Sunday, August 30, 2009

Taupe This.

So we've had our house for sale all summer and no one has bought it. Our realtor came over the other day and gave us some suggestions for home improvements. She walked through the entire house and basically said "Paint this Taupe!" in every room. Since I am not working while the kids are in school, my new job title is the Queen of Improvements, Specifically Taupe Ones.

Please gaze upon my only son. He lost a tooth. I now call him Leroy.The room in which he is standing is our home office. Please notice the lovely blue walls. I like to call this color "Portrait Studio Blue." Definitely not Taupe.

Here are the girls, who wanted their portraits made too.
My job #1 was to rid the office of its portrait studio. Three coats of taupe and white later, it looks like this:I have a giant entertainment center in my office that weighs about 1000 pounds, and we have been trying to get rid of it for a while. Since it is too heavy to move, I just painted taupe all around it so there is still a big blue spot behind it. Surprise, future buyers!

Now my next job will be to rid the office bathroom of its 80's wallpaper. I put Leroy to work on that.I just need to tell you that I'd rather pull out my toenails with pliers than remove wallpaper, but it needs to be done. We're also going to put in a new mirror and light fixture.

The next room on the list to be Tauped: Katie's room! (sob) This sucker took FOREVER to paint. Not happy about that.(Photos stolen from my real estate listing online. But yes, it is always that clean. Because I force the kids to clean their rooms EVERY FIVE MINUTES.)

Meanwhile we are possibly going to get a new kitchen floor. (And no, we won't be doing that ourselves.) My kitchen is totally retro-70's, but not in a good way. It's a little....brown. Although we did get rid of the mauve-and-cream heart wallpaper that used to be in here, so there's that. (Did I mention that I clean this kitchen until it looks just like this before I leave the house in the morning? EVERY DAY? I don't really shower any more, but my house is looks fantastic.)

The cabinets are going to have to stay, even though they are old and worn, because I do not have the mental or financial faculties to deal with them. I plan to douse them with Old English Scratch Cover (again) and I've considered spray-painting the hardware, but dang that seems like such a pain.

So there's your Home Improvement Update. I'll post some more 'After' photos hopefully soon.

4 comments:

  1. oh taupe, how I hate thee. why do home buyers have no imagination? when we sold our house our real estate agent told us not to bother to change anything (not true, we had to tile the bathroom floor), not even the crazy underwater (complete with painted sharks!) bathroom. Of course, we were in the middle of the California housing bubble. (and, as you might expect, after we paid to retile the bathroom we learned that our new buyers would be redoing it again, anyways. that was a waste of money)

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  2. Your office looks great! My kitchen in our old house had mushroom wallpaper! MUSHROOM! I totally get the retro-70s but not in a good way. When we redid this house, I chose purple for my kitchen. It is my favorite room. Everyone over 60 walks in a goes "Ugh." All my friends think its wonderful. Since I won't be leaving here til it's time for the rest home and we don't have a good track record of repainting, however, one day someone will walk in and go, "This is so retro-2000. What were they thinking?" Had it been up to Donnie, every room would have been taupe, but I won that one. teehee.

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  3. PM, we sold our townhome in DC during the housing bubble and I think we could have painted swastikas on the walls and people still would have been fighting to buy it. My, how times have changed.

    and Tracy, mushroom and wallpaper are two words that should never go together.

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  4. This is why even though we kind of want to sell out house...we never actually do anything about it. Soooo much work!

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