A Different Kind Of Before And After

Good morning, and happy Monday to you!!

Let me admit, right off the bat, that I have nothing interior decorating-related to share with you this morning. This weekend I did something that I seldom ever do…I took the weekend off. Not completely, but I made sure that anything I worked on could be done from a sitting position, mostly in my bed. 🙂 Have you ever tried building closets or hanging grasscloth wallpaper from a sitting position in your bed? It doesn’t work so well, so I had to find something else to occupy my time.

It felt so nice. I’m not generally the type of person who likes to do that. But because I’m always going and always doing projects and working on my condo or someone else’s house, I work myself into complete exhaustion and simply have to take a couple of days of complete down time every now and then.

So if you were visiting me this morning, hoping to get a glimpse of my bedroom progress, I do apologize. I promise I’ll work on it next weekend.

So do you want to see what I worked on all weekend from my bed? It’s the new and improved Addicted 2 Decorating website and blog!

I am so incredibly excited about this new layout. Not only does it look much nicer than any previous layout I’ve had, but it will be so much easier to use and navigate. Until now, this website and blog have been a complete jumbled mess. I’ll bet there are things on A2D that most of you aren’t even aware of!

Did you know there’s a photo gallery filled with gorgeous rooms from designers all over the country? (used with permission, of course!)

Did you know that there are articles on the website, written by me and others who have contributed valuable decorating-related information?

Did you know there’s even an interior designer directory, arranged by state, for those who want to assistance of a professional?

Probably not. It’s all been here, all of this time, but it’s been so jumbled and so hard to find!! Well, not anymore. With the new layout, all of that info will be just a click away on the new streamlined menu at the top.

And each section of the menu has a drop-down menu, to make navigation even that much easier!

Menu options under “A2D Blog”.

Menu options under “DIY Projects”.

And probably my favorite menu item of all is the Complete Room Designs section, where all of my DIY rooms will be featured.

Right now, the only room listed is John & Alice’s master bedroom, but I am working on adding pages for my kitchen, my breakfast room, Gwen’s master bathroom, and Gwen’s master bedroom.  Then as soon as they’re complete, I’ll add pages for John & Alice’s master bathroom, my bedroom, and any future DIY room that I complete.  You get the picture.

On those individual room pages, there are sections for before pictures, after pictures, budget breakdown, resources, related diy projects, and related blog posts.  The before pictures section and the after pictures section will have little thumbnails of each of the pictures, that you can click on to see the larger pictures.

Pay no attention to the capitalized and double underlined word “Photo”. This is a screenshot from my computer, which obviously has spyware on it.

I’m pretty darn excited about how organized all of this is going to be.  You (and I) will actually be able to find stuff!!  Yay!!

Would you like to see one of the pages “live”?  You can click here to see it.  It’s the only page that’s uploaded so far, which means that most of the links don’t go anywhere quite yet…or they go to pages of the old website.  I think it’ll take me about another week to get everything uploaded and arranged. Soooo…that means you only have one more week of staring at this ugly and dull blog format.

But I promised you a “before and after”. Well, while I was sorting through all of the pages of the A2D website, I came across one of the pages that had never been updated since the very beginning, and it just made me laugh. At the time I started building this website, I had only the most basic knowledge of HTML, and therefore could build only the most basic websites. Want to see what the original A2D looked like? Here it is, in all its glory–the “Before”.

lol…it’s a little…ummm…BORING, especially compared to the “After”.

So that’s it…that was my big weekend. Sitting in my comfy bed, leaning against my cushy headboard, window open, cool breeze blowing through, and just clicking away on my computer.

More decorating to come. I promise. But I sure needed this break!

Have a wonderful Monday!!