Style Cure

Behind schedule, but still chugging along

There is a saying among us freelancers: if work is slow, book a vacation and all of a sudden everyone will want to hire you. I suppose the same can be said about starting a big any house project. Things were pretty slow when I signed up for this year’s Apartment Therapy Style Cure, and now things aren’t slow anymore.

I was able to complete a lot of assignments from the comfort of my computer: style questionnaire? Check. Room ground-plan? Check. Room problem areas? Check. Shop for things you like? Check. But now that it’s time to implement the plan, I’m way way behind.

With the Interwebs as my enabler, I purchased the following items:

Bar Cart

Bar Cart (overstock.com)

 

Rug

Rug (chosen because the pattern/color is likely to hide cat puke) (overstock.com)

 

Fancy Picture rail hook

Fancy victorian picture rail hook (HouseOfAntiqueHardware.com)

 

Simple picture rail hook

A not so fancy picture rail hook – just in case the other one didn’t work. (HouseOfAntiqueHardware.com)

 

And that’s how far I got. While most normal people have been enjoying their refreshed rooms, mine looks just like it did before.  Ba-Humbug.

 

Honoring them Vicotrians

Choosing paint colors was never hard – “was” being the operative word here. Ever since we became the owners care-takers of the Pink Lady, I have been struck with what I call Paint Paralysis. Maybe it’s because we’re spending so much time removing all vestiges of questionable paint choices of the past (all manner of pink, blue and, of course, Muppet Flesh). I’ve been mulling over paint colors for almost 3 years, and I haven’t really decided. First I thought I’d jump head first into the gray wagon, but on second thought, that seemed too trendy (although I have used it in the house)

As part of the Style Cure, I must pick a wall color. Needless to say, I’m way behind schedule: I simply can’t decide. My gut keeps veering over to aqua, or what I’d like to call Hospital Green. We  used the color in our previous kitchen and I just love it so much. It’s kitsch, it’s wonderful. But do I want it in my dining room? I don’t know.

To help me decide, I looked up Late Victorian Period paint colors. It didn’t help. While the Victorians were into color, they were not necessarily into colors I would put on my walls – and that makes me feel terrible, because our restoration of the Pink Lady aims to honor the historical character of the house.

Upon further poking around, I found a color palate from the Jazz Age, and that one I like quite a bit (perhaps because of this):

Benjamin Moore also has a historical paints palate, but they neglect to properly qualify what period goes with what color.

Retro Renovation has a super useful list of 20th historical pants by  manufacturer and The National Trust for Historic Preservation has a collection of Valspar paint colors that cover Georgian, Neoclassical, Southwestern and Victorian colors.

The more I research, the more I realize that I don’t see eye to eye with my beloved Victorians when it comes to wall color. I’m going to have to jump ahead a few decades to the Jazz Age. And since the Pink Lady certainly lived through the roaring 20s, that’s historical enough for me. Bring on the aqua Blue Sky SW00 63!

 

 

OH C’MON ALREADY!

The glacial pace in which things are moving these days is starting to get to me. In my mind, by now,  we would be throwing fabulous parties and our house would never be messy (ha!).  In my mind, we’d already have a gorgeous kitchen and a working oven. OMG! No more having to bake in  a countertop electric convection oven. How great would that be?

Well, that’s a question I can’t answer  because we’re still using the old kitchen and the old stove is still broken. The room that will house our future guest room is still the dining room, and quite possibly the second most awful room in the house. It’s always messy and we spend no time in it – because it’s just terrible.

Don’t believe me?

It's hard to even begin to list everything that is wrong with this room, but let's try, shall we?

It’s hard to even begin to list everything that is wrong with this room, but let’s try, shall we?

This room was never meant to be for this long. This room tries (unsuccessfully) to function as our dining room and pantry, but the only thing it succeeds in is being a catch-all for all sorts of junk. Once we build a new kitchen, this room will become a bedroom. Painfully, it’s becoming quite evident that this will happen sometime it the future, far, far away (probably around the time when the sun runs our of fuel, or when the melting ice caps flood our world – whichever one happens last, because we’re going to need that extra time).  With that in mind, it became  pittifully obvious that we can’t live with this room one. More. Minute.

From the depths of my hopelessness, I decided the sign up for Apartment Therapy’s Style Cure. The fireplace mantel will finally be fully stripped. That half peeling, half painted trim will be dealt with. The pantry will become organized and everything will turn out unicorns and rainbow.

Or so I hope – Lordy, this room needs help!