Real Talk!

Okay, it’s time that I admitted it. I’m in the midst of a mess! Anyone who has experienced it will tell you, there’s nothing more horrid than renovating.

It’s not that I’m doing anything THAT major. I’ve ripped out a lighted dropped ceiling in the kitchen, a dreadful 70’s wrought iron railing and we’re re-facing the cupboards… peeling off old wallpaper and painting.

We also tore out a wall and coat closet in the living room and we’re painting the master bedroom and ensuite.

This week, we got lucky and managed to book our trusty painter for a few days and he’s going to do the trim- plus he’s promised to fix the mess we’ve made cutting colour in at the ceilings. It is extraordinary what a painter can do with a paintbrush. He makes it all look so easy! He claims that much of it has to do with the brushes and rollers that you use. I think its years of experience.

He’s partly right, though. It irks me, especially. I should have known better. For several years, I was in the business of selling paint and wallpaper and I know that you need to use good tools. Some paintbrushes cost more than the paint!

It’s all coming together. Slowly but surely, it’s starting to look a little like a house again. A messy house, but a house.

I’ve resolved to get rid of a lot of the chatchkas and gee-gaws. I’m a sentimentalist, so it’s really hard to do. One time, when I moved, my sister forced me to burn several boxes of stuff- mostly paper with a scribble on it… I almost cried, until I realized it was scribbles, I had held onto the stuff for years and looked upon it as my daughter’s first art!

I have “stuff” that was my grandmother’s, stuff that was her grandmother’s… stuff that isn’t particularly pretty or expensive… some stuff that’s broken, some badly repaired but these are things that someone else held onto for a long time and I’m just the current guardian.

Okay, I’ve been saying it’s time to streamline for a long time… but this time I really mean it! I can’t wait to have the furniture back in the right rooms and stuff semi-organized again. We’re planning some work outside, to the house. There are other things I want to do inside, but I just can’t bear to think about that right now.

I wonder how long it will take before I get the itch to decorate again. I know where I’m headed… the planning has been done… we’ll see how long it takes me to forget the horror of living like this.