The Kind of Thing That Shouldn’t Really Matter In The Great Grand Scheme of Things, But Somehow It Does Anyhow

So, while I’ve been putting up photos of Spain for you all, I’ve been keeping you in the dark about what’s actually been going on.  We took possession of our new place, renovated the bathroom, changed the floors, painted everything, and then last Monday we moved in.  Now, when I say we did these things, we actually hired people to do them.  We live in a condo, so strata rules say that licensed people have to do any renovations.  This is fine, as we a) don’t have tools and b) are not really handy folk.

But oh my god, the decisions!  Generally, I am excellent at making decisions.  I make them fast and am content to live with the outcome.  This is when I’m making decisions for me, however.  When I am making decisions that affect other people (other people in this situation meaning my husband, who probably wouldn’t have appreciated the cream, pale yellow, and pale pink colour scheme I may well have gone with were I single), I have significantly more trouble.

It’s much harder to do anything when you also have to think about what will make other people happy.  (This, my friends, is why dictatorships will always be more efficient than democracies.)  (They have their downsides though.)

So every single thing suddenly felt like a monumental decision.  I spent about a zillion hours on houzz and design seeds.  We practically lived in the paint chip section at Home Depot.  We spent almost an entire Saturday at various tile stores choosing tiles for around the shower, aiming for that elusive blend of both classic enough not to look dated after a couple of years and cool enough to make the shower experience interesting.  Or something.  We may have put way too much thought into the shower tile.

And that’s the thing.  This all seemed to matter.  Like lives hung on the balance of how grey or how blue the grey-blue we picked for the living room was.  I am a home-is-my-castle kind of girl, for sure, and getting it right would definitely affect my overall mental well-being.  But this got a bit silly, at times even tense.  When I first saw the brown we picked for our bedroom on the actual bedroom, I almost cried.  And seriously people, there are wars going on out there.  You know, actual problems.  What is wrong with me?

But.

But….  Everything is painted now.  (Except one table that is getting the treatment tomorrow.)  The tiles are up and committed to.  We have pretty much figured out where all the furniture is going to go.  The art isn’t all up yet, but the boxes are almost all unpacked.  We’re balancing out the previously scary brown bedroom with white curtains and sheets and pale art.  There are still some things to do, but we’re almost there.

And I love it.  I walk in the door and I smile and feel lucky.  Which I am.  I know I really, really am.

Anyway, here are some of my favourite design choices we made:

The mini chandelier between our bedroom and the bathroom.  I don’t think I can fully express how happy this stupid light makes me.

Our fancy-schmancy doorknobs.

We decided to paint all of our black furniture and mirrors white.  I adore this decision.

Art we got to make the brown wall a bit more pretty.

The paint we chose for the bathroom, which is a dark purpley-grey.

And last but not least… the tile! In the end, we went with white subway tile combined with the daring choice of chocolate-brown grout. (Apparently this did not impress our tiler.  Oh well.)

Home sweet home.