Lately I have become...
Obsessed.
Obsessed about painting rooms. About picking out dining room tables and chairs. Obsessed about which type of dining room table I want. What chairs would match? Do I even want them to match? I dream about colors of paint. I dream about re-arranging. I am going crazy!
No matter where I have lived in life, it has always been important to me for that place to be welcoming. If that means keeping pictures of family up on bulletin boards in my dorm room then so be it. If it means decorating with curtains and candles in my apartment or creating a certain look with art and bedspreads then I would make it happen. Even in the little hotel room I lived in while studying in Italy, I tried to make it a place that I enjoyed being.
So here we are. I really like old homes. I like old homes even more if they have an imporant history to my husband. Here are a few things I love about this house:
I love that it is brick
I love the open lay out
I love that it has a basement
I love the location
I love the old tile in the bathrooms even if they are not my favorite colors
I love that we live in a young neighborhood with families
I love that it has so many memories for allen
I love that it is full of retro finds like an old can of saltines (minus the crackers) or coke bottles that say "bring back to refill"
I love the telephone nook in our hallway
I love the walk up attic
Things that frustrate me or that I wish I could change:
I dont like the crack in our ceiling in the living room
I don't like the old door handles
I wish that the house didn't have an old house smell sometimes
I wish that it was ours.
I want to paint the wood panneling.
I dont like the old light fixtures.
I wish that we did not have a tentant.
I wish that our washing machine worked.
I want to paint the dining room, the front bathroom, the guest room, the back porch, the hallway and the extra room.
I wish the closets were bigger
I know the list could go on forever on both sides. Things I love vs. things I struggle with.
I think that in order for me to keep my sanity I will just start writing them down on the chalkboard in the kitchen. Of course I will erase my rants when company comes over :) but I keep it inside and its too much. Also, I can tell Allen something that I want to fix or something that frustrates me but its my issue not his. So its easy for him to forget about while I still mull over it and get annoyed.
Sorry for my rant. I am struggling today with the house. I am also struggling with it not being in my control. WE don't own it. We don't know if we ever will. I am struggling in the balance of what part are we responsiable for and what part are his parents (the owners) responsible for? So i go back and forth between wanting to make it "ours" and wanting to just throw my hands up and say forget it.
Whether or not they get done, I second your notion to make a list of things. When we moved into this apartment I was bursting at the seams to decorate. Ideas circulated in my head to the point of exhaustion! Then I made a visible list on the dry erase board and it helped a bunch. Most of the things will never get done, because we're just renting after all, but it is good to let out those creative ideas somewhere...
ReplyDeleteHave fun making the most of your renting situation. Lord willing, we have years of decorating ahead of us! :o)