I've got the fever.

Nope, not baby fever.  Nice try though.

The "I-want-to-change-and-remodel-and-redecorate-every-single-room-in-my-house" Fever.

We bought our house in May 2006, a few months before we got married.  I was 23.  The house was built in 1996, so it wasn't too old, just 10 years.  But the decorating was outdated, and I was young and energetic, so I painted.  Every single room in the house (well, minus the basement, but we'll talk about that in a minute).  Every single ceiling.  Every single closet.  Every single door (well, the entry doors, not room doors).  I wanted color, so I painted colors.  At the time we didn't have furniture, or decorations, or really much of anything.  So it was a blank slate, and it was fun.  And exhausting.  So once everything was painted, I took a break.  I wanted to decorate, I had ideas in my head, but I got tired.  Our wallets needed a break, so I stopped.  Over time we would acquire pictures and decorations, so I hung them or placed them because I had the space but didn't really love it, I was just filling space.  Life got busy with grad school, and jobs, and oh, then I got pregnant and had a baby, so life got even busier.  So the projects stopped, and my house got less clean and less organized, more cluttered and undecorated when Lyla started getting into everything. 

So over 4 and a half years later, I'm looking around at my house, and getting a major itch to change everything.  It started in November, I was in our basement, the basement that had a really ugly border when we moved in (Coca-Cola?  Who chose that?), the basement that I wanted to paint since the day we moved in, but I kept putting that project off because we didn't use the basement.  Well things changed after Lyla's first Christmas, and our house was overflowing with toys, so the basement got new carpet and became a toy room very quickly.  Anyway, in November I was down there and realized I couldn't stand looking at that ugly border a second longer and just started ripping at it.  Relief.  So I finished ripping and stripping and I went out and got paint and I painted. 






And then I told Chad that it was time we changed our kitchen/bathrooms/entryway flooring because I couldn't stand IT a second longer (yes, I'm a little dramatic).  And he listened and we went to Menards on Black Friday and got an awesome deal on laminate (hardwood-ish) flooring and he got to work on that (*although this project still needs finished, he has less time on his hands than me).





The last few days, I started looking around the house and realized I hated some things (dramatic).  I hate the color of my dining room, it doesn't flow with the rest of the house, so I rushed to Sherwin Williams and got some paint samples, and you better believe that room will be painted within the next few days (as soon as someone can watch Lyla for me; if I didn't have a child to care for, that room would have been painted today).

I hate some of the things that are hanging on my wall; I mean, what was I really thinking when we hung those?  I took them all down. 

(If you pictured me frantically running around the house like a crazy woman, ripping things off the walls, and unscrewing outlet covers and slapping tape on the trim as fast as I can, you probably pictured correctly. Oh, and moving furniture too).


So now I have a room that is taped up and ready to paint (I'm telling you, I'm impulsive and impatient), holes in my walls from where I took pictures down, and I'm not sure where to go from here.  I have ideas of what I want, but I always have ideas, and I can never find what I'm looking for.  And when I find what I'm looking for, it's like, a million dollars.

So I think I need to take a deep breath, slow down, and pace myself, and work on these projects little by little...and be patient.  Yes, be patient.  Something that I almost never do. 

Wish me luck....