3/6/15
Interior Disaster
I am an interior disaster.
We bought a house last May. (Not the photo above, thankfully -- that's photographic hyperbole.) A lovely new-build blank slate. I was beside myself with excitement at the thought of insta-decorating it, just as I've done with the seven rental properties we've lived in the past eight or so years. Insta-home is my specialty! A few well-placed knickknacks, some artwork...I know the drill.
Only...I seem to have lost my touch. Cases in point:
Only...I seem to have lost my touch. Cases in point:
- I've brought in and rejected no fewer than three rugs for the living room. You'd think with each I'd be getting that little bit closer to the nebulous aesthetic I'm aiming for...but the opposite is true. The first rug was by far the best of the three (though still absolutely wrong); the last was, both M and I agreed, an unmitigated disaster. We are on rug-hold. Freya must play on hard laminate. Her Safta would not be impressed.
- Our bedroom is blue. Blue, blue and more blue. I'm so sick of blue! And equally terrified of injecting color! We slumber in decor-limbo.
- I admit to purchasing the living room sofa for form rather than function. Meaning I picked it out online and didn't really pay much attention to how, erm,d **comfortable** it might be. The upshot of which is -- M hates it. Like, won't-sit-in-it-drags-a-chair-into-the-room-instead hates it. Soooo, I did the practical, wifely thing and put it up for sale online -- I even had a buyer for it, but...we would have had to take a small hit on the price. And suddenly M was all, "no, it's okay, let's keep it at least for a couple of years. Pillows -- pillows will make the difference." And so we kept it. And a friend of his came over last week and commented that the living room (the sofa is pretty much the only thing in there right now) looked like the waiting area of a doctor's office. Cue reappearance of M's passive aggressive sofa hatred. It is, quite literally, the beige, corner-shaped elephant in the room.
- Freya's bedroom is perfect. It took no effort at all -- I randomly chose things I loved and it all came together beautifully. It's also pristinely clean and untouched because SHE REFUSES TO SLEEP IN THERE. She slumbers in blue decor-limbo with us.
- In our kitchen, we have: modern, off-white gloss units, chrome appliances and pale tile floors (already in the house when we bought it); an absurd Moroccan mosaic vinyl backsplash in blue, red and grey (what was I ON?); a country kitchen table and chairs (gifted); an orange sofa with turquoise cushions and a lot of dog hair and crumbs...all visible to the naked eye because the floor is light and un-patterned enough to show EVERYTHING. I was hoping for Scandi-design chic, but we are firmly in schizo-design territory. Don't know quite how to claw it all back, but instinct tells me to start with the backsplash.
- There are no pictures hung anywhere (apart from Freya's perfect room.) My mania can't bear the thought of nails et al on pristine, new walls (because inevitably we will hang something in the wrong place, thus creating visible holes where there don't need to be holes.) Instead, our artwork remains stacked against the wall in the spare bedroom with blankets shading it from view, like sleeping guests, who may eventually stay in the room if, as and when we maybe, like, get a bed for it...
- I impulse-buy curtains that are the wrong size. Somehow we always end up in fabric and home design stores without the written-down measurements so I guesstimate the length and width of our large and non-standard house windows. When-oh-when will I learn that 90 inches (standard, readymade curtain length) is not (I repeat, not) long enough for our windows? Fifth time will perhaps be the charm. Sidenote: also, do not order curtains from a disreputable websites in China. I work for a technology company and, still, in my house decorating optimism and frenzy, had to learn this the hard way.
- For those of you who followed the saga that was Freya's nursery preparation in our old house, you'll recognize that choosing a paint color is no simple task for me. Eleven shades of yellow later, I finally settled on something between warm sunshine and butter. It took three coats to cover all my tester spots. Multiply that by six rooms, with differing lighting and internal style -- the tyranny of possibility is upon me! This is a nice problem to have, don't get me wrong. (I'm not really complaining.) I could probably patchwork-cover an entire room at this point with all the tester paint tubes I've invested in. "Hmmm, actually, maybe that's not such a bad idea...?" says wicked design angel on my shoulder...you see what I'm up against?
- We've finally put up feature wallpaper in the living room and I'm terrified to tell M that I'm not sure it's right. Pretty sure I'm just going to have to live with it for a few years at this point, or find a new husband. I like him more than I dislike the wallpaper, so we'll go with option A.
But I still have ideas...and optimism. So much optimism. Presently in the form of weathered brick effect wallpaper in the kitchen. What do you think? No, you know what? Don't tell me. I probably won't listen anyway.
Onwards & upwards.
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