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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It took us forever to hang pictures in our house. What finally pushed us to do it was that I had some friends coming into town for a visit, and I really wanted it to look like we actually live here. A great lamp is a benefit to any project or just pleasant to read by.
Balmy temperature of a pizza kiln! Too funny! I live in the sometimes dreary Pacific Northwest, so I'd love it for reading or grading papers in the evening.
We were really good about painting a few rooms in our house before we moved in….Now it's 10 years and 2 kids later, and I haven't made a whole lot of progress beyond that!
My little apartment has few windows, large shade trees blocking the little amount of sunlight that could get in, and pretty terrible artificial lighting in general. I will have to look into this idea of brighter, more natural lamp light. I could use it for all of my nighttime reading and studying.
Ooh! I need one of those lamps in my office! I was sewing in there the other day and it was so dark!
That is a lovely lamp! We have plenty of overhead lights, by it is nice to have something on a table or desk.
My husband's dark office would love this light. Thanks for the giveaway.
I work from home at least half the time and it's SO DARK here in the winter. So I would love to have some nice light just for working away on my laptop. I think I'd also use it for sewing. Thanks!
I like to think of the sloooow progress we've made in updating our home as extra time to dream up the possibilities! 😉
That lamp would be perfect in the sewing nook my husband is creating for me at the moment.
I need a light like that for my classroom! I teach in a row with no windows and I think I would get so much more done and graded if I had a really bright desk lamp like this!!
We have incredibly yellow light in our basement apartment, which means there's basically ALWAYS yellow light. Thankfully I think we're getting close to house hunting days, but until then, that lamp would be awesome! I'm always cringing when I look at the projects I worked on at night in the light of day.
Mostly reading but even just enjoying life! The northeast winters are rough when it gets dark SO SO early
For sewing!
As a reader and knitter, I would love this!
I would use it for sewing!
I'm living in a basement apartment with TERRIBLE lighting – even with floor and table lamps there always seems to be a dark side of the room. It's miserable, especially in winter! A lamp like that would be a lifesaver.
I really need a light in my sewing room!!
I'd use it for illuminating sheet music. The overhead light in our house is super dim.
I would use it for reading
I would love to use it for reading and needlework.
Thanks for the chance to win!
wildorchid985 at gmail dot com
Seriously? Reading in bed of course! Also, if you wait long enough, green carpet will probably come back as a new rage soon enough. 🙂