The Bonus Room Chronicles: Step 6: Change Out The Bi-Fold Doors

Welcome to a new week! I am writing this on Sunday night and I already have a case of the Monday Blues. Aside from busting up my internet, I was pretty productive this weekend. I have figured out that what I really need in order to light a fire under me is visitors. I don't like people knowing about my huge piles of junk in various spots around the house. So, I work hard to get things tidied up before they get here. We just had a couple of quick pop-in visitors, but it was enough to get me to workin' hard!

I remember when I was living in an apartment with some friends I used to have the messiest room on the planet, but it would only take me about 20 minutes to get it looking spotless. The key was that I had a bunch of boxes hidden behind my bed that I would throw everything in. Clearly that was a better solution than dealing with the clutter. 

Once my dad was visiting, and as always, I had waited until the last minute to clean up. So, I put everything on top of my bed and threw the comforter over it. I spent a few minutes patting things down so it didn't look like I had magazines and lunch boxes and whatever other random thing was floating around my room hiding under the covers.

Now, it is time to move onto the fascinating reason you are all here today: BI-FOLD DOORS!

This is probably the most boring step in any of the chronicle series. I am sorry about that!

The house came with louvered bi-fold doors and they just weren't my style. I think in the right environment they can look fantastic, but in this room they really dated it, especially with the "funky retro vibe" we had going on. Scott changed them out himself and the whole process was pretty easy. I didn't take any photos. Just follow the directions that come with your door. They know what they're talking about!

So, we went from this:

To this:

To this:

WHHHHAAAAATTT! Is that what I hear you screaming at your computer? Where did the funky retro vibe go? Well, we are in the process of de-funkying and de-retroing our house right now because....

THIS
LOVELY
ABODE
WILL
BE
GOING
ON
THE
MARKET
SOON!

Sorry, the one word per line thing may have been a bit much, but I think you liked the dramatic effect of it just a little bit. The cat is out of the bag. If you live in Charlotte or are looking to move to Charlotte, this tropical paradise of loveliness could be yours! I will tell you more about everything in another post soon to come. 

Back to the land of chronicles! Here are the steps that the Bonus Room Chronicles have passed through, along with the very last step. Yay! There is just one more step to go before we can cross this chronicle off our list.

The Bonus Room Chronicles Introduction Post

Step 1: Move in. Paint the walls. Put up curtains. Put up art. Paint orange design. Paint polka dots.

Step 2: Put up wire display.

Step 3: Put up wall of frames.

Step 4: Move furniture around. Get rid of TV. Add bed.

Step 5: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3: Build window seat and built in bookcases.

Step 6: Change out the bifold doors

Step 7: Part 1.  Part 2. Part 3. Finishing touches

Here are a few more photos of the bonus room where we left it last time.

Art On A Ladder

I told you that when I was growing up I liked to put a lot of time and energy into decorating my room and I showed you all the crazy things I did to it.

I did not tell you that I used to keep a ladder in my room. 

I saved up my money and bought a wooden ladder. Mainly, because I thought it would be awesome to have a ladder in your room. It could be used as extra seating. I could use it in my acrobatic routine. And it was a little helpful when I needed to put more pictures of The Muppet Babies on my ceiling.

I painted the ladder yellow.

I googled yellow ladder and this image came up. I have a million smurf miniatures. So, who knows... maybe this was my inspiration.

Here is the point in this post where you get more of a glimpse of what a weirdo I was (AM). I would lay on the ground and try to do tricks where I twirled the ladder around with my legs. I did these tricks ALLLLL the time. I even impressed my company with them (READ: made my company think I was stranger than they originally thought). Most of the time I would end up accidentally throwing the ladder into the wall or conking myself on the head with it.

I really am one strange dudette.

On with the show...

I have stopped using a ladder as part of a gymnastics routine but I have no stopped decorating my house with them. As you are probably starting to realize, Scott and I always have at least 300 projects going on at one time. Many of them involve a ladder. And many of them go on for 6 months to 3 years (no joke... we are SLOW). 

For the first time in a few months, we do not have any indoor ladders. We do have a couple of outdoor ones up that are ready to be gymnast-ified. The ladder pictured below is a little too metal and a little too big (my old one was only 6 feet tall and couldn't be stretched into a big one like this).

So, as you may have guessed from the title of the post, I will use the ladder as an art display for you.

This photo is basically an M.C. Escher "trick your mind" painting. Not really, but it does look like the two yellow, blue, and white paintings are one big painting. Big gotcha of the day- they are 2 separate paintings. You will get to see those ones again on the big bonus room reveal.

There you have it, folks. That is what they call "art on a ladder."

And what you all are really here for... the daily 

Would You Rather Question!

WYR... everything you see is tinted a shade of green

or

your dominant hand was replaced with a hook?

My Old Abodes

For as long as I can remember I've been involved in the decorating of my room. 

Before I was strong enough to start moving my bedroom furniture around by myself I would decorate my Barbie house with whatever random items I could find. A slinky turned into an elevator. An old raisin box was a chair. A scrap of fabric became a rug. And a picture of a flower from a magazine was now a print for the wall.

I was a very lucky little girl because my mom let me pick out what color I wanted in my room. 
I took that to a bit of an extreme when I was about 12 years old. That is when I started doing things like painting a rainbow on my wall, covering my ceiling in pictures from magazines, putting photos all over my furniture, and spilling paint all over my floor.


Here is a photo of my best friends, Christina, oddly playing a guitar like it is a violin in front of the rainbow on my wall. 

Please take note of her sweet bangs and the amazing spiral curl that comes down the right side of her face like a peaceful ocean wave.

Seriously, I cannot imagine letting Cora decorate her own room. I am very, very thankful that my mom gave me free reign over the ridiculousness that were my walls. I think that had a huge impact on my decorating style and it certainly gave me plenty of experience. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that every single day I would either change my furniture arrangement, paint something in my room or add new pictures to my wall.

As I mentioned here I love a bunk bed. I was lucky enough to have one for 3 or 4 years until I realized that it put a major damper on how many different possible ways my room could be arranged.


Here I am with my two best friends, Mali and Christina taking the bunk bed down. 

As you can see, I had wrapped magazine photos all around the outside of the bed. My favorite celebrities at the time were Claire Danes, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and Jared Leto. If you look hard you can also spot a picture of Bill Cosby, a dinosaur,  the Seinfeld gang, Mork & Mindy, and Rosie O'Donell (strange, I know). There are about 3 entire walls that you cannot see in this photo that I covered with magazine clippings of my two very favorite celebrities, Johnny Depp and Leonardo Dicaprio.

The back wall of the bunk bed was covered with photos of my friends.

I had pink Christmas lights surrounding the bunk bed.

As I matured I realized that clouds on the ceiling, blue sponge paint around your bed, album covers and Ferris Bueller were a lot more sophisticated.

I turned the rainbow into a yellow wall with blue polka dots. Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio became green walls and a cloud poster.

My college roommate, Nicole and I decorated our dorm a bit but that mainly consisted of insane to do lists like I mentioned here and Swedish Fish and Tootsie Roll wrappers on the floor. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any photos.

I lived in an apartment in Arlington, VA with my two best friends, Christina and Kristen. Here is a glimpse of my fabulous room.

PS- I know I keep saying everyone is my best friend. I have a lot of best friends. I had 10 bridesmaids in my wedding and they are all my best friends. It is weird and I like it!

I moved to San Diego, CA with my best friend (there it is again!), Angela. San Diego is where I met my sweet lovey dear, Scott. It is also where I stepped on an enormous piece of glass, got a bunch of stitches, wore crutches and because of that couldn't work for about 3 months. I tried to find another job but it is hard to find a job in San Diego. It is possible that people just weren't interested in hiring the spazzy lady on crutches. Luckily, I had saved up some money and it gave me time to focus on perfecting the decorations in my bedroom. It also gave me time to watch the director's and actor's commentary on every single DVD I owned (I am a weird bird).

So, here she is... the ol' San Diego palace.

A big thank you again to Grandmama Ross for letting me go wild on my walls. 

Another thank you to all of my best friends for helping me take down bunk beds or help with whatever weird decoration project I happened to be working on!

PS I am calling this a LIST of photos from my old rooms!