Know When to Fold 'Em

Fitzpatrick-Since many blogs are simply repositories for fairly mediocre personal handwringings, I’d avoided posting about my own upcoming remodeling project, and instead bored Peg verbally with it.

My husband and I had agreed we’d put off planning the job until this new year, but being the Type A Aries he is, he goaded me into decisions and materials selections throughout the year and went about hiring his godfather, an 82-year-old Armenian architect, to design an addition and remodel of our existing 1991 tract house.

So we dabbled around and six months and $4,000 in architectural fees later, we sold the house and moved.

Why?

During the planning, we performed the quality-of-life and quality-of-neighborhood calculations many of my clients have done and realized that even with sinking six-figures into the house, it wouldn’t be what we really wanted or where we really wanted to be.

Yeah, we spent four grand, but we didn’t waste a hundred.

Sometimes remodeling and investing in your home is one big card game. You assess your hand, you guess at neighboring hands, then you use your gut. And sometimes it says, “Fold.”

Busy Lives

Koontz - I can't believe it's been so long since we've posted anything...bad, bad, bad. I happen to know that Jodi has been busy with an unexpected change of address...a wild hair sprung up that prompted her and hubby to sell their place and purchase another. As those things never go quite according to plan, and this was in the midst of a book she was finishing, her time has been quite taken up else where of late.

For me, I've been on a tear regarding construction that has made me want to avoid it on my off hours. A few too many overly anxious clients that have drained me of my happiness in the subject. And that's unfortunate. Improving your space, making something work, coming up with just that right infusion of practicality and beauty---that is what building is about and it should always be celebrated.

The last couple of weeks I've been working on an interior paint job for a repeat client and it has been a restorative process. The client kind of knew what she wanted...but not quite...

So, we bought sample paints, we bought tints, we mixed and applied and re-mixed until voila, one day we all knew that we'd found it! At least for that wall! We were painting two adjoining rooms and we needed a few different colors...we ended up with five different ones it turned out. Least it sound extreme, I should say that three of those colors were used on a multi-stepped ceiling. Still sounds extreme doesn't it? But it's not, it's actually pretty perfect. Completely changed the look of the rooms; from fine, to stunning. It was fun and for me right now even more important is that it was appreciated by the client. It's nice when it all comes together and if you trust yourself a little---let that imagination go and do what you really want to do-it can work miracles.

If you've always wanted a purple room, try it...it may restore you too.