Until I moved into my current home this January, I had lived in rental apartments my entire life--I even grew up in one. I think that many folks are so driven to own their own home in early adulthood because they grew up in a house and they think of it as something you are supposed to do when you grow up. It's not that I wouldn't have liked to have owned a home at a younger age; but being single and living in a major metropolitan area where real estate was mind-blowingly expensive, a home that I would want and where I would want to live just was not within my financial grasp, even though I made a pretty good living.
Being a rule-following kind of gal, when my apartment lease said "No painting.", I didn't paint. Hence, my blog post on Labor Day about learning to paint a wall at age 55. A friend asked me "Why do you want to paint your bedroom? Do you not like white walls?" And my answer is that I forcibly lived with white walls my entire adult life; and, now that I own my own home and I can do with it what I damned well please (within limits), I want something other than white walls.
To update those who read that Labor Day post (The joy of independence), I did ask my friends for help in finishing the bedroom painting and it is now done. Mike is so experienced that he painted the whole darned room (2 coats) in the time it took me to tape, trim and paint just the alcove portion of the room (1 coat). I still helped--well, he may not have thought of it as helping, to be absolutely honest, but I wanted to be a part of the experience. I cut in around all the switchplates and did some of the painting around windows/doors/corners.
So once the bedroom paint was dry, I put all the furniture back, hung some new art and mirrors and did some decorating. Below is what the "new" bedroom looks like. Yea, I know, it still sorta looks like white walls, but it isn't. The color didn't come out exactly as shown on the paint card, but at least it's warmer than white walls. I was going for a light-but-rich cream color. It looks like that in some light, but in other light has more of a pink undertone to it.
I have been furnishing and decorating my place on and off for nearly the entire 8 months that I've lived here. It has been a true pleasure and so much fun. I watch for the sales and I do a little bit at a time to keep the financial expenditures under control (I'm living on a pension now, after all). This recent nesting process reminds me how passionate I was about interior design/ decorating in my 20s, when I got one of those mail order degrees in the subject. I never had the confidence at that time to actually get a job doing it, or strike out on my own doing it, but now I'm thinking "Hey...I'm not so bad at this."
Sometimes our passion for something and our confidence to take it somewhere don't coincide at the same time in our life. That's okay. All I know is that I'm having a ball doing it now!
To quote my friend Pam, "Nests are best!" Happy nesting from my nest to yours (with apologies to Paula Deen).
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