Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Decisions, decisions...

I'm knee deep in redecorating this week!

We've decided to re-carpet our house. Our house is 16 years old and still has the original carpet. It has held up amazingly well over the years but it's finally starting to look worn and it's time for a change.

I've wanted to recarpet for quite a while because I was ready for a change but now that we've finally decided to do it it's stressing me out! First of all, recarpeting your whole house (or the majority of it, anyway) is a huge pain because you have to move everything out. We're recarpeting everything upstairs, which is four bedrooms, so all that furniture has to go downstairs. Matthew has a gigantic loft bed that is going to have to be taken apart to get it out of his room. I'm not looking forward to any of that.

We're also recarpeting the formal living room, dining room and den on the main floor (the rest of the main floor got new flooring a while back), so all of that furniture is going to have to be moved out. We decided not to do the basement this year, so at least we don't have to get all the basement furniture upstairs. We're going to wait and do that next spring.

So that is a huge job that I'm not really looking forward to. I AM, however, looking forward to everything being moved back in when it's done, all nice and new like a new house. That part sounds nice!

The other part that is stressing me out is actually picking carpet! Shawn and I went to the flooring store last week to look at samples. We brought a few things home and I've been looking at them for days and I can't pick one. I'm kind of terrible at this sort of thing. Just picking out a paint color stressing me out. This is like picking out a paint color except that you can't change it if you hate it. I don't want anything too dark, too light, too brown, too grey...it's tricker than I thought it would be. I think I've narrowed it down though and now I'm just waiting for the carpet place to get a few bigger samples of the colors I like to make sure I like it.

Once I pick something out it will be another week or so before we can get it installed. I'm hoping for the end of February or first of March.

In the meantime I decided that this would be a great time to redecorate Josh's bedroom. When we moved here we had the whole house painted and to make it easy I just had both boys room painted light blue and Josh has decorated it over the years with awards he's gotten and school project posters and things but it doesn't really have a cohesive theme and it looks like a little kids room. It was a great little boy room but he's going to be 13 in May and I decided to make it a tradition that when the kids turn 13 they can redecorate their bedrooms and pick out what they want. It's time for a teenage bedroom. I would make him wait until he actually turns 13 but it will be easier to paint at the same time we rip out the old carpet so we decided just to do it now.

He decided he wanted a green bedroom and he picked out some great bedding from Pottery Barn that is a plaid with greens and browns and blues in it. I really like it. Tonight I went to Lowes and picked up a bunch of green and brown paint samples so we can start figuring out a paint color.

Again, I'm not super great at this. I'm not an interior decorator. I'm not good at picking out colors and coordinating things. Josh and I sat down tonight and looked at the paint swatches against the bedding and we narrowed it down to a few. We'll mull them over for a few more days. He's excited to paint. He has to do a project for Scouts and painting a room will work, so I'm going to teach him how to do it and let him do a lot of the painting work himself. I'll supervise and probably do the trim work but he can roll the walls. That will be a fun project!

For decorating we decided to decorate with his hobby, which is filmmaking. We found some cool vintage Star Wars posters that we're going to frame and hang and I'm looking for some sort of metal film reel artwork or something. We're still looking around for decor.

Once all of this is done I think we're going to love it. In the meantime making all these decisions is freaking me out, lol. Most women I know enjoy interior decorating. I don't really. I like things to look nice and I know what I like when I see it, but trying to come up with ideas and coordinate colors and put a room together isn't really a skill I posses. I rely on my friends a lot, who are good at this sort of thing!

So that's what is happening here these days. We've been busy getting ready to redecorate and the kids have been super busy with school. Matthew is doing a big research project for the gifted program and then another research project for his regular class at the same time so we've been at the library helping him get books and get the information together.

This week Josh has to pick out his classes and electives for next year. I'm really proud of him because he decided on his own that he wants to take honors English and honors science next year. He had to go around and get teachers signatures and then write an essay about why he thought he'd be a good candidate for honors English and he has taken the initiative to get all of that done on his own. His teachers approved him and he's really excited for the challenge. I'm really proud of him. His filmmaking teacher has also asked him to be her teachers assistant next year, which he can do as an elective, so that will be really fun for him. I'm proud of him. I still can't believe he's officially going to be a teenager in a few months. I'm still in denial about it, lol.

Clarissa is still loving preschool and doing great. I tried curling her hair again for church on Sunday and it looked super cute. I'm officially jealous of her hair, lol.

So there's the update from our house! I'll keep you posted about the redecorating!




1 comment:

Rae said...

kirklands has great movie themed decor on the cheap!