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Sunday, March 22, 2009

Spring has sprung

The weather here is beautiful, the trees are turning green again, flowers are blooming, animals are courting and making baby animals, and I am feeling the need to rip the house apart.

Plans are formulating in my head. Big ones, involving paint and flooring and rocks outside. We had big plans for the house when we first moved in. We had a bunch of money saved up to make changes we foresaw when we bought the place. Some of them happened, some did not. Money ran out, and the winter blahs set it, and improvements on the house came to a screeching halt.

Ah, but Spring is now here, and a tax refund is on the way! Hope springs anew! We're going to do the responsible thing first, paying off our credit card and recharging the savings account, but the rest? The rest is my playing with the house money. The lineup:

1.) Our dining room floor. It's carpet. And we have 4 kids. Need I say more? We'll probably end up going with laminate, because we love the look of wood, but my kids are also scary hard on floors. I need something I can hose down, and not have a heart attack when kids are driving cars all over it.

2.) The dining room and living room walls. Are currently white. And painted with flat paint. The white looks fine. It's light and airy. The flat paint though? Is a huge problem. Hannah has scribbled ALL over ALL the walls. And not just a little bit. It's building up over time, because I can't get it off the flat paint. Anything I try somehow just takes layers of paint off, but leaves the scribbles there. It's bad enough we've joked about scribbling on the walls all the way to the top and saying it's modern decor or something. So, we're going to have it painted. Most of the painting around the house, I've done. But the walls in those rooms are literally two stories high, so thanks but no thanks. We're probably just going to pay someone to do it.

Choosing a color has been hard. See, the walls in those rooms are all connected to each other. So the same color has to be on all the dining room, living room, and hallway walls, plus the wall by the stairs. And did I mention some of those walls are two stories high?






So whatever color we go with, we have to REALLY like. After much agonizing, we think we've made our choice. We wanted something kinda neutral, but not boring, warm, but not too dark. Behr has a color called Stable Hay, which on Behr's site looks blah, but in action looks pretty great I think. Here's an example snagged from someone:



According to that person, it's the same color on all those walls, it just looks different with different angles and the way the light hits. Which should be great in our house. (hopefully)

3. The kitchen counters. Yes, I have done a whole post before about them. We were seriously considering stainless steel, but think we're going to wimp out for now and do corian. Anything will be better than what is in there now, which is stained, scratched, and chipped laminate. I'm thinking of this: http://www.cabinetdiscounters.com/corian/Colors/matterhorn.jpg which I am hoping will look good with the cabinets and paint



4. The front yard. Which right now looks something like this:





Already we've hacked down the holly bushes up against the house. A long term goal will be to put a fan shaped trellis there with a climbing rose or something. But in the short term: we're going to put a lattice around the bottom part of the porch, to cover up the giant hole of nothingness. The lattice and the porch will be painted to match the front door. (which also matches the mailbox and the posts of the carport) We also plan to line the mulched area that has the azaleas with rocks of some sort. Biggish ones. The final thing will be putting in river rock type stuff all along the house where the holly bushes are/were, under the porch, and along the front of the house to the right of the porch. The house hangs over there, and it tends to be just full of mud and weeds, so hopefully that will help some. And all of those things won't cost too much either, so yay.

5. And the final thing, the kids' rooms, which really just involves more paint. I've not fully decided what we'll be doing in the boys' room. I know it involves painting one wall a midnight blue and putting glow in the dark stars on it. Other than that though, I'm not totally sure. Right now their room is just a hodgepodge of boy stuff. I should pick a theme or something and go for it. The girls' room has been decided though. The walls will be Tinkerbell green, seen here: http://disney.go.com/disneyhome/tink/images/bed-paint_tink_palette.jpg and then the frames around the windows, doors, and closet doors will be done in this: http://www.myperfectcolor.com/v/vspfiles/photos/MPC0079700-2T.jpg

And there you have it. My long rambling post about the things that have been swimming around in my head for the past week. Woohoo! I for one, am excited. And would love to hear any thoughts anyone has!

2 comments:

The Mrs. said...

I'm exhausted just thinking about those projects. Your house is going to look AMAZING when it's all said and done. I can't wait for the "after" pictures!

Meghann said...

Yeah, it's a lot to think about, but at least most of it, we'll be hiring other people to do it for us, lol! I am excited about what the house will look like when it's done though!