Home Improvement

We love, love, love our house, but, as I told a friend, it was a wallpaper museum (or mausoleum?) when we moved in: a pasted-paper tribute to the 1980s, '70s, and '60s. To put our own touch on it and bring it into the present, we have

• painted the office green
• de-papered Hillary's bedroom and painted it pink (with stripes in three additional shades of pink below the chair rail)
• de-papered our bedroom and painted it purple (with a darker shade of purple below the chair rail)
• de-papered our kitchen and dining room and painted them "heavy cream"
• painted our laundry room "Acapulco sand" (a tan shade)
• de-papered the front entry and hallway to the upstairs bedrooms

Next up?

• paint the living room blue
• paint the entry/upstairs hallway "heavy cream" and a shade of blue darker than that in the living room
• paint the main bathroom upstairs a shade of blue above the chair rail to match the counter and a shade of green below the chair rail to match the shower tiles
• paint the smaller bathroom upstairs white (and remove a cabinet in it)
• paint the downstairs hallway and family room two shades of tan/brown (above and below the chair rail)
• paint the downstairs storage rooms the lighter shade from the family room
• paint Suzanna's bedroom green (with stripes in three additional shades of green below the chair rail)
• paint Abigail's bedroom blue (with stripes in three additional shades of blue below the chair rail)

We've also had a split-system air conditioning system installed and are waiting to have egress windows installed in Suzanna's and Abigail's bedrooms. Our new washer and dryer come for our laundry room on Tuesday. We've had wireless Internet and digital TV installed. We have furniture to purchase, too: an entertainment center, a desk, a dining table and chairs, a music cabinet, some storage shelves, etc.

Oh, and I mowed our lawn for the first time yesterday! It was so thick that the girls and I had to rake it up today after the cuttings had dried. A far different kind of lawn from our previous one (this one is thick, lucious, deep green, healthy . . .). We have a crab apple tree in our front yard that is heavy with fruit. If our home were more in order, I'd pick them and Susan would make jelly from them.

We've had several neighbors come over to introduce themselves--something that never happened in the 10 years at our previous home but has happened within 10 days at this one! And several neighbors, mind you! We're eager to have our house in order (messy work done, furniture in place, boxes unpacked) so that we can host our new friends and neighbors and show them the house we like so much.