The Tip of the House Projects Iceberg
We’ve now lived in our house for seven months (although it seems much longer, frankly).
By this point, we’re starting to get a good feel for things we want to change and where to start.
My parents like to joke that one phrase that has never been said in the history of the English language is, “The house is done” and I’m sure we’ll never have every potential project in this house done.
But we do want to make steady progress toward making our house a place we love to be, and we are definitely spending many weekends visiting model homes and the hardware store, because basically we know how to party.
These are our top priorities right now:
- Painting. The main living areas are all beige, beige, beige, with the bedrooms painted in charming shades of orange, neon mint, and navy/burgundy stripes. This month, we finally picked up some buckets of paint and repainted the entire kitchen, breakfast nook and family room in a much better shade of white. Our bedroom (goodbye, orange!) is up next, as is my office. And then the girls’ bedrooms and the laundry room and dining room. Okay, fine. The whole house needs a good dousing with paint.
- Flooring. The green carpet just has to go. We can’t make much progress at all without replacing it because it’s just so ugly and no amount of lovely furniture can disguise the fact that said furniture is situated on a bed of green hideousness. We’re also strongly considering replacing the carpet in the basement with wood laminate to open it up a little and also make it more friendly for messy crafts like play dough and painting. In a world where money was no object, we’d probably replace the tile too, because Bart doesn’t really care for it, but I’m not sure that will happen because it is fairly expensive, large tile and it’s certainly not offensive. It’s just not what we would have picked.
- Lighting. The lighting in this house is just SO yellow, it’s ridiculous. We’ve been slowly changing out bulbs for higher wattage and ditching the yellow covers on the ceiling lamps, but even on those, we’re recognizing that our house definitely needs more lighting overall. The corners stay dim with only ceiling lamps, and although this house has a lot of windows, you kind of have to keep them closed in the summer because otherwise your room quickly reaches the balmy temperatures of a pizza kiln. My office is one of the very worst, so I was delighted to add a natural light lamp to my desk. It’s been so depressing to go into my cave in the evenings and work under the most yellow light imaginable, so having a light that produces beautiful, bright light and looks sleek and modern in the daytime is a huge bonus. I also feel like my eyes don’t feel nearly so tired when I work with it on. And if I ever get around to working on calligraphy, it’ll be perfect for giving me some decent light to practice by – that’s something way more fun to have under my lamp than my laptop.
- Family Room and Breakfast Nook Decor. We have so many blank walls right now (in part because we know we’ll just take things down to repaint) and we’re trying to figure out what we really want these spaces to look like – our highest priority is the family room and breakfast nook since that’s where we spend the most time. You cannot imagine how many evenings we have spent looking at Pinterest or paging through decorating books and magazines.
I haven’t even started thinking about the girls’ rooms yet. Come visit in 2019 and we’ll hope to be closer to our dream house.
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I have a floor lamp one for my sewing desk and love it
We've decided that we're doing our whole house in hardwood and add acent rus where needed. After living in 2 places together, we've come to the conclusion that my husband is allergic to carpet. We'd have waited.to replace the flooring but my husband is absolutely miserable and has a hard time breathing!
We also need better light, I'll have to look into those lamps!
I'd definitely use that Kano on my sewing table. It is in the basement and I only ever get a chance to sew in the evenings so I totally relate to feeling like I'm in a cave.
I'd definitely use that Kano on my sewing table. It is in the basement and I only ever get a chance to sew in the evenings so I totally relate to feeling like I'm in a cave.
I would definitely put it by my sewing machine! I love to sew and with my machine in the basement (in not the best lighting) it would come in very handy!
I'd use mine on my sewing table. It would really help light up our dark basement.
As someone who works from home full time, that light would be amazing in my office. Michigan is very depressing in the winter and I could use some nice light!
It would be great for sewing and knitting!
All our walls are beige as well. I really want to paint but it's an open floor plan. Basically that means we have to paint everything all at once. There's no easy stopping point. That's the only reason I haven't tackled it yet. I'm in my last year of grad school and have to work on homework late at night with low lights so I don't wake my son. This light would help out in that department so much.
Like the other commenters, I'd put it on my sewing table. My husband and I are slowly, slowly starting our home improvement projects. My top priority is replacing carpet, as well.
As a college student, there are so many ways I could use this lamp! Of course, I would mainly use it for school work, but think of how pretty this little lamp would make an otherwise dull dorm room!
I'd put it on my husband's desk! He's recently taken a lamp from our bedroom to put near his desk which means our bedroom is sooo dark (read:no overhead light).
This lamp would be so helpful for crafting at night in my dark office
I'm thinking about repainting this summer. Eric is not so keen.
I've heard of those lights! They are perfect for crafts when it's not daytime.
I think I'd use that light on my nightstand. It seems like a nice amount of light for reading at night.
Somehow we always manage to find another project to work on in our house too! One of the best things we did lighting wise, was to buy daylight LED bulbs. They are completely which (like I can set my white balance to sunlight on my camera, white) and there is absolutely no yellow feel. I LOVE them. We have a house that was built in the 70's and has little-to-no overhead lighting, so throwing a few of those bulb in out lamps has made a huge difference! Although, most of our upcoming projects include adding can lights to every room in the house 😉
We're in the same boat. We've only been here 3 months but I just can't stand this wall paint any longer, so paint chips are lining up all over the house.
I would use the ottlite to help me do crafts at night after the kids have gone to bed.
I'm not a super crafty/ project-y person, so I'd probably just use it for reading