It all started with buying a large screen television. Now it has blossomed into repainting one room, a new entertainment center, completely re-doing another room, and maybe refinishing ALL the wood trim in the house.
We bought ourselves a brand new 57" HDTV. Looking over the room where it was to live we decided that we needed more space. So we moved things around and ended up putting a chair from the living room into our bedroom. The living room theme, if you can call it that, is taupe. The bedroom is patterned after the “Water Lilies” painting by Monet. A taupe chair clashes somewhat with dusty rose and lavender.
So we set off to get the chair reupholstered. The cost estimate for the chair alone was as much as it had cost brand new. Since we tossed in a few other goodies we ran the estimate up to almost $2400. Once we slept on the idea we each felt that $2400 spent in other rooms of the house would be a better investment. Our bedroom is already in wonderful shape. If we move the big chair to another room, then it’s taupe-ness isn’t a problem.
We decided that the living room would be our next project. We looked at and picked out a new throw rug and a new entertainment center to house the TV. And we are getting estimates on having the room repainted after some minor patch work to one wall. This will use up the $2400 very nicely, and at the same time make our living room much more to our liking.
While at the furniture store we saw a very nice kitchen/dining room table. Currently we are using eating end of our kitchen as our office. Once upon a time we thought about converting the 3-season porch into an office, but we have continually put that project off. Over lunch yesterday we talked about moving the “I love Lucy” collection to the unused bedroom, which neither of us wants as an office, and turning the Lucy room into our office. We’d rip up the carpet and put down a laminate wood floor, slap some new paint on the walls, add a ceiling fan, and get me a new desk. Ta-da! A new office, with hard wood floors and matching desks, and an actual eat-in kitchen. This would give us an excuse to buy a table and chairs. That leads (eventually) to re-decorating the kitchen. Maybe next year.
Of course putting down a blonde or light colored wood floor will clash with the darker colored trim in the new office. Once you strip that and re-paint it then the trim in the rest of the house starts to look out of place, so while you are re-doing trim you may as well do it all. It’s an 1800 square foot house with an appropriate number of windows and doorways. There’s a lot of trim. Oh and the interior doors are dark to match the existing trim. They’d need to be stripped and redone as well.
All this just to watch letterbox movies without the black bar at the top and bottom of the picture.