As some of you may already know, my house and I have a love hate relationship, I hate it and it is constantly giving me more reasons why I should love to hate it even more. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the shelter that it provides for my family, but as far as loving my house, I am trying.
A couple of months ago the universe opened my eyes to what needs to be done before I can leave here and begin a new journey, I need to grow to love my house, make an effort to make it feel like a home so that the next family to move in here will be left with remnants of happiness and love. When I moved in here, there was such a heavy feeling of loss and unhappiness, and once I knew the reason behind why the seller was letting this house go, I understood more clearly why this house had such a dark essence. This house had been a home for a man and his wife, and children for 16 years, but during those years, there was adultery, accusations, loneliness, anger and divorce. Darkness such as this has a tendency to leave a residue in the house, and I am sensitive to energy, so living here hasn't been a pleasant experience to say the least.
Several months ago, a member of my Mom's Club was considering listing her home and shared that she created a list of everything that needed to be fixed before they could put their house on the market....BRILLIANT!!!!
One morning while all the boys were at school and Kameo was busy with My Little Pony, I sat down and created a list (several actually) of everything that needed fixed, replaced, redone, or just done. I made a list room by room, from ceiling to floor, I also included the back and front yards and what I think would be appealing to a young mother and father looking to buy their first home in a quiet little neighborhood.
When I was pregnant with Kameo, I went through a mental breakdown and made my husband paint two of my living room walls brown....like, poop brown. I wish I could say that my sanity snapped back and I immediately went out and bought some paint to cover up the dark poop brown walls...ummm...not the case, as a matter of fact, after my insane pregnant brain birthed those wall colors, I went straight into midlife crisis mode and painted my bathroom black, white and menstrual blood red. Technically the red is called "Red Dahlia", and it is a GORGEOUS color...perhaps not in a bathroom, but when I am sitting there, on my throne, I feel happiness while staring at that magnificent red. I painted one whole wall red, all the shelving black and another wall white. I of course realized (as I usually do) that I really dislike painting. I am always so eager to paint, and then as soon as I roll on that first roll, it hits me...Amber, you hate painting, what were you thinking....Of course I have to keep going because the bathroom would just look ridiculous with one roll of menstrual blood red on it. So here we are, however many months later, I still need to finish painting the red, the black needs to be painted to the corners, and now I am trying to decide what kind of flooring is going to match this? I plan on accenting the bathroom with damask, damask canvas totes for the shelving, damask covered towel hangers, you know...accenting it makes it look less like a midlife mistake right?
Flooring, this is the meat and potatoes behind this blog post actually.....mmm, meat and taters sound really yummy right now!...Back on track Amber, geez!!
After talking to my friend (who happens to be the best insurance agent around!!!!) she lead me to check out Allure flooring. The flooring that I have in my house right now is one of my biggest sources of depression, and embarrassment, and why I never invite people to come to my house. No matter how clean the house is, this floor makes it feel like it is never clean enough. The gentleman who owned the house before us got a "great deal" on some parkay flooring......there was a reason obviously...this stuff is hideous, I would have given it away for free. Now, as if the wood flooring wasn't bad enough, he went and bought MARBLE GREEN tile and laid that in the KITCHEN and the entrance way into my house....what was he thinking????
1) I can't think of an appropriate room where this marble green tile would look decent
2) If you have marble floors in your kitchen, you should never own dishes that aren't plastic....never buy any glass kitchen ware for me, I promise you, it WILL get broken.
3) We live in OREGON, and when you put marble tile in an entrance way to a house, you will eat shit. You will be standing one minute and staring up at my ceiling the next.
4) You cannot find a good color to paint the walls with green floors....red accents would make it feel like Christmas all year, so off white it is.
Back to the reason for the post....I found FLOORING for LESS than $1 a square foot!!!!! I wish I could relay to you just how excited I was and how my entire outlook on this house changed the moment I realized that new flooring could be done. I live with Mr. Negative , and for all these years he talked about how expensive new flooring would be, and I would watch him nail back down a parkay tile with a red hot resentment. I have thought that new flooring in this house was unattainable and I felt defeated. Then, to have someone tell me about this Allure flooring, and then to shop around and find it for .84 cents a square foot...I about piddled myself with joy.
With some of our tax return I am going to get enough flooring to cover my entire house, and I think one of the first things I do is host a coffee date, I might even invite my brother and sister in law to come over for dinner..who knows, the sky is the limit.
In 1 year, 1 month and 17 days I will have lived in this house for 10 years. 10 years!!!! I have never lived in another house nearly that long. The Husband and I originally had a 10 year plan to live here and then hopefully have enough equity built up to turn around and sell....well, we won't have the equity, but we will have been here long enough to realize that we don't want to live here any longer than we have to. I have 1 year, 1 month and 17 days to make improvements, replace, redone, or done and then we will be listing our house for sale. We bought this place at the peak of the real estate market and paid waaaaaaaay to much for it, so we will never get anything out of the sale. I have been told that the market climbs back up about every 10 years, and that will be perfect timing for us to sell.
I have to make improvements to this house with love and care, so that the universe will be able to release me from it. I need to love this house so that someone else can see the love that has been put in to it, I need to love this house because it deserves to be loved and taken care of.
Life lessons suck and sometimes they hurt, and sometimes they make you cry because your floor never feels clean enough.
Thank you for sitting there and reading this ridiculous post and wasting your time...I appreciate it more than you know!!
I hope you are all cozy and warm, and know you are loved!
Peace and Blessings,
A.
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