Interior divination

Since I’m pleading for help anyway, I may as well share the other areas in my life where I am desperately in need of help. I need help decorating. I mean, I need some Real Help decorating, as in Divine Intervention. Most couples buy new furniture during the first few years of their marriage; they start selling off the pieces they each owned and buying new things together to furnish their new home with each other. Andrew and I, however, spent the first three years of our marriage living in London and lounging on someone else’s furniture in a fully-furnished flat. We squandered all our money on travel while we were living overseas, so that all we really came back with was a bunch of Christmas ornaments from various countries and cities around the world. While our Christmas tree is beautiful and interesting each year, our house leaves something to be desired.

We still have our college furniture.

That’s what we use to decorate our house now. When we got married, I was two years out of college, living in an apartment with a roommate (a girl I met in college). It was understandable that I still used my college furniture. But before we got married, A’s company came to my house and boxed up absolutely everything I owned except for a select few things I set aside to be shipped to London, and all my clothes. All that old crappy furniture just sat in storage for three years until we came home. At that point, we opened it all up and unwrapped everything to find what junk we had saved, and had to make do with what we could.

Some of our stuff is great, but in bad need of refinishing. Some of our stuff is terrible, but I’m reluctant to give it away for one reason or another. For instance, my bedroom suit in college was this pale coloured wicker headboard with a matching desk/vanity and armoire; we’re using it in the guest bedroom now, and A has often suggested we sell it and buy something new. However, I think that it will be perfect for Bryleigh’s “Big Girl” room when she gets a little older. I remember how rough I was on furniture when I was young, and if she’s using that furniture, then it wouldn’t bother me if she taped up photos on it or put condensation rings on the nightstand. But it still looks good, and from what I hear, wicker is back In.

I am just terrible at home decorating. On the other hand, I came up with a fantastic idea for a website: Decorate My Home. In my vision, you can upload a photo of a room in your house, and then interior decorator-wanna-bes can have fun drawing on your photo or adding photoshopped accessories (supplied by retailers who advertise on the site) to show you what they would do with your room. Of it won’t work with people uploading their own photos, then you could have it so that you can design what your room looks like by choosing the room shape, floor and wall colour, adding furniture and changing the furniture colour, and then save it and let people have a go at it. I think I would spend a lot of time on that site just rearranging things to see what I could come up with! Anyway. A great idea, but I have no way of implementing it. Another day perhaps.