It all started with this....
I can't believe that it was over 2 years ago when the seed was planted. After we put the Christmas decorations away I knew I was really tired of our wine country themed kitchen.
Our kitchen before...
Instead of putting things back the way they were, I filled a vase with some lemons and an idea began to form. It simmered for quite awhile. What I was thinking was very different than what we were used to.
We had played it safe decorating our first home (Who am I kidding? I didn't really decorate it at all for the first 3 years we lived there). The walls were plain and white; the tile, white; the carpet,white;..really, it was a lot of white. It was the first place we owned and we could hang stuff on the walls, but we didn't for a long time. We didn't know what to do with it, so we didn't do much of anything.
Oh, but we did have a huge island with a Corian countertop. It was purple. We selected it when we built the house. Purple? What were we thinking? Now I am wondering if it was that countertop choice that made me want to move. Did I mention I only dislike one color, only one? Yep, you guessed it....purple. I don't think I disliked it then. Heck, I also had 2 bathrooms decorated in purple stuff. But today, yeah even my 5 year old knows that I don't like purple.
Here it is in all it's purple and white glory (at least this photo was taken after I wasn't afraid to try a little decorating). I guess a wine country theme worked great with purple.
And WOW!! That is a lot of white, and I think the tile had purple tones in it. I think the grout was purple.
What do you know? There are the lemons on the right side of the island. Maybe the seed was planted a long, long time ago. :)
When we built our current home, we opted for whole house "Apache Tan", and other than my craft room and my oldest's room, lived safe with a house full of earth tone decor for almost 7 years. Brown walls, brown tile, beige carpet, stone, cherry wood, brown leather...BROWN. Want proof...here is the "before" family room.
A little disclaimer...this is when it was nice and neat...(circa 2005 or 2006) that would be before kids. Apparently, it was also when I didn't know I should turn off the camera flash and use natural light when taking a picture.
(If you thought I was going to show you reality this early in this blog's life, sorry. If you really want to know what real life not picked up looks like...follow the link in my side bar to my personal blog. I am sure there are pictures there that do not show a clean and clutter free home).
That original seed that was planted a couple of years ago began to fully form into a new vision for our home. A vision now that has taken on a life of it's own. How is that one idea or project leads to another, and another, and a 100 more?
My dilemma...a limited budget (don't most of us face this?). The first 2 jobs were to replace the badly worn carpet in the main rooms and paint. Painters are expensive and I have a long list of needs and wants that gets added to daily. The square footage of the immediate floor replacement was less expensive to hire out.
We opted to have the 800 square feet of new flooring installed for us. Leaving the painting as our first big DIY project . Phase 1 of "Project Paint" started in February and involves close to 2,500 square feet of our almost 4,000 square foot home.
As of today, we have finished around 2,000 square feet, with 500 to go, plus repainting all the doors and trim. Our flooring has been installed and now it seems we are forever in the middle of a DIY project.
Stay tuned as we share our tales of joy and frustration. I'll sign off with this sneak of what's to come.
Michelle
