Friday, May 15, 2009

Making a change

I've been looking around my house lately and realizing that it has a bad case of the matchy-matchies. Take the master bathroom, for instance. The level of pink-and-green-ness in there is truly nauseating. I think I caused that to happen, over time, because of a needlepoint picture my great-aunt gave me that I hung in there, but really, there's such a thing as overkill. I'm going to need to do something about it.

Recently we replaced the cat-scratched slipcovers in our tv-room with inexpensive white ones from IKEA. I was a little apprehensive about doing this but decided to push ahead with the assurance that we could wash, and even bleach, them whenever we needed to. And we have. We've put in a multi-colored checked carpet and have covered the arms and backs of the chairs with the various afghans, quilts and throws I've made over the years, and I like the way it looks and feels. I'm thinking I'd like to do more of this.

I've already purchased inexpensive white slipcovers for the dining room chairs, but I'm holding off using them until we start using the dining room as a dining room again. I think I'd like to make/buy/otherwise acquire white slipcovers for the living room as well -- I'm really loving white these days, and since the furniture is still perfectly good (except where the cats have dug in) there's no reason to replace it -- though a part of me wants to ditch it all and go with secondhand. I want to decorate with color and texture and freedom and things I love, and not worry about whether anything "goes."

I'm collecting vintage fabrics and am hoping to replace some of my bedroom and bathroom linens with handmade items -- in particular, I want to make a duvet cover out of pillowcases and a shower curtain from a 70's bedsheet (which means I will need to learn how to make buttonholes -- a new skill!) I think I will also make some new napkins and dish towels, and think about what to do for a tablecloth or place mats. And then there is the question of what to do with all of my old matchy-match things -- the sheets and blankets and towels and such -- how can I repurpose them? So much to think about!

What changes would you like to make in your home?

1 comment:

  1. Right now I've got a bee in my bonnet about our bathroom. It's the one room we basically haven't touched since we moved in, and I've been slowly acquiring the pieces we need to do the overhaul, and now I'm just tired of waiting! But alas, even though the complete over haul I'm day dreaming of would probably only total about $2.5k, we are too poor right now to afford it. Somehow, between last week and this week this situation has become completely unacceptable and it literally stresses me out to be in there! Yes. Crazy. Maybe if I can just decide on the right paint color I'll be able to chill out and wait for a while longer.

    It's never really done, is it?

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