Stripping back your house.

[peter]

Mrs P and I have stripped our house out and embarked on a major refit (it began with the room decoration you may remember from another post). We soon learned our own limitations in the decorating art and engaged professionals thereafter, which seems to have been the right thing to do. The kitchen, downstairs flooring, hall and landing are now semi done and most of our furniture stored or conveyed to the local tip. The house has a strange (unsurprisingly) empty ring to it, but hopefully the laying of a new stair and landing carpet on Monday will help with this. It's been an odd experience, decluttering our lives and divesting ourselves of decades worth of accumulated tat, and not at all easy. You become oddly sentimental over the most trivial of items and simultaneously shed others that should have great meaning without so much as a thought (eg I gave away to Oxfam a collection of Billy Bunter books that took me a decade to search out but got all soft on an onion fridge magnet I found on our path {it was like it was trying to find itself a home}).

It's going to be strange to see the new home morphing up around us - a process which has already begun as things slowly take shape - and one never truly knows what the end result will look like. Vague pictures in your head become fluid and evanescent as you randomly add items that change the nature of the whole (example, yesterday I bought a clock for the kitchen that is modern and retro in equal measures, and has to be fitted in to a room that has yet to be painted and furnished with stuff that has yet to be delivered, all of which has been done in small instants of decision {wall color, kithcen unit, lighting, etc} made over a period of time and built into a mental map before it has any concrete existence). Doubts begin to creep in - will it all fit in to a unified whole of style and good taste.....or will we create a kitsch monster of vomit inducing proportions, an outward expression of our inner base uncouthness: will a clock composed of a starburst of coloured balls instead of numerals sit over a cottage style unit with a retro 60's formica grey table and chairs in front - you're 'avin a larf guv ......... either that or you're an interior design genius on your one and only shot at it. It's a one bite cherry for us - what we do is what we get, but my gosh it's been fun (and terrible in equal measure) and I can't wait to see what we finish up with!

[Sorus]

Good luck with the remodeling and whatnot. Decluttering my life was one of the best decisions I ever made. I have become whatever the polar opposite of a hoarder is (an anti-hoarder?) - possibly a little too far on that side of the spectrum at times with my NEED to get rid of stuff sometimes, but it could be worse.

I've been on a bit of a home improvement binge myself this weekend, which started with repainting my bathroom and having leftover paint, so starting to repaint the hallway and running out of paint before I finished, so now I'm seeing ALL things things that need repainting, and will probably buy more paint on my way home from work tomorrow.

I wonder if my landlord's lack of caring about what color I paint stuff extends to the outer hallway. It's currently white and lime green. I'm really not into lime green. I guess I should probably ask.

[Avatar]

Urgh...I really need to do some de-cluttering myself. I have a lot of clutter. Not to mention probably a couple years worth of papers that really should be filed, but are instead tucked between books on my shelves etc.

Meh.

--A

[peter]

Get to it Av; procrastination is the thief of time etc!

(edit; The house is full of men laying a carpet on the stairs and upstairs landing. They are banging and hammering and generally making a todo - but they are working in silence themselves. Grim and taciturn in their manner they have set to the job in an efficient and expedient fashion; I like them my cats have 'run for the hills' as usual and are nowhere to be seen!)

[Sorus]

That's a lot of work.

I'm always torn between the knowledge that I don't own this place and won't live here forever, so there's a limit to how much time and money I should sink into bettering it, and the fact that I hope to remain here for a good while yet, and I might as well make it look decent.

In related news, spent too much money at the hardware store. Have gained 3 types of paint, none of which are lime green. Hoping I can talk him into letting me redo it in turquoise or teal. I expect he will, since I'm doing the work and it currently looks awful.

[aliantha]

I'd vote for turquoise, but that's just me.

peter, my hat's off to you and your home improvement projects. Many's the marriage that hasn't survived such upheaval...

[Avatar]

Get to it Av; procrastination is the thief of time etc!

Pffft. Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

--A

[peter]

Not an easy thing to deal with Ali, having your home of 20 years rendered like an animal carcass before your eyes, but each time you put something back that you have chosen - and it looks great - the buzz is palpable. I've been amazed at how each time something has to be chosen, after a period of only one or the other of us liking a given piece or color or whatever, all of a sudden something jumps out on us that we both instantly know is right - and it's better than any of the ones we liked individually before. Today I have the most beautiful stair and landing carpet I've ever seen - and it's in my house!

Agreed Sorus, about the dilema of spending money on someone else's house. E and I have lived here for 20 years but only bought it last year. Hence it had years and years of DIY paint jobs before I was prepared to sink money into having this refit. As I said, it's a one off job for me, really the culmination of a life's work, and it's a rare privilege for one time in my life, to have both the means and the property to indulge it. It's both frightening and exillerating, but home is very important to me and I want this place to take my breath away in a surge of joy (the joy of seeing all those things you chose and love all together, an outward expression of who you are) every time I open the front door.

[Sorus]

I hope it's everything you've dreamed of.

[Avatar]

Haha, I love your enthusiasm Peter.

--A

[peter]

There have been troughs of despair as well Av when 'like the summer rain came his tears' (especially when the cats had to be sent to the cattery for 12 days for the kitchen and floor refit). Damn did I miss those little monkeys!

[aliantha]

Aww...

[Avatar]

Sheesh, I wish I could get a 12 day break from mine. (Although perhaps not in exchange for constant construction.)

--A

[peter]

It was a nightmare really because we went away for a week to give the installers a free run at the downstairs........and then the supplier only delivered a fraction of the kitchen the day before the work was due to start and we were due to leave. On phoning to find out why, I was told our delivery date was not for another 9 days! Thus I had 3 cats booked into a cattery, a week's holiday 1000 miles away, a team of installers arriving - and no kitchen or flooring for them to fit! They blamed three different things on the mess up: first a driver had gone sick, then a person in the haulage company had screwed up, then a supply problem. Over the course of the day and numerous back and forth phonecalls it became obvious I was getting nowhere so I said " OK - if this isn't happening I'll just have to reschedule the delivery and you'll have to refund my installation fee (4000 pounds or thereabouts)and I'll l get my own guys to do it." Instantly things started moving and the delivery was arranged BUT I spent my entire holiday coordinating piecemeal deliveries between the fitters and the suppliers because they could not get their heads around the fact that there was no point texting me about immanent deliveries because I was not there, and they had to phone the house direct and speak to the installers. If it happened once it happened 5 times and every time I had to phone the house to make sure the guys would be there to accept delivery, since a missed one would mean the work grinding to a halt.
Thus was what should have been a seamless and enjoyable refit rendered by human ineptitude into a grueling slog of stress and effort. But when I got home I had a new kitchen and floor!

[Sorus]

It isn't home without a cat or four underfoot.

[peter]

They are comfortably back home and love the new carpet, fighting the stairs being one of their main functions in the house!

[aliantha]

It isn't home without a cat or four underfoot.

I wouldn't go that far. Two's my limit.

[Avatar]

Sheesh, most days I feel my two are two too many. But that's only because they're work and I worry about them.

--A

[peter]

Me too Av - but a free cat is luckier than a captive dog any day of the week. In the past in UK law you could never be deemed to own a cat - a recognition of the cats right to roam where it will. A cat stays with you because it wants to, not because it has to .....but that freedom brings with it risk and I guess is part of the deal.

[Avatar]

*sigh* Yep. Doesn't make it any easier though. The Buddhists are right...attachment is the root of unhappiness.

--A