Last night at eleven thirty Avram and I were lying in bed. I'd been talking to him for over half an hour about the architecture and design books I'd been reading. They say that you shouldn't just have a choppy decorating style - a Tuscan Villa kitchen, a Victorian Living room, a Contemporary bathroom, etc, because you're house will feel choppy when you walk through it, even if each individual room is done well. Same thing goes for having uncomplimentary colors - a red living room, a lavender kitchen, an orange bathroom. These would look weird together.
I was trying to come up with a unifying color scheme that would still express individuality in each room while basically using all of the furniture and decorations we already own. So I had decided that in a hypothetical house buying next Summer the answer lay in picking complimentary paint colors/applications that went well together in the public areas of our hypothetical home, such as different greens or blues or something.
After my twenty mile long monologue, I turned to Avram and asked him how he thought we should paint the walls. He sleepily replied from his part of the bed, "Splatter red paint on the walls, and call it 'Husband murdering his wife.'"
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Peppermint Bark Fudge
4 days ago
Avram wants everyone to know that he cannot be held responsible for anything he says while trying to sleep and that he's really not planning to murder me....really.
ReplyDeletethis made me laugh for quite some time.
ReplyDeleteyeah...samuel thinks it's a boring topic too. :D
this all reminds me...PLEASE fix your camera so I can see your new apartment! I am dying here! (and I guess pictures of you and yours would be nice too)
Gussying up the interior of our house would give the false impression that we were something other than a couple of hayseeds with small children. The closest we get to coordinated is having all the rooms relatively clean.
ReplyDeleteI think this becomes funnier the better the reader knows you guys. Some complete stranger would think "Well, what an inappropriate comment to make to one's wife!" and then there's me going "Yeah, that's Thora and Avram. I can't believe how fantastic those two are."
ReplyDeleteI have decided that you are like Shadowcat and Colossus. I just stumbled upon the parallel this week, and it fills my soul with joy.
He is so funny, even when he's half asleep!
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, I've been watching some BBC interior design show and they keep doing the exact same color/style through three rooms of the house. Like The living room, dining room and kitchen will all be this minimalist orange and white, or lavender and silver. That's just way too much to have the three rooms in the house that you spend the most time in all looking so much alike. There should definitely be a unifier, as you say, but all the same style and color? No good. Sorry, just had to share.
I agree too, Lisa. I could never do such a coordinated matching scheme in my whole house. I think just one color carried out in paint on the walls (in different versions/complimentary colors like Various shades of green, and then I don't know, pale yellow, or some blue or something that looks good with green) and then have whatever you want otherwise in the rooms. For one thing, I like all my stuff. And I wouldn't want to get rid of it to just have a "decorated" house.
ReplyDeleteAleatha - I know how you feel. I was going to do this great post with before and after pictures (before taken while boxes still reigned supreme). I have the before pictures - but no after ones. It makes me very sad.
Oh pookie! THis had me laughing so hard!!! I totally get it. 1. because I do the same thing to devin and while he has not said that aloud...yet, we all know he thingks it. te he! 2. because well I shared a bed with you when we were younger and sometimes I talked your ear off about stuff and sometimes you talked my ear off thats funny! lastly, Avram you crack me up! and remind me of myself in some ways. It must be the leo! or maybe that thora loves us the most!!
ReplyDeleteThough the violence implicit in that comment is disturbing the wit totally wins out - what a clever boy!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to autumnal tones throughout our home...browny yellows, rich browns, rusty oranges and warm reds (haven't talked hubby into yet - but inevitably I will triumph). Home Depot has some fab paint brochures that are great for dreaming with.
hey tali, i think thora loves me the most ;)
ReplyDeleteThora i read this aloud to cory and we had a good laugh.. because this is how we are all the time! I always have a lot to say and cory doesnt understand why i need to discus it at midnight but i like to get all my thoughts out before i go to sleep. last night i was going on and on about what to serve for the baby blessing this sunday. He thoughtg i was all worked up and upset obout it, but i wasnt i just am a heated talker. I was talking on the phone to soren one night and cory thought we wer fighting which we were not at all we were just discussing politics and i am really pationate about them.
my house is all dark woods and fall type colors. Except the boy room that is all bright blue and green. anyways good luck with you house colors! i find i had all these plans for things but then i have three kids so many house makeovers have been on the back burner indefinantly.
okay sorry for choppy comment, nursing and theo is hanging on me and porter yelling at me to help him figure out computer game.
I loved our town house for how we decorated it. I picked a color that I liked, it was a beigey-taupe, like a warm greenish gray? I guess, from a paint strip that had all the shades of the same color from the darkest olive green to the lightest almost white. And then I used the various shades all over my house. I liked having the neutral on the walls, which gave them color so it didn't look sterile and white, and then I added my personality in the colors I chose for our furniture, window treatments and accents.
ReplyDeleteListen to me, I sound like I had it all planned out from the beginning! Which I did not. It all kind of fell in together. I like having all my stuff kind of go together, so that I can move it around from room to room, and it will all fit anywhere. I used a lot of earth tones, and red. Well, you saw my house. The one exception was Oliver's room, which was a celery green, almost the color of your blog, on the walls, with the stuff that filled the room being chocolate brown, tan, cream, light blue, and a few touches of orange (think Tigger from the Classic Whinnie the Pooh.) I loved his room, it was my favorite room in the whole house.
Now we've moved, and I have essentially a blank slate. And it's overwhelming, and I don't have the time nor the money to do anything now any way. So we have blah creamish white walls.
I like to think that I may be sort of getting to that coordinated decorating phase of life, but I'm actually not. Although both of the bookshelves in our living room are increadibly similar tones of wood. That was very exciting.
ReplyDeleteI'm like you, though, in that I have a hard time parting with furniture I like, no matter how it fits/doesn't fit with anything else.
Anyway, my first thoughts as I read your blog were that my sister is currently remodeling her kitchen (which is the kitchen in the house I live in, because I live in her basement) and she has finally convinced her husband to let her paint the walls, and he also concented to the living room being painted because they had the popcorn ceiling removed while the kitchen was being torn out.
The increadible thing about this is that he concented to it being painted other than white. He has been very adamantly a white-waller so far in their marriage (2 1/2 years). It is amazing what a difference color on the walls makes in making a space look like welcoming, coordinated, warm living area rather than a thrown-together hodgepodge of circumstancial decorating. And then I realized that I every place I have lived since moving to college has had white walls (our basement here included), and I am currently suffering from the conviction that it is this single fact alone that is to blame for all of lack of polish in the decor of my home.
The other thing this post made me think of is how when we were roommates you would spend the first, oh, about half hour every morning lying in bed telling me all about whatever you dreamt the night before. I probably did that to you, too, or else you inspired me to start doing it, because I subject my husband to the same ritual every morning. Maybe that is something I got from being roommates with you, along with completely coming out of the closet in my passion for milk.