The Year of the House

I'm seeing our lives fold out into defined times.....a year for vacations and trips, then a year to stay home and work on the house. This appears to be a year of the house. :)

I painted today....touch-ups were needed in the bathroom where I hurried and painted over a spot that should have been sanded and the paint peeled :/ and in the hall where the girls picked out a spot about as big as my hand, and there were plenty of dings there, too.

The bathroom wall is green....my favourite wall in the house. I sit in the bathtub and just enjoy that wall. :) The trim in the bathroom is a lovely lilac....I would NEVER have chosen lilac paint, but it was a happy accident, in which I found three gallons of beautiful paint for $5 each at Home Depot, and thought it was cream - judging from the splotches on top - and when I got it home and started painting, lilac. Three gallons of lilac paint. I think I'm going to paint the alcove trim and cabinet lilac, too. I like it.

The hall is the colour of melted chocolate. If you've seen the new version of the Willy Wonka movie, when the palace of chocolate starts melting....that's the colour of my hall. Makes me want to lick the walls.

The rest of the house is mostly white. When it was put up for sale, it's owners slapped (quite literally) white paint on everything. I had so much to do just removing the paint from the floors and walls where it wasn't supposed to be - not to mention that the floors had to be completely redone, sanding and all, and when I took the wallpaper border off the kitchen wall the plaster came down, too - so I left most of it white. The kitchen, of course had to be re-painted after it was repaired, and I went with a light grey there. It seems the best compromise, because, although I want it to be sunshiny yellow, or at least a light spring yellow with blue accents, it wants to be brown. (And my library wants to be red......ornery rooms....)

I HAD to have the green wall in the bathroom, and the trim there was unpainted with plaster, so it required painting. The hall needed something, so it was chocolateized. The girls each got the trim painted in their rooms - Emma purple and Anna green, and the trim in our bedroom is blues.

The rest of the house is still white. I want to paint some things, but they don't want to be painted....kitchen trim, for example, is jealous of the hall's brown, and refuses to even try on yellow to see if it likes it. Library trim says if it can't be red it will just stay white.

I put a coat of a beautiful cream colour in the living room, on 2 doorways and the door to our bedroom, but then the living room said it wanted to be fuchsia! Of all colours! I'm hoping I can talk it into at least trying a lighter colour, but I don't expect to have much luck after the other two. :)

I would like to someday paint the stairs' railing and risers some sort of funky colour or colours, but after hearing that the living wants to be fuchsia, I don't even want to ask what the stairs have in mind! ;)

Beyond colours, though, we have plans for a new kitchen floor (vinyl....we're too rough on floors to do wood in there, and cork would cost around $1000. THAT isn't going to happen!), perhaps a refinishing of the hall's floor. (Both the hall and kitchen have those nasty little stick-down squares. ick!)

We're decluttering....hopefully 2012 will be the year we can actually see past the piles of stuff. ;)

Then there are the odd jobs that need to be done -or redone-.....tub surround need to be re-grouted, kitchen sink needs to be taken up and re-set.....perhaps with a new, taller faucet? Stove needs help because it keeps shocking me. I don't know what to do about that one.....

The hardwood floors need attending, too.....I would like to polish them really well with oil or wax or something, but online says they need to be re-sanded and re-stained. Probably, but 2 years isn't enough time for me to forget doing it before!

Christmas Woes

My husband worked up enough courage (or guilt?) to go to his mom's on Christmas, and take her a gift.

When he got there, she asked, "Did you see what my friend gave me?" and pointed to the porch. He looked out the window and saw a little plaster fellow on the porch, and said, "Oh, yeah, it's cute."

When he left he saw the sign it was holding - "Friends welcome, Family by appointment only."

Huh. Real sweet.

Just a Thought....

Realized tonight I'm raising a couple little liberals. One moreso than the other, but both fit this description fairly well...

."“If by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal", then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal.”"
― John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage

Very interesting to watch them grow and form their opinions, from my POV, having been raised in a VERY conservative home....I find their thoughts on certain topics enlightening, to say the least. ;)