Next, The Living Room/Dining Room

Now I'm psyching myself up to work on the living room/dining room. I've taken input from several sources and gotten several good ideas. Nothing's really pinging for me yet, so I'm still circling this idea from every angle. My notion is that I want built-ins in between the LR and DR, and something matchy on the LR wall surrounding the fireplace.

Given all the maple and oak in the kitchen and fir everywhere else in the house, what wood to use is one piece of the puzzle, what style to use is another. I'm running out of steam (and budget) for high(er) end finishes. I like the thought of paint-grade white, but then I would be tempted to paint a lot of existing stuff too, which wouldn't be so painful to consider, except that I remember the process of stripping paint off trim years ago... Not just ANY trim but THIS TRIM... or actually, maybe my "childhood" home of my high school years in Portland, come to think of it. Anyway, having done that work so long ago makes it difficult to consider undoing it, in this manner now. But it's what's tempting me the strongest right now.

Not only that, I went into my den this evening and even though it's on the north side of my house, it felt very bright. I think it was because of the light bamboo flooring in there. Light flooring. Hm. I like the refinished fir upstairs. It's not as light as the bamboo, but it's much lighter than the present finish on the LR/DR floors. Definitely something to consider. Dang that fir it's so soft!!

10 Months Later...

Finally, I've put on my lower cabinet handles. Er, crap, make that mostly. I did the top row drawers eons ago (read "weeks"), and the cabinet doors and remaining drawers about a week ago, maybe a little more.

The more I tried to notice knobs and handles on doors and drawers everywhere I went, the more I saw that they were all centered. For some reason I was really resistant to that. And I noticed that cabinet handles for lower cabinet doors were pretty nearly always symmetrical to the upper cabinet door handles (that's a chicken and egg thing, I'm only saying they matched in the end).

So something in me snapped, and I pulled the trigger. I got my pencils and my measuring tools and my drill and my screwdriver and I put the dang things on. Can you tell whether the lower door handles are the same measure from the edges as the upper door handles? Can ya', huh? How about the lower drawers? :)

I'm a rebel, they're not just the same, but they're pretty dang close. It's like that time I dyed my hair, anybody else could barely tell the difference, but to me it looked a clownish compared to my natural hair color I was used to. I have the same feeling about make up, though I've worn it on occasion and truly enjoyed it (more often than not thanks to my cousin Leslie's handiwork).

Oh yeah, and I've skipped one cabinet that I'm thinking about doing differently. Don't ask me why, I guess I'm just not done thinking about it yet.