I’ve been reading lots of decorating books lately, and my latest suggests I make a list of things I love and then look for themes.
- islands
- linen
- blue
- wool
- tweed
- ireland
- a clear day, not too hot
- handmade
- neutrals
- a good book
- comfort
- birdsong
- carnations
- tartan
- babies and chubby cheeks
- whitewashed wood
- curves in furniture
- green
- citron
- numbers
- maps
- detailed carpentry / woodsmanship
- birch
- mid-century modern
Next, I’m supposed to pick out the themes. There’s definitely a homespun concept in there – wool, tweed, handmade. My color favorites are those that make me think of sea and sky, except citron. I love the idea of Ireland.
Next, I’m supposed to pick out pictures.
Apparently I love chairs!
I’m actually a big fan of wall paper, but I don’t think I’m brave enough to do it in my house. We do have wallpaper in one room. I’m not thrilled with it, so perhaps we could replace that with more wallpaper. It’s interesting that it’s fallen so out of favor. I wonder why. Perhaps there is more variety in paint available now.
Wouldn’t you love to have this on your wall?
I also have a soft spot for ornate things, like this mirror.
Lose the ampersand, and this is great.
I can never resist teal and turquoise. But I think this is better in theory than practice.
I love this look. In practice, though, I like my floors covered with nice, soft carpets.
As we’ve decorated our house over the last 7 years, my tastes have totally started to change. I find myself wanting our entire house repainted, ESPECIALLY the trim, which is all off-white. I just feel like it makes everything look dingy and I hate it. But I can’t even imagine how much it would cost to have all the trim painted, and I know I’ll never do it myself, so I keep trying to resign myself to the fact that it will just have to be off-white.
But maybe I’ll just pay someone to redo it all anyway. Lol.
What do you mean by the trim – the baseboards? Maybe we don’t have trim.
It probably wouldn’t cost that much to redo it. We had our entire rental house repainted for $1500 – the whole house.
(Jen, I think she means molding – like chair rail, floor molding, crown molding. Its very common in houses here, word is used interchangably with trim, at least in Houston)
So Byron just re-painted all the trim in all the rooms of the house except the living room. Took him the better part of the week doing it full time. I suggested to him that it would be easier to tear it off, buy new trim, paint it outside, and reinstall it. Painting trim is a bit harder because of the oil based paint you have to use. But we wanted to do it before we replaced the carpet, don’t want to get paint on new carpet.
Tastes do change. When I painted my house in 2002, I wanted bright, vibrant colors. Now I want more mellow earth tones, and husband wanted desert southwest colors. It was fun repainting the house (and by “fun”, I mean directing Byron to do it). As we re-hung pictures and moved furniture, things got moved around, different walls, different rooms, etc. It really felt like a bigger change than it was and I am noticing things that have blended into the background for quite a while.
Anyway. This time I swear though I am going to keep the trim clean.
Interesting. We don’t have “trim,” and I don’t think it’s all that common around here. I think you mostly see it in older houses. It looks nice, but it sounds like it’s a bit of a pain.
By trim I mean baseboards, window sills, mantle, all doors, and a bit of crown molding. It’s a lot.
Ah, I see what you mean. I’m not sure if that stuff got painted when we had our rental house done. I’m thinking not. Our doors were this cheap fake wood stuff, for example.