Our dining room. We bought ourselves the mirror (way on sale) for our anniversary this year. Now if we could just get it hung.
Our Welsh kitchen dresser, which I use as a mini buffet. I would love to get rid of the wallpaper.
One of two oversized chairs that don't work in our house. This one is especially bad because the cats decided early on to use it as an additional scratch post.
I have learned (a little too late for this house), that after moving into a new home, you really should live there about a year before buying any furniture or making any kind of design decisions. It takes about that long to get to know a house. To get the flow, the nuances, understand where the best walkways are, and where the best places to put certain pieces of furniture are. We made the mistake of buying chairs waaaaaaayyyyyyyy before this milestone was reached, and I have regretted it ever since. The rooms in our house are not that big, and we bought oversized chairs that just don't fit well in the room. We also purchased a square dining room table. I love it, but we really should have bought a rectangular one in order for our Welsh kitchen dresser and antique buffet to fit in our dining room. I already owned a gigantic four poster queen size bed before I met Jav, and it is too big for our bedroom.
Our Welsh kitchen dresser, which I use as a mini buffet. I would love to get rid of the wallpaper.
One of two oversized chairs that don't work in our house. This one is especially bad because the cats decided early on to use it as an additional scratch post.I have learned (a little too late for this house), that after moving into a new home, you really should live there about a year before buying any furniture or making any kind of design decisions. It takes about that long to get to know a house. To get the flow, the nuances, understand where the best walkways are, and where the best places to put certain pieces of furniture are. We made the mistake of buying chairs waaaaaaayyyyyyyy before this milestone was reached, and I have regretted it ever since. The rooms in our house are not that big, and we bought oversized chairs that just don't fit well in the room. We also purchased a square dining room table. I love it, but we really should have bought a rectangular one in order for our Welsh kitchen dresser and antique buffet to fit in our dining room. I already owned a gigantic four poster queen size bed before I met Jav, and it is too big for our bedroom.
So there are many things that need changing about our furniture. We are in the process of trying to decide if we want to make our front bedroom the master, the middle bedroom a playroom/office and thereby move both boys into what's now our room in the back of the house. This would mean moving closets too, and I'm not sure I have the energy for that right now. We really will need some extra room one day, especially when Gabriel wants his own room again. We could add on to the back bedroom going into the backyard. We might be able to add-on with a second story. I'd love to screen in what is now the back porch and build a deck around it. But with me staying home, none of this will happen for a pretty long time. And sometimes I feel like our decor is a little garage sale-like. Which always makes me think of When Harry Met Sally and the Roy Rogers garage sale wagon wheel coffee table. Hee hee.
When I ran all of this by Jav he said, in typical male thought process, "Why don't we just move to a bigger house?" Well, money is the first answer. But the second one is that I love this house, at least most of it. It would be so great to have an extra room for guests or an office, or preferably both. We both HATE our master bath and want to have it completely ripped out and redone at some point. The kitchen could be a bit bigger too. But I love the living and dining area and the yard. So do we pour money into it, knowing that we will probably not get that investment back if we ever sell? Or do we just move?
Our color scheme is a bit wacky too. The people who lived here before us had the walls of the main living area and hallway textured and painted. There's brown, kind of a mustard color, and an unusual yellow. It sounds horrible, but it actually all works really well together. Even so, one of our problems is that there's just too much going on with all of those colors. Especially when we get down to my furniture color scheme. I've always loved the movie Home Alone and coveted Kevin's house. Every room has some form of green and red to add to the Christmas spirit of the movie. Without even realizing it, I already have a red and green color scheme running through this house. (Not bright red and bright green, but subtler shades of each). The living room has a green rug and a burgundy chair. The kitchen has burgundy and green in the wallpaper border, and so does the Master bedroom. I'm not too jazzed about keeping the borders long-term, but they'll do for now. The quilt on our bed is red and Molly's bed is green. We painted the playroom an apple green, and want to go back and paint the baseboards and trim some shade of red. This all seems to work in my head, but I know we need to remove some of those colors from the wall for it to really work.
Oh well, it all gives me something to think about in my spare time. Ha.
1 comment:
Even after being in our house 40+ years, I have the same thoughts. Only now we juggle the ideas of updating or adding on to match current trends (I watch too much HGTV) or keeping what we still like, outdated as it may be, and letting the next owners worry about it when we are gone. We still plan to live here a lot longer, so that balance of re-do/keep it continues.
This is not our "dream house." My taste has changed over the years. But this is home to so many memories of our children and their friends.
As for the furniture, a lot of it belonged to my parents and is still nice. But all three kids have their own styles and will have no need for the "family heirlooms." Something I am trying not to worry about too.
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