Designed to Stay

Have you ever watched Designed to Sell on HGTV and expected the homeowners to say at the end of the show, "Wait, I've changed my mind! This place looks so good now, I'm not moving out after all." That's usually my reaction. With that in mind, I've been reading the book based on the TV show. I want some ideas for making our small rooms seem as spacious as possible. A lot of the advice is just what you'd expect: remove the clutter; focus attention on the room's best features; repaint; for a color scheme, think neutral, neutral, neutral. Since we're going to live here for the foreseeable future, we don't have to be quite so conservative with the decor. But I'm definitely aboard with the no-clutter theme.

The author says, "Buyers love built-ins." Well, I love them too. They add charm and function to a room. That's why we're building them. However, the process is painfully slow. Add to that the fact that older houses like ours have no true right angles, meaning that no matter how hard we work to get the built-ins level where they should be level, and parallel where they should be parallel, they end up looking slightly uneven from one vantage point or another. I think the built-ins for this house will end with the living room. For the rest of the house, I'll buy furniture instead. If a future buyer expresses a wish for more built-ins, I'll tell them to nail the furniture to the wall and call it good.

Since work on said built-ins is proceeding at a snail's pace, there are no updated pictures to add right now.
However, just to keep things interesting, here are a couple of pictures of a bedroom we converted into a library/office. It's the only room in the entire house that's all the way finished, although these pictures were taken before all the furniture got moved in.

First, we re-insulated, put up new drywall, and replaced two small, square, high windows with a single large egress window to meet local safety codes. To decorate, we went for a simple, clean, modern look, inspired by the mahogany bookshelves my husband made many years ago. The books and knickknacks provide color and pattern enough, so I chose a neutral beige ("Gobi Desert" by Behr) for the walls.

The beige-on-beige carpet has just enough pattern to give it a bit of life, but not enough to compete with the bookshelves. We liked the look of crown molding, but we didn't want to overwhelm such a small room, so we chose the smallest molding we could find to stay in scale. The molding, doors, ceiling, and other trim were painted with Behr "Swiss Coffee," a beautifully clear white with just a hint of ivory. For the final touch, we sanded and refinished the hardwood floors. I love the way it all turned out, lively and interesting, but restful and relaxed, too.

It's nice to have one good room to retreat to when the rest of the renovations get too crazy. Or too slow.