I haven't talked about it much, but during most of 2009 I was thinking about my house. John and I bought our house in 2001 in a neighborhood in Chicago called Ukrainian Village (for those of you who aren't familiar with Chicago, it's a city of neighborhoods, and if you ask most people where they live, they'll tell you the name of their neighborhood). When we bought, life was still unsettled, uncertain. We'd only been married for a little over 2 years and we looked at the house more as an investment in an up and coming neighborhood rather than someplace we planned to stay for a long time. That said, we decided to go with the house option rather than a condo, assuming that if we liked it, the extra space would give us more flexibility and possibly room for a family.
Flash forward to now... we've been here almost 9 years. The neighborhood has just gotten better and better with the passage of time. We did start our family here. We still don't know if we are living in our "forever home", but it is clear that for now, this house is where we are. During 2009, it really started to hit me that in many ways we had never really moved past thinking about the place where we live as "our house". By now, shouldn't I think of it as "our home"? But it was clear that I didn't. Only in a very few places had we done anything to really mark that it was ours. I'd hired an interior decorator to work on the small powder room on the first floor. John painted Z's room a lovely pale purple. We'd hung a few bits and pieces on the wall, placed a few photos here and there, but other than that, I realized that I would be hard pressed, as a visitor, to identify who lived in this house. I felt a little sad, for both me and our house and decided that it was time to give the place a bit more character and give us a place that felt like home.
To get started, I focused on our master bedroom and our guest room. I made a decent start, but for a variety of reasons just couldn't keep myself focused. And then Julie decided to talk about a project she wanted to tackle on her blog: A Room a Month. The idea behind this project is to identify 12 rooms in your house and, each month, try to tackle some of the things that would make you happier about the room, make the room a better place, or just need to be done. Maybe you don't get everything done, that's okay, but for one month you focus on the issues with that room. For me, for one month, I'm going to think about what I need to do to make any given room more a part of my home and a place I want to be and less just a random piece of house.
So, to kick things off, here are, in no particular order, the rooms that I want to focus on during the year:
* The kitchen, dining area and family area are really all part of one large room, but because the things that would make them better are really very different things, I'm separating them out.
The area I'm going to start with (I think, this may change as I continue to think about it) is the Family Area. This is a part of the long, high ceilinged rectangular space that holds our kitchen and dining area as well. This is the area that Z plays in and that has started to accumulate most of her toys and books. It needs the following:
Flash forward to now... we've been here almost 9 years. The neighborhood has just gotten better and better with the passage of time. We did start our family here. We still don't know if we are living in our "forever home", but it is clear that for now, this house is where we are. During 2009, it really started to hit me that in many ways we had never really moved past thinking about the place where we live as "our house". By now, shouldn't I think of it as "our home"? But it was clear that I didn't. Only in a very few places had we done anything to really mark that it was ours. I'd hired an interior decorator to work on the small powder room on the first floor. John painted Z's room a lovely pale purple. We'd hung a few bits and pieces on the wall, placed a few photos here and there, but other than that, I realized that I would be hard pressed, as a visitor, to identify who lived in this house. I felt a little sad, for both me and our house and decided that it was time to give the place a bit more character and give us a place that felt like home.
To get started, I focused on our master bedroom and our guest room. I made a decent start, but for a variety of reasons just couldn't keep myself focused. And then Julie decided to talk about a project she wanted to tackle on her blog: A Room a Month. The idea behind this project is to identify 12 rooms in your house and, each month, try to tackle some of the things that would make you happier about the room, make the room a better place, or just need to be done. Maybe you don't get everything done, that's okay, but for one month you focus on the issues with that room. For me, for one month, I'm going to think about what I need to do to make any given room more a part of my home and a place I want to be and less just a random piece of house.
So, to kick things off, here are, in no particular order, the rooms that I want to focus on during the year:
- Master Bedroom
- Z's Room
- Guest Room
- Living Room
- Basement Bathroom
- Master Bathroom
- Office
- Office Bathroom
- Kitchen*
- Dining Area*
- Family Area*
- Main Floor Powder Room
- Laundry room
* The kitchen, dining area and family area are really all part of one large room, but because the things that would make them better are really very different things, I'm separating them out.
The area I'm going to start with (I think, this may change as I continue to think about it) is the Family Area. This is a part of the long, high ceilinged rectangular space that holds our kitchen and dining area as well. This is the area that Z plays in and that has started to accumulate most of her toys and books. It needs the following:
- Additional storage unit for toys (Ikea here we come!)
- Small book case for better book storage
- Small couch/loveseat to make a sitting area to go with the rocking chair that is already there.
- Paint for the wall.
- Some artwork that works both as family friendly and mostly adult, since the room is still home to the kitchen and dining area as well.
Is it sad that this post make me ridiculously excited? I don't own a house so I have to live vicariously through other peoples' redecorating. Yay!
I love your idea. I have a similar feeling about "home". We live in an apartment, not a home, but we've been here almost 3 years. We might move this summer to a nice apartment, I've always looked forward to it, because this place is kind of a dump. But now that the move is likely, I am not sure I want to leave here . . . as I kind of think of it as home.
I have lived in my home about thirty years, and am still making changes, some big and some small. It took about ten years to get it basically the way I wanted it - a room at a time. But not a room a month. More like a room a year. The kitchen was the last thing (so far.) You can see some pictures of the kitchen work at -- http://joannasweb.net/Pages/quelle_horreur.htm
What a great idea! I am a home improvement fiend, and after ten years in our fixer-upper, it's definitely our home. It's no mansion, but it makes me smile every time I walk in the door. I hope you have the same experience as you work toward making your house into your home.
We just moved into our house in May, and I keep thinking I should have done something other than paint a single room. I'll be interested in this, because I think that how you approach things will be a handy tool for some of us in the same boat.
12 rooms in 12 months sounds like a great idea!