J Cooper Photography

I can’t move my right arm.  My shoulder socket is inflamed beyond repair and my arm will have to hang limp from my body to recover for a few days.  But it was worth it…because the red plaid wallpaper is down, baby.  And not only that…the poo brown paper in the dining room met its demise as well.

But let’s back track a bit first, shall we?

Saturday started off bright and cold.  Winter weather was on the way…they were predicting heavy, mounting snow.  So what are two decorating crazed people to do?  Go shopping of course.  I picked up my mom and we slipped and slid across town to a little place that had been calling our names all week.  The Furniture Barn.  It intrigued me the first time I drove by it on the edge of town.  Furniture in a tin shed.  That’s my kind of joint.  Plus any store that effectively utilizes the word “barn” gets my vote.  Funny thing about stores in tin sheds…they have inconsistent store hours that don’t necessarily line up with napping toddler boys.  So our first attempt to visit “the barn” was in vain and a re-visit was in order.  When we first pulled up we assumed we had missed the mark again.  Not a car in sight for blocks.  But apparently it was just the blizzarding conditions that had kept people away…cause they were OPEN for business!

Freaky self portraits of us to prove we braved treacherous conditions to get our shop on. {I really need to stop with the iphone pics and just get out my camera already!}

But come on…you would have done the same for this.  That’s 20 feet straight up of furniture stacked to the rafters.  It was like a junkers dream.  I think I heard the angels singing.

I bought a cute little side table for my living room (sorry…forgot to take a pic) and have my eye on several other pieces.  Then against good common sense…we slid down to the other side of town to hit a few antique shops where I spied this little primitive kid’s table that HAD to come home with me.  I was contemplating a Pottery Barn table for the kidlets in our downstairs family room.  But this real wood, already lovingly distressed, full of character table just beat the pants off that idea.  Plus it saved me hundreds of dollars.  And the owner of the booth gave me an extra $50 off cause I asked nicely

Here it is positioned in our basement right near a cabinet jammed packed with all our family games and puzzles.  Can’t you just picture my sweet, educationally-minded children playing quietly here?

If you are wondering why all my iphone pictures have a crazy yellow/orange cast in my house…it’s because of the insane amount of OAK plastered on every surface.  Someday years from now…everything will be bright and happy and white and I won’t have that issue.

But I know what you are really wondering is…what about the poo?

Our dining room.  It’s immediately to the right as you enter the front door.  And it is the color of poo from the ceiling all the way to the floor.  Poo brown oak floors, poo brown painted walls under the chair rail, poo brown oak chair rail, poo brown paisley wallpaper, poo brown ceiling – oh yes they did.  And poo brown custom made drapes as well.

I think I may have just set some sort of record for the number of times poo has been mentioned in one post.

So we stripped that bad poo right outta our hair this week.  My mom even helped (that’s true love) after our shopping extravaganza.  I’d love to say that the room looks much better.  But the crazy wallpaper lovin’ people who lived here before us did the unthinkable and painted POO BROWN on the walls first before they wallpapered.  So now its just plain poo brown minus the paisley.  But tomorrow I PRIME.  And revenge will be mine!

{here you can see a sneak peak into the torn up living room}

The girls and I amused ourselves by coming up with clever paint chip names for the poo brown.  My favorite from The Brainiac was “Pumpkin Poo”.

I wore my poo brown sweater for camouflage.

It’s just a sticky, goopy mess.

But I’m happy to report all of the wallpaper in the dining room AND kitchen has been removed.  And guess what?  They painted RED under the red plaid wallpaper in the kitchen…LUCKY US!  And I think the red paint is actually WORSE then the plaid paper.

Tomorrow I must break out my real camera and take you on a little tour of the chaos here.  Fun times!