Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Today on the cleanup menu...

...is Painting Walls and Editing Books.

One thing that sold us on this house was architectural detail like wide baseboards, crown molding, columns, & a medallion in the living room. When we moved into our house 3 years ago the walls were white and the trim was a fantastic array of jewel tones - teal, aqua, purple, red, pink. Not my decorating style. I spent a week painting over all the trim and walls on the first floor, then we moved in. Then I tackled the kitchen, which hadn't been updated since the 1940s except for appliances. Steve helped me add molding to the plain doors, and then I painted them, stained the new island, added shelves for dish storage, refloored and some other stuff.

Then we got Riley. Neither of us had never had a puppy before, and I couldn't get a lot done because she insisted on being close by my side. That meant the painting piddled out around the top of the stairs. I had gotten the whole first floor finished and then lost my steam.

We hired a guy to help with Steve's office and the upstairs bathroom last summer, and he did all the trim on the second floor (something I couldn't gear up for again). The only thing left was to paint the walls in the hallway. Today (ahem) I finally did it and it looks great. Walls are sage and trim is ivory.

Next is tackling the bookshelves. We love to buy books and CDs, but I'm learning a lot about myself lately and one new nugget of wisdom is that I am not a big reader. I like to think I am, but if I have down time I'll pick up a magazine or watch a show from the DVR. And I don't go back and look up products in Consumer Reports' back issues, I look them up online. My, how the internet has changed things. Goodbye, back issues of magazines and books we never read.

I'm sorry if you've come here looking for jewelry banter, but working on the house is all I'm doing right now!

(That photo is of the bookshelves when I was mostly finished.)