After installing the quarter-round molding across the back of the surface and then touching everything up with a final bit of paint, the new desk is installed, and I'm pretty damn happy with how it came out.

The back surface of the desk is 20 inches deep, and we opted to put the PC there since it's the computer that we use the most in the office. Since the office is pretty narrow, we went with the return being only 15 inches deep, giving us more work surface without sacrificing breathing room. I doubt that we'll stick with that lamp, we have a little bit of cable management work to do, and I'm almost certain that I won't be allowed to keep the Iron Giant on the desk. (I have been promised a little bit of a shelf for him, though!)

In the end, there are a few silly little things I'd do differently were I to do this again, but nothing that comes close to me feeling like this wasn't a home run for us being able to use the study. I can't wait to get the shelves planned and installed... our inclination is to put them on the short wall above the main desk surface so that the room doesn't start to feel even more narrow, but we've bandied about the idea of partial-length shelves on the long wall. We'll see which way that debate settles out, and we'll enjoy the hell out of the room in the mean time!

During the househunting process, one of the very few things that Shannon and I didn't like about what has now become our home is that it pretty much has not a single usable clothes closet. The house is over a century old, and the two upstairs closets are between 13 and 15 inches deep -- not even close to deep enough for a clothes hanger. So we stressed and fretted about how we'd solve it in the weeks before we moved in, and ended up with a series of solutions that we're really happy with.

In terms of the clothes storage problem, we shopped around quite a bit for a closet system that would work in the space we had available in the master bedroom. One idea that I really wanted to work was EasyClosets, a company that provides you with the ability to design wall units online, and then ships you the materials for self-installation. Unfortunately, the place we wanted to put the closets was on an old plaster wall that wasn't exactly plumb and has a door right in the middle of it; after talking to a rep, it turns out that the EasyClosets system requires an uninterrupted back wall on which to mount the main hanging equipment, and it's not easily adaptable to weird situations like ours. We played around with a bunch of other ideas, but found our solution at (of all places!) Ikea, their modular PAX system. Using their 93 inch-tall frames, we ended up with three different levels of hanging space along with shelving and drawers galore, enough space to replicate both of the closets we had back in Brookline and then some. The whole unit sits perfectly against the back wall of the master bedroom, and took about five or six hours in total for Shannon's father and me to build.

Of course, that left us with another dilemma -- what to do with the two pre-existing closets! As shallow as they are, it wasn't hard to decide; we ended up getting 3/4-inch plywood cut down to size as shelves, and I spent the last few days hanging them up. We now have a great space in the bedroom for off-season and decorating storage, and a great linen closet in the hallway, and all it took was a bit of wood, a little circular saw and sander work, some paint, and some screws and anchors. And with one of the remnant bits of wood, I was even able to put a mini-shelf into Shannon's basement knitting area! All in all, we went from closet panic to closet and shelving nirvana, and all it took was patience.

Lookie what came today -- our house number plaque! In the run-up to moving down to DC, Shannon and I have been concentrating on the big stuff (replace the windows, fix the floor, get a new water heater, etc.), all of which has taken up the clear majority of the time we're able to devote to the new house from here in Boston. About two weeks ago, though, we realized that the new place is essentially anonymous, with nary a marker showing it's number on the block. And in true DIY-style, we figured that this was an opportunity for us to get something nice to put up, something that keeps with the style of the house and lends it a bit of je ne sais quois. We liked the look of the various cast bronze plaques that are a dime a dozen at internet merchants, but didn't know how well they'd hold up to the elements (and accordingly, whether we'd be scrubbing outside wall as the bronze deteriorated over time). That's about when we stumbled upon Bryson's Stuff, a foundry in Pennsylvania that specializes in cast aluminum products. Given the width of the space next to our front door, we opted for the 10" oval plaque, and (as you can see from the picture) it looks just plain awesome. I can't wait to get down there in a few weeks and put it up!

Shannon and I took a trip down to Washington, DC this past weekend, both sets of parents in tow, to try to get some painting done on the new house. We painted our current place in Brookline after we moved in, and it took forever (what with needing to move furniture around, and having to time everything so that rooms were available when we needed to use them), so our aim was to avoid that by getting the painting done before we moved down to DC. We were lucky that everything had recently been painted in a white latex by the seller, so we didn't need to do any priming of the walls, and didn't have to do anything to the ceilings or trim for now.

Shannon and her mother put a lot of time and effort into choosing the colors, from amassing about a thousand paint chip strips from various stores to carrying swatches around with them of our just-purchased new sofa and chair to painting entire posterboards with colors that were in consideration (so that they could hold them up against everything and get a better sense of how things would work together). I have to say that the posterboard idea was pure genius; colors that looked fine on the little paint chips from the store looked terrible against the floors and countertops once they were painted onto larger areas, and it really took the bigger sample to get a sense of what would work. Going down to DC, we had only made one firm color choice (for the upstairs and downstairs hallways and the guest bedroom) and had a handful of posterboards ready to be tested in their respective rooms, so we were a little nervous about not having enough time to get everything done. In the end, though, the "probable" colors all tested perfectly, everything ended up available from the same paint company (Benjamin Moore), and everyone was knocked out by how great things came out once the paint was on the walls.

Starting in the front of the house, we painted the dining room and living room in a bright yellow (Goldtone). We originally started out with Restoration Hardware's Butter, having painted Shannon's study here in Brookline in the color and loving it, but the posterboard tester looked terrible against the teak floors and was too vivid against the new sofa and chair fabrics. Shannon and her mother spent a chunk of time with small paint chips, chose a few options to test on a larger scale, and ended up with Goldtone, and it looks awesome in both rooms.

Headed to the back of the house, we wanted to do a tan or beige kitchen, but knew that our marble countertops would make it hard to find a color that didn't clash too terribly. We didn't really have a good starting point for this, but throwing around words like "taupe-y", the ladies again made a few choices and landed on Tucson Tan. (Hysterically, Shannon found herself unable to avoid saying "Toucan Sam" every time she tried to tell someone the paint name, so that's what it's now known as to us.) And while the countertops were the prime mover on the color choice, it also works well with the teak, as well as with the cherry cabinets. In contrast to all the other rooms, we went with a matte finish in the kitchen, as Benjamin Moore advertises it as scrubbable for easier cleaning.

Moving around and up, we knew that we wanted to keep the entryway, hallways, stairs, and guest bedroom pretty simple and easy. To us, that meant going with Linen White, the same paint that we used for more than three-quarters of our home here in Brookline. It's a nice, soft white that tends to take on a warm glow in natural light, and it's also one of the off-whites that Benjamin Moore paint stores stock on their shelves by the truckload. In the picture, the color looks a little greener than it really is; you'll see why that is in the next room.

When you come up the stairs, you're facing our little half-room, which we've taken to calling the "pygmy room." It's going to be our office, and our color starting point was the Restoration Hardware Silver Sage that we used for my office here in Brookline, a color we've liked a lot. Again, though, the Silver Sage was way off when put against the floors upstairs, so a few more choices made it onto posterboard testers. We ended up with Dried Parsley, and I have to say that it came out good enough that this is my current favorite room in the house. (The room is also the most electrically-enabled, with four different circuits, for reasons we can't even begin to guess.)

Finally, we end up in the master bedroom, which was one of the most difficult because of all the competing things we wanted to match. Between the beige-to-ash carpets and our many-variations-on-red bedding, we thought that a color like Manchester Tan might work, but once again, it looked terrible when Shannon tested it out. In another southwestern nod, the winner ended up being Tucson Winds, which came out awesomely.

We started painting around noon on Saturday, and were ecstatic that we were able to get everything done by around 4 PM on Sunday (again, the beauty of not having to paint the trim or ceilings). We had a few painters' tape issues that I'll talk about some other time, but when all's said and done, the house looks amazing and we were sad to have to come back to Brookline for a few more weeks.