On House Plans

Josef and I have spent the last two nights cleaning up our messy, messy house. It was so messy that we were both pretty on edge about it, but weekend plans and busy week schedules made us get quite behind on our domestic duties such as laundry, sorting through the mail, taking the dry cleaning, cleaning up all those papers that somehow accumulate on every available surface, etc. Add to that all the Hunter-hair-dustbunnies and other dirt badly in need of removal. To say our house was gross and messy would be putting it lightly.


Luckily, as I have said, we were able to devote some time to cleaning up. It looks so much better and it's a lot less stressful to enter our house. We have to get to work on some decorating next, so long as we can keep it clean, of couse!


Current plans

Downstairs, we need to rearrange our overly-crowded sitting room, figure out furniture for the formal living room, we need to finish building the dining room table, buy chairs for the dining room table, return the kitchen table and chairs to Josef's parents, and decorate. We need to paint the walls and the half bath, and we need to get some curtains for all the windows. The challenge will be working with a completely open downstairs floorplan, making existing furniture work with something new we bring in, finding fabrics for the entire downstairs for curtains and pillows and possible reupholstering of some furniture we have.

Upstairs, we are accidentally butting heads about decorating the master bedroom and bathroom. By accidental, I mean to say that we can't make up our minds about colors. I would rather find some bedding that we both like and then decorate the room around it, while Josef has paint color suggestions, some of which have now been taped to the wall. I want the room to be peaceful and relaxing, so I'm scared to paint a color and then have to find something to match or coordinate. I'd rather go the other direction, because then the paint color options will be much more narrowed down. So, I guess I'd better find some bedding we both like before Josef beats me to the punch! :) (Love you, honey!)

Also up for debate is the bathroom color. The nice folks who lived there before made out like Alice in Wonderland and painted the bathroom red. Is it ever RED. I have no idea what the paint color is actually called, but I dubbed it "Wake Me Up!" It seemed an appropriate name to me. Josef and I like the idea of the bathroom being a warm golden color, but due its proximity to and visibility from the master bedroom, I want to tread cautiously there and make sure it "flows" color-wise. I guess if it all winds up clashing, we'll just paint it again. The nice people who lived there also sloshed red paint all over all the fixtures and tiles in the bathroom. Ever heard of painter's tape? Geez.

The guestroom is looking the most put-together of all the rooms. With a russet duvet cover over the down comforter and nice seafoam blue/green sheets, the bed is a nice focal point. Some of my paintings add a bit of charm (I hope) to the room, and they coordinate well with the bedding, which was a total accident. Now we just need to put a nice warm paint color on the walls.

All the walls in the house, by the way, need to be painted. There are all kinds of marks, scrapes, and smudges all over the wall surfaces of the house. It will be a very good thing to get those walls repainted. I do like the khaki wall color just because it's a warm neutral, but I wouldn't be opposed to going a different direction (just not too drastic).

The guest bath is probably good to go, except it needs some Kilz on the ceiling. There appears to be a mold problem there, so that worries me. The walls are a good color, but, again, need to be repainted.

The office could probably do with some color. I don't remember if its walls are khaki like the rest of the house or an off-white. Our office two houses ago was a nice sky blue that made me happy, so maybe we could do that. Although, I'd like to somehow make the house flow together nicely; perhaps I ought to make sure I work off of an agreeable color palate for the house so it's not a crazy mish-mash of colors!

I guess the things holding me back are time, money, and the desire to do things right the first time. So, wish me luck!

Cheers,
Susan