HGTV comes to Abilene Trail

If you don't watch HGTV this post will probably get on your nerves.

We had a busy week working on our gameroom culminating in a visit from Jackie (Mat's mom) and Judd (Mat's stepdad) this weekend. We like to fondly think of them as Candace Olsen from Divine Design and Frank from Trading Spaces. They're much better at design than we are, so the weekend was a combination of Mission Organization, Clean Sweep, Freestyle, and Design on a Dime. All weekend we were wondering how in the world those people are able to get a whole room finished in one day!

I couldn't take a before picture because my camera wasn't at home on the day that we started, so for those who have never been here it was painted a dark tan color and had brown beadboard on one wall and all over the very large wet bar. Also, our TV had been sitting on an old dresser for about 8 years. :-) I did a screen grab of two different movies I took of Luke in the gameroom so you can kinda see how junkie it was before. The bar is behind him on the left.



We started by having the wet bar removed. Don't worry, we still have another wet bar so we're in good shape. You gotta love the eighties. I don't know why in the world the people who built this house thought they needed two wet bars in addition to a kitchen and three bathrooms. But they probably were not thinking about my feelings and how bad I would grow to despise the wet bar 24 years later. Speaking of those people, we found a stack of family photos under the bar that I presume belonged to the first inhabitants of our house. We also found a newspaper dated July 6, 1983 and a perfectly preserved mouse skeleton.

So anyway, last weekend I met a lovely girl named Rachel from craigslist who we hired to patch the hole in the wall left by the wet bar and paint the room. She did a nice job, and we're having her back next week to paint downstairs. Then after spending weeks looking for the right furniture we settled on the very first thing we saw at the very first place we looked. We got the stuff at IKEA and had it assembled by professionals. I'm sure if we hadn't hired the guys to assemble it we'd still be trying to get the boxes up the stairs right now instead of laying on the couch writing this blog entry.

Then, on Friday the design team showed up (Jackie and Judd) and about an hour later Mat and Jackson left for their father-son camping trip. Jackie, Luke, and I went back to IKEA to get some accessories and that is where I got hurt. Jackie was off trying to entertain Luke because he was melting down, and I was pushing a loaded cart and carrying a heavy sack of more stuff through the warehouse. Suddenly I stubbed my toe on the cart. It hurt a normal amount, and I really didn't think much of it. A couple of minutes later, though, it felt kind of weird and I looked down and most of my toenail was kind of hanging off and it was bleeding all over my flip flop!! I started to panic and looked around for the first aid station. I thought a place this big with so many crazed shoppers must have a doctor or at least a nurse onsite. When I calmed down a bit, though, I realized that shopping injuries were not really very common and I was probably on my own.

We spent the day Saturday putting the room together and rearranging the couch and chairs about a million different ways. We contacted another helpful man named Brandon from craigslist to come and remove all the debris from the garage. We organized our books and movies and hung pictures. And here is the result of our efforts:






Tonight we will pop some corn and enjoy watching Heroes Season One, Disc Three in our new room. It's gonna be great!