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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This is the perfect lamp for my husband to work on his art. He draws autobiographical comics that are simply the best! (and I don't think I only love them because I am a prominent character in the stories) hehe.
Couldn't agree more that there's always something more to add to the list. 🙂 Good luck with all your projects and the light looks great!
I would read or work on needlepoint/sewing projects.
I'm learning to crochet. Mortified to realize how my eyes are ageing!
I'm learning to crochet. Mortified to realize how my eyes are ageing!
I would do some drawing and painting. I've been doing more of that lately, and sharing it on instagram, and it's a lot of fun.
I would use it for reading. I also want to check out how it would work for food photography when there isn't enough natural light.
I would use it for reading. I also want to check out how it would work for food photography when there isn't enough natural light.
Arizona-beige-tan is the WORST! And it's everywhere. I have 2 rooms left to paint and the yellowy brown will finally be gone. I also am working on replacing every single lightbulb, and all my lamps have white-white shades because it doesn't sully the light coming out of them. I realize they aren't as trendy, but I don't care, I need white light on pale gray walls to keep my sanity. (As a side-note, my favorite bulbs are not the super efficient greeny-white light ones, but 65w bulbs that are lavender-blue glass, which gives this gorgeous clear-white light! Dah, I love them so much!)
xox
xox
I would use this light on my desk, too, and I think it would motivate me to work more on the recipe book project I have underway!
Our house (we also moved in recently) has similar issues–not a lot of light at night and windows that bake us in the summer! We love our new house though, and are slowing replacing bulbs and such as well. This light looks great–I have a corner of my kitchen that I use as a baking station that is mostly in shadow. The OttLite would be perfect to brighten it up!
I'm excited to hear about your updates! I just bought a house and it's tempting to try to do everything at once. It's probably a good thing that I can't afford to do everything right now because it will give me time to live in the house and figure out what I really want. Plus, the amount of painting I need to do is totally overwhelming (the previous owners LOVED funky colors of paint), so it'll be good to just bite things off in small chunks.
That lamp would be great in our super dark basement where our desk is!
I was just thinking about an OttLite last night when my eyes were crossing under yellow light while cross stitching.
We just moved to OK and live in an apartment with our three kids. Our bedroom has this weird (also really yellow) light on the WALL?! So, to have some "daylight" on my desk would be a huge blessing.
I would love to use this on my nightstand for before bedtime reading!
I need a new lamp on my nightstand!
My whole house feels dim especially my daughter's room. We need to change the ceiling fan to a bigger light and get some lamps.
I'd love it for reading at night or on a table for scrapbooking!
I make and sell jewelry; this would be immensely helpful 🙂
xoxo