Yesterday, I called a favorite colleague who, like me, had some major home renovations this year. Her lovely old house in upper Northwest Washington has a fabulous new kitchen and two renovated bathrooms.
The conversation was about how, when you do a couple of things to fix up an old house, all of the stuff that remains to be updated looks really, really awful.
In my house, I have 2 new bathrooms that look fabulous. Each abuts a bedroom that just looks like hell. The little old lady who owned my house from about 1940 to 1970 wallpapered the entire house a bunch of times – including the ceilings! So today, the walls and ceilings look like a wrinkled shirt! The floors (heart of pine) are beaten up, and the entire second floor is still cluttered and messy from stuff that had to be moved around to get it out of the contractor’s way.
The clutter is new, but for years, I haven’t paid much attention to the plaster and floors. Now it’s making me crazy!
So my friend talks about visiting her favorite psychic after her kitchen was done and she was suffering from renovation fatigue as well as a depleted bank account. And she passed on the advice she got from this wise seer:
“Replace all of you light bulbs with very, very low wattage. You won’t notice as much.”
What was the trick about throwing a red scrarf over the lamps to give the rooms a pink glow. Perhaps that would help or be a fire hazard. I'm not sure which.
Wallpaper on the ceiling?!!! WOW. YUK!!
Just use candles and you'll be fine. Now go sell that listing in Dupont! :-)