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Home style!

00:11 / 13.11.03

last december, with tons of parental assistance and friend-lent emotional support, I bought a house. it's a fixer upper in a great neighborhood with a good base to work with. my kid's school is about 3 blocks away and my parent's house, where I grew up, less than one.

in the past I've always had excuses not to fix my place up, the main two being a) I won't be staying here long, not worth the effort and money and b) have NO money. well, those excuses aren't really valid anymore, and now that the dust has had nearly a year to settle, I have no choice but to inspect - and begin to move on - my options. which pretty much includes anything.

so whether you have a tiny studio to work with or a huge house, a place you share with a zillion roommates, or the whole spread all to yourself, what have you done with it to make it yours? does it serve as a reflection of your personal tastes, or is it simply function above form? have you made creative use of your limitations, or set it all aside as unimportant?

03:42 / 13.11.03

I have covered the walls of my bedroom with my art. Its a constant reminder to myself of what I've done and what I'm trying to achieve. I want it to be a bit of me sort of...

07:46 / 13.11.03

I've just moved into a new house and I'm trying to make my new room "my own" - Things have to be exactly right or I can't relax and having lots of boxes full of books is doing my head in at the moment and I can't afford a bookcase until next month...

Anyway I was at Ikea at the weekend and bought a plant and this cool lamp thing, it's like a vase with the bulb inside and gives out a nice chilled out green light - they made things much better...

I need to put posters up I guess because the walls are too blank, but I think posters might be a little student like?

I'd love to fix up a house, I wish I'd become an interior designer...

Cloned Christ on a HoverDonkey

07:56 / 13.11.03

My house tells unsuspecting visitors that our 18 month old boy hasn't yet learned to put away his toys, or indeed anything.

It also tells you that I spend far too much time on my PC when my family have gone to bed, mainly due to the disproportionate tobacco smell in the computer room.

The huge, squishy leather sofa tells you that we're all a bunch of lazy gits, as does the predominance of remote controls strewn thereabouts.

The ghastly pictures on the walls clearly indicate that my wife indubitably has the final (and the first, third and fifth) say on all interior decor decisions.

The huge, imposing television indicates that occasionally I am grudgingly granted a scintilla of leeway on certain matters.

08:16 / 13.11.03

Our house is decorated in bright orange, bright blue, turquoise, yellow, red and white. We have a palm tree in the front room, a bamboo bar in the dining room and lots of kitch 50's furniture.

I think it tells people we're intoverted and thoughtful.

11:02 / 13.11.03

Our home style says we are vulgar, could use a good clean up, and are expensive to rent.

12:58 / 13.11.03

Our house looks (and indeed is) very old; it was built in 1760. I'm not sure what that says about us but it does tend to mean the modern, minimalistic chrome-fittings-and-rubber-flooring look is a bit out the (wonky) window.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:15 / 13.11.03

My place tells people I could do with a bigger place...

19:54 / 13.11.03

My 'place' tells people that I have a fondness for rock music, buy more books than I read and rarely sweep the floor.

20:07 / 13.11.03

My house rattles, because everyone's moved out, but the 3 of us, whereas at one point there were 12 of us in there. It also screams 'my mum loves Ikea', and as much as I used to like it, I am not fond of my house looking like a catalogue, and my room being slagged off because it doesnt.

I think my room says 'I like handprints'. There are 70.

But MY place will, hopefully, have lots of 50s kitchen things, and 60s/70s lounge things, and bits of crap that look quite cool. I've spotted some already. On the staff-entry at work, there are 3 metal sculpture things, but with a flat side so they go on the wall. Beside them it says 'see your customer' 'listen to your cstomer' 'sell to your customer' or something crap, but the metal bits are an eye, an ear and lips, and very funky. When we close, Im asking for them, and a see-thru mannequin.

21:21 / 13.11.03

I'm really proud of my bathroom, which was completely redone, due to the fact that the toilet and sink were a pale, ugly GREEN. I picked out every damn tile, and it's GORGEOUS. it's not even done yet. if the rest of my house turns out half as good, I'll be quite pleased

as far as the posters go, a good frame can lend a little style to even the silliest of movie posters.

23:53 / 13.11.03

I have lots of plants and odd bits of junk. I finally got rid of the huge crate of bicycle wheels--for a while there I was finding them abandoned all over the place and felt compelled to take them home. They're just so graceful and cheery!

As for the furnishing, I do a lot of "recontextualizing". My end-table is an ancient steel kitchen cabinet; I have several work tables made from shelves and one made from an old footboard; my little sideboard thingie is an up-ended drawer, and the other drawer is hung from the wall as a mini-bookshelf, where I keep the books I'm reading this week; my kitchen counter is a cedar chest that is really much too nice a piece of furniture to keep in the kitchen, but I needed a kitchen counter. Almost everything else is 2nd hand crap. Oh, I have bamboo blinds that I'm quite fond of, even if they're getting a little ratty.

I think this all says that I'm po'. And I love my plants: a mini palm, a bunch of English ivy growing in tin cans, some sickly pathos also in a tin can, a mysterious tropical thing whose strange fleshy flowers have all died but the leaves look healthy enough, some pepper plants that never really flourished, a strapping thing with broad leaves that I forget the name of, a spider palm, and a special kind of bamboo that grows well indoors. I used to have several bonsai, but they all died when I moved last year.

01:45 / 14.11.03

Glidden used to do their color decks in palettes called Calm, Warm, Fresh, and Vibrant. So my place is all done in Calm colors. It's very nice, and it is calm. (But don't use Glidden paints --the quality is atrocious. I had all my colors made up in Benjamin Moore, or "Benjamin Moor" as I am always mistyping.)

My place says that a manic person desperately trying to stay calm lives here.

01:52 / 14.11.03

It's kind of funny, actually... my sister is so slow that she appears to be inert most of the time, and she has her apartment all done up in super-bright --HOT PINK and PURPLE and ORANGE-- colors. It's like that corrective makeup that you're supposed to wear if your skin is too pink or too yellow.