter tops have become the landing zone for pretty much everything.

But this is all at the cost of a custom made desk for the studio. And it’ll be worth it.

We were inspired by The Brick House and Morgan’s fauxdenza. It’s sleek, clean, and most importantly – only 13″ deep. See hers, exhibit A:

I already have my painting table, so we simply needed another thin desktop for me to use as a mini task station, a landing zone for the laptop and a zone that’s functional without taking up space.

Like any unassuming couple, we took off for Ikea, and came home with lots of boxes. Like Morgan, we used Akurum cabinets with Applad doors (meant to be used as upper kitchen shelving, hence the shallow depth). Unlike her, we chose a different configuration that allowed us to have a pull out drawer.

We built and built.

Then we followed the Ikea instructions and got to hanging. While we would have loved a long wall of nothing but storage, we also liked the idea of fitting a few stools underneath. Once they were up on the wall, we staged our desk using these stools we got from Overstock. The camera lens does add distortion, but there’s no denying how small this room is:

We were on the right track, so the next step was finding a piece of wood that was 8′ long x 13″ deep. While any number of bloggie fauxdenza posts may lead you to think this is a common, easy to find thing – it’s not. We called several local lumber yards and struck out each time, learning that the standard depth is less than 12.” After a whirlwind of phone calls, we found one 16″d lone piece of white oak at Wood World (snicker), paid a pretty penny for it (more than we would’ve liked, although, it is gorgeous) and very, very carefully made our cuts, sanded it down and got to conditioning, staining and polying. Phew.

As for the whole rundown on our steps, it’s simple: we followed the can’s instructions. 1 coat of wood conditioner, 2 coats of stain (we used Minwax Jacobean, which as far as we’re concerned, kicks Dark Walnut’s ass) and 3 coats of Minwax Polycrylic with a light sanding between each layer. (This is the same method we used for the wood panels on our media wall.)

And now? Here’s the state of things:

Perhaps the hardest part of this process is the waiting. There’s a good 24 hour window between staining and polying, and then there’s a half a day wait before handling. (If you’re ever unsure on dry times, read the can!) And when you’re moving around a tiny, overcrowded room and the light fixture comes crashing down (yes, this actually happened; no, no one was hurt), there’s even more time spent cleaning up glass then time spent adhering completed wood to Ikea cabinets.

Oh, boy.

Before this week is over, we will have a finished desk! And we’ll show and tell. And then, wouldn’t you know, it’s on to the upper shelving. A whole wall of ‘em. (Insert evil laugh here.)

So, hey, what’s up with you?

First photo via The Brick House. See more of our studio ideas on our Pinterest board, right here.

We started the weekend with a ridiculous amount of Ikea boxes stacked in the studio. It was pretty comical for a while, blowing through box after box and hacking apart the pieces so they fit us, rather than the intentional mold. By mid-afternoon Sunday, we became a bit delirious (rightfully so!) and cracked had-to-be-there jokes. As we hauled 50 pounds of cardboard boxes to the recycling bin, I would say, hey, man, what’d ya get at Ikea?, and Scott would reply, all the things!

Eh, you had to be there.

We made mind-boggling progress, even when we hit a few road blocks along the way. And just this morning, I purchased three yards of champagne colored Oh Joy! wallpaper:

Did you know you could buy by the yard? Only a few select patterns, but it’ll be perfect for our application, as a whole roll (although awesome!) would have been unnecessary. Any guesses on where it’ll go?

How was your weekend?

1. I love our office; it’s blue, and it’s pretty.
2. I always sort of assumed it was Scott’s space. Yes, I work from home more than half of the week, but I have my painting table, you see. I have my laptop and the kitchen counter, and everything’s been working just fine, yessum.
3. My studio? This has been our ongoing inside joke for the last year – it wasn’t meant to be real. Not yet. Every day, I dramatically discuss my plans for my studio. My future studio in our someday home. The one with more space.
4. But most importantly, he told me (in not so many words, of course) what I never had the courage to say out loud. Operation Pet Shop has outgrown it’s headquarters in the kitchen nook. It is real. It’s my real, legitimate job, and it’s working out. (Amazingly so. Thank you.) Moving into a space of my own makes it that much more real. And I got really excited (and scared!) about that.

Now, why he acted so no big deal about it was beyond me, especially when last week, he took his bikes off the ceiling and relegated them (with chains bigger than my head) to the basement. Yes, points 1 through 4 whizzed through my brain on repeat for the last several weeks, but my initial response to his dinner chatter was, uh, what about your bikes?!

Yet without thinking twice on his part, they were gone. And point 4 played over again (and again) in my head. To Scott, there’s no question that I’ve graduated to the office. He trusts me and this unconventional path I’ve chosen. He’s the cheese to my macaroni. Which is why a few short hours after those bikes came down, the office looked like this:

Over the course of that same week, we primed the blue (Distance by Behr), the trim and the doors. We painted the ceiling bright white, and we contemplated thirty shades of pink.

Now, in point 3 of my dream studio, the walls are pink. Did I not say that before? I also have a shaggy rug for my toes, large, expansive spaces for stuff, and ridiculous amounts of framed artwork. While I may need to reconsider my choices on rug and forgive the space shortcomings (this room is a pint-sized 8′x10′), the pink was a must.

First, a few close calls: Belle of the Ball by Behr (too fleshy), Reverie Pink by Behr (pretty in tone, but too much saturation for my taste), Pink Sea Salt by Martha Stewart (too peachy-cream), and the first runner up, Naiveté by Olympic. However, saying naiveté made me cringe, and so while it could have been the one, we tossed it.

The winner? Diana by Olympic. Can you see it? Soft and clean, it’s just the right touch of pinky-lilac for the future home of my inspirado. Which, ironically, is totally the opposite of her dubbed nickname, Dirty D. (You might remember it from Renee’s bedroom redo of yore, too.) Only the top half is finished in this photo, with more coats to come on the see-through bottom:

But as Scott boldly announced on Monday, we will not be a slave to this room. After a day of misfortune – between a failed crown molding install, a lack of base paint for more Dirty D and more arguments than I’d like to publicly admit – we’re taking this one step at a time. Sure, I’m writing this update from the kitchen counter, and yup, I’ll be painting your kiddos from the same table I’ve been doing so for the last year for a few more weeks, and that’s okay. I’m coolio with this table, and until completion, we’re having fun dreaming and sketching up the end result.

As for what’s on the to-do, here goes:

• Prime the walls, trim and doors
• Paint the walls, trim and doors (halfway completed)
• Install crown molding and chair rail
• Paint the painting table for the new room (yes, really)
• Sell and/or donate the unnecessary furniture (halfway completed)
• Design, build and install a storage wall (similar to our media wall)
• Decide on artwork for the room
• Clean, paint and prep thrifty frames
• Frame, mat and hang inspirational artwork (using this technique)
• Decide on lighting
• Decide on textiles: rug, curtains and upholstery for seating
• Buy the decided upon things. Budget. Install them.
• Re-stock painting, shipping and packaging supplies
• Pull it together like we own it
• Return to normalcy (we can only hope)

The first item had been checked off, but trust that we’ve dabbled (and have been continually dabbling) in the first half of the list for the last several days. In this between time, our hallway has been, um, fun to live with.

We’ll be chipping away one day at a time, and while we plan to take off some of our self-imposed pressure, we also hope to have a functional space by February. (Famous last words?) Regardless, I’ve slowly begun to realize that Scott was right – even in all his casual hey, why not? glory. With the office being known as “the room we store the bikes” for the last several years, it was no longer catering to our evolving needs. While it’s only beginning to make sense to me now, I’ve been pinning – with caution; this girl doesn’t like a cluttered board – my little heart out for the last three weeks. (Not to be confused with Sussudio, mmkay, Phil fans?)

The goal? A functional, inspirational and organized room. A room that makes me smile, surrounds me with creativity, and makes me eager to start my work day. A place for everything and everything in it’s place. And certainly no more of this working-from-the-kitchen-counter bull.

Because we’re curious, how would you design your “dream” room?

For better or worse, this weekend was our first test.

If you follow us on Facebook, you might’ve seen that a full-on office gut job has begun. The space is making a slow and steady transformation over to Kim’s dedicated studio space. It’s going to be awesome… when we finish it.

We made solid progress on Saturday. Trim and doors were given a fresh coat of white, walls were primed and painted (more on the color later) and the project was on schedule. Yesterday, on the other hand, was a total disaster. Honestly. What began with an awesome morning dog walk turned into the mother of all shitstorms.

A simple crown molding installation turned into a nightmare (dramatic, yes) that still isn’t completed. We spent $30 renting a nail gun and $15 on finishing nails we didn’t even use – much to Kim’s budget-crunching dismay. The light we ordered for the room was cancelled from the manufacturer when they realized they didn’t even have it in stock. I drove 30 minutes to Lowe’s to find that they had just sold their last gallon of base paint we needed to finish the walls. We wasted hours of time, argued over the right way to do things and accomplished absolutely nothing.

So what did we do? We quit.  Feeling totally defeated, I returned the unused nailgun and changed out of my painting clothes. Big effing deal. Our first pseudo-new years resolution was a success. When the stress got to be too much, we realized that we’d be happier and more productive another day on a fresh charge of the old batteries.

We hoped to have an awesome progress report post ready for your perusal today, but we don’t. And ya know what? We’ll all live. In the meantime, we realized we still had a bunch of fun, awesome thrift store adventures to share with you guys. While visiting Kim’s family in Pittsburgh over the holidays, we found some gems hidden throughout it’s hills and valleys – with our tops being UFO and Bill’s Furniture (found on our way to Retro on 8th, which turned out to be closed that day!). Here’s what we saw through Kim’s lens, including the much debated Dorothy Draper knock-off that I convinced her we positively did not need.

But what we took home are a few carefully selected gems that did make it to the back of the Subaru. They’ll all end up in my lady’s studio – eventually.

In other (non)monumental news, our ol’ wagon reached the 100k mark. While it didn’t quite make it during the triangle of terror, it did reach it’s target during the umpteenth trip to Lowes over the course of the nothing’s-going-quite-right Sunday. How appropriate.

More news on the studio progress (or lack thereof) in the coming days. In the meantime, any thrifty scores make their way into your home lately? Resolutions you’re willing to share? And who else photographs their car mileage milestones? (Yeah, we’re literally all over the place. Sorry ’bout that.)

We spent the last 9 days traveling the triangle of terror, as Scott would say (in good jest, of course) – from Chicago to Cincinnati, from there to Pittsburgh and back home again. With close to one thousand miles on the road, we almost put our ol’ wagon over the 100,000 mile mark, but not quite.

While staying with Scott’s family in Cincinnati, we let Jack loose in a muddy dog field, bathed him in time for Christmas dinner, and ate our weight in cookies, muffins, and bagels. We saved room in our bellies for Skyline chili and UDF ice cream, spent evenings nursing hot buttered rums, and cozied up to an outdoor fire pit during what felt like a cool, tolerable winter night. Our time in Scott’s hometown was much too short, of course.

Pittsburgh was reserved for family dinners with my Gram, margaritas with one of my oldest friends (going twenty years back), and cheering on my baby brother at his basketball tournament. We thrifted circles around the Steel city (snagging office re-do loot along the way) and spent a day clothes shopping for my younger sister’s first job, managing to get lost on every turnpike and each tunnel in town. (By the way, have you ever noticed how pretty Pittsburgh is? All those homes nestled and tucked in every nook of every hill – love.) We wrapped up our stay with a Penguin’s loss (boo), but it was the first time we got a chance to poke and mosey around their new arena.

Now that we’re home, we’re eager to get started on those things we’ve been putting off until “after the holidays.” We’re mapping out office plans (my soon-to-be studio!), gutting and purging our closets, and slowly (but surely) easing back into the groove.

Happy, happy 2012 to you all! What have you been up to? And what are you most looking forward to in this new year?

In the last twelve months, we’ve met some amazing new friends, found a few moments for summer vacation, reached personal goals and accomplishments, celebrated our two year bloggie birthday (see our fun Q & As here and here), a four year home-iversary (more on that here, here, and here) and a three year wedding anniversary. But we’ve also lost some feline companions (the kiddo of our close pals, Sammie, and my family’s cat, Tyler), seen another basement flood and have been filled with confusion, frustration and yet fulfillment as we figure out this funny (but amazing) path I’ve chosen.

And all this time through the ups, downs and in-betweens, we’ve spent the last year continually turning this home into our favorite place to be – a place we want to fill with friends, games and an air mattress for the over-nighters. When we began looking back at the DIYs and ideas fulfilled, we thought it’d be fun to share our favorites again. A re-cap of sorts; a yearly wrap-up.

1. From Apples to Storage: Once housing apples, it’s now home to our cozy throws for movie watching. Casters make the world go ’round.

2. Chalkboard Backsplash: We played with the idea here, weighed the feedback, and in the end we went for it. While it mostly displays doodles of our furry kids, we’ve been having some holiday fun with it, too.

3. The Media Wall: A labor of love doesn’t even begin to describe this momma. It was all worth it though, as it (very proudly!) displays our pride and joys – and was even featured on Apartment Therapy and Young House Love. Holy cow.

4. DIY Laundry Suds: This is hands down our most popular and somewhat controversial post. We still use this exact recipe and can’t even fathom the day we go back to store bought brands. After a double-throw-up-kitty-incident just last week (ew, we know), this mix came through as expected. (See an update here.)

5. Dino Terrarium: Sure, it’s seen it’s fair share of ups and downs – including being re-built three times. But dammit, third times a charm. It’s still alive and kicking, thank you.

6. Hi and Bye Doormat: As we come and go, it makes us smile.

7. Rosemary Chicken Burgers: Before the now defunct ReadyMade magazine stopped filling our mailbox, we found this gem of a recipe. We lost count how many times we used it on the grill this summer. So good.

8. Those Hairy Situations: Probably our second most visited post, we discuss how we kick those fur tumbleweeds. We would like to thank our Dyson, the Furminator and the inventors of the lint roller and prickly office mats.

9. Ottoman’s Makeover: I mostly wanted to see if I could pull it off, and luckily, I have a stand-up man who puts up with my crazy (more on that here and here). From cube to sleek, we did it. It’s just too bad it’s missing two buttons now (just keepin’ it real). Luckily, the tufts remain, and we found the buttons. Now to just put them back in place.

10. Bedside Lights: We (literally) couldn’t have completed this one without Daniel from Manhattan Nest. And although we’ve been nutty busy since it’s completion and I’ve yet to read more than a chapter from a book, we’d like to think he still saved our marriage.

It’s probably best that we stop at 10, although we’d like to note that if we tried to rate them in a “Top 10 List” of sorts, well, it’d be like picking our favorite (four-legged) child. Not gonna happen. And don’t forget, you can always check out our growing list of projects right here.

To keep with the favorites theme, we’re also excited to say that next week we’ll have a post a day lined up from some of our favorite girls:

Melissa of The Fauxmartha
Gloria of A Little Paint
Kara of Kara Paslay Designs
Kathleen of Jeremy & Kathleen
Melissa of I Still Love You

They’ll be keeping our little nook of the web cozy and warm, sharing their own favorites from the past year. We like to call it our favorites’ favorites. The goal is to share other creative ideas, tutorials, and recipes that have inspired us, and we’re sure they’ll inspire you, too.

We’ll be back in the new year, and good gracious, we have so much up our sleeves. A whole lot of organization is on the agenda, and we’ve been bursting to announce that the office will be getting yet another makeover! This time, it’ll be pink (we think). And no, it will not be a nursery! (C’mon, now.)

Thank you for being perpetually awesome, encouraging, and all-around the best readers and friends, hands down. We wish you all a very merry holiday filled with warm fuzzies, your favorite folks, comfort foods and rum, wine, and hot chocolate.

What are you thinking about as this year draws to a close? And what’s your favorite project (home related or otherwise) that you’ve tackled in the last twelve months?

One of the upsides to having a bitty home is that you can be most anywhere – and still see the tree. Part of that is our placement, and like every year prior, it hangs in our entryway (while the usual console takes a backseat to the basement). Seen from the hall? Uh-huh. The kitchen? Living room? Yes and yes. In the evenings, it’s a pretty sweet night light.

We lost a slew of ornaments in this summer’s flood (you might remember that we salvaged what we could), and we’re tisk-ing ourselves that we forgot to snag a three-year ornament while we were in Grand Rapids as part of our Christma-versary tradition. A few boxes of clearance ornaments had to do for now, and we’ll just have to start growing our collection again.

And because everyone loves a good bokeh tree, here’s a bokeh tree with our model man, Jack.

As two nuts that revel in all the holiday cheese, we’re a bit late to the game this year. While we normally enjoy a good tree trimming the Friday after Thanksgiving, over the years we’ve been slowly progressing into December, and this year, well, is it already mid-month? We blame busyness, but with the year wrapping up (fast!), it’s about time we take a few final weeks to really soak up the cheese, so to speak.

Are your homes dressed in holiday cheer? Or, perhaps, you’re a little behind, too? And hey, who can point us to a not-too-cutesy tree skirt? As you can see, we’re embarrassingly bare bones down there. Help!

PS… Don’t forget to check out our giveaway from Row Boat Press – ends tomorrow! And get free shipping on all (unframed) orders through December 25th using promo code yellowbrickhome.