It began as a slight itch. Then an annoying thought that would rear its head with increasing frequency. Now its become a bona fide "to do". We're talking about redecorating. After four years since moving to our Silver Lake studio apartment, Emily and I are just a bit tired with our decor. We love our place, but the sheen has dulled, and we're starting to feel the pull of redecorating with an aesthetic and colour scheme much different from the one we have today. Four years isn't really a long time, but we've had most of our major furnishings for more than 7 years now and we're liking the idea of shaking things up. We've changed in that time, as have our tastes...
Grace has been doing a great series of posts about redecorating on a budget, but we're thinking more about redecorating over a span of time that works within our means. That means we plan to set aside some money each month with the plans to have money to reupholster our seating in a new colour (or fabric), repaint our walls, replace our dingy rug and maybe even restain our larger furniture pieces. No putting things on credit...doing it the old fashioned way by saving up and spending what we can truly afford. That's going to take patience, but a plan that gives us time to plan things out, keep a conservative measure of how we use our money, and also give us options if we have other more dire needs to address. We're not planning to purchase new furniture, but all the surrounding details can be updated, refinished, and edited to give our apartment a new look. Because like a romance, home decor is just as much about excitement as comfort, and we think we need to relight the fire, so to speak.
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I repaint about every 2-3 years, it's my hobby. As soon as one room is finished, I start another one. My mom and I switch items with each other such as endtables and lamps, and I change knick knacks and pictures around about 4 times a year. And every winter/summer I change curtains, pillows, etc. to go with the season.
i re-arrange every season. i paint every 2-3 years...sometimes its just a lil touch up here and there.
I tend to repaint my place(es) so often that my friends joke that they're about a dozen sq. ft. smaller when I leave.
I'm finally getting to the point where I have enough stuff that I can start switching out my accessories in the spring and fall. I can't wait to put some stuff away to pull out again in the fall. Ideally I'd like to be able to switch out rugs, curtains, pillows and vases 2 times a year.
As far as painting goes, we don't have a house yet and have only lived together for about 4 years, so we've never done anything major.
We like to repaint now and again (ceilings are a pistol)...but it is important to change stuff, to keep things fresh.
I've never been anywhere close to finished, so I would say I am still decorating for the first time. I tend to move every year or two, so that helps, uh, keep things fresh...
My bf consults in the furniture industry and we live in the furniture capital of the world (High Point, NC) where the twice annual international furniture shows are. I barely get used to our "market samples" (below wholesale cost leather couches and anything else you can imagine) when he wants to replace them with the latest greatest new stuff. It gets a little hard to deal with sometimes as I am of the mind to wait and wait and wait for the perfect piece and then stick with it forever, changing the wall colors and accessories occasionally. We end up having a house crammed with too much stuff and that irks my feng shui sensibility to no end! LoL.
Katy
http://fengshuibyfishgirl.com
I redo the house about every 10 years. I am doing it now. Maxwell would be so proud. Room by room, emptied and professionally cleaned, painting as needed, and editing, editing, editing. The kitchen now looks more like an art gallery than the cluttered mess it was. I am going with the vibe, and hanging one artist on all the walls. Okay, not the artist, but a roomful of his works.
If it's smaller than a bread box and I don't use it everyday, it's out of here.
i think in this economy i'd rather save for a home purchase rather than more or different "stuff" although saving rather than putting purchases on credit card is definitely the way to go. i just think that home prices and interest rates are going to go lower and if you don't have the money saved to buy, it'll be a real missed opportunity. i wish my situation was different right now so that i could start buying investments while things are so cheap. oh well!
I am like lemonadefish, still decorating for the first time. But I have been here for over 3 years.........well, I'm awfully slow and awfully picky.
GET OUT OF CALI!~ that's what I did. now i'm a landowner and also a landlord. NC has temperate winter weather, beaches, and mountains (Asheville), and is a fraction of the cost of living. We need more progressive artists to move here!!! A 3 br/2.5 bath house on our fab street just sold for the ridiculous price of $33K. It's on a wonderful park with a bike / walk path, has f/p, wood floors throughout and a bonus loftlike upstairs. It'll come back to it's real value of $115K soon enough (that's here...if it were in Topanga Canyon it would be a $750K house right now).
Katy
http://fengshuibyfishgirl.com
I just can't ever think of any room as completely finished, it's always a work in progress. I don't think I can "redecorate" unless I've already, past-tense, "decorated."
I think the idea of redecorating, as in, replacing an entire room's worth of furnishings and objets at one fell swoop, is an artifact of our consumer culture. I'd rather replace things as they need replacing, or as I find things I love. It makes sense if you're repurposing a room - say, from a guest room to a kid's room, or a kid's room to a home office, I guess.
I make my living as an interior designer...so you'd think I'd be all over the redecorating thing! But at home, my decorating ends up being more of an ebb & flow of life's "stuff" -- artfully arranged of course! A wicker trunk that once served as a great coffee table/footrest, now houses the children's toys, for example. And our "artist in residence" is a 4-year-old -- so our wall decor has shifted toward the abstract.
I love the idea of taking your time and being conservative on the spending front -- wait to find what you really love and it won't end up in the landfill in 12 months. And keeping the "bones" of your furnishings in tact while you fine-tune the details is a great way to update and refresh without senseless spending and over-consuming.
I think that you have to define redecorate. You can do so much with what you have to get o feeling of redecorating without having to make major purchases. I am constantly mixing things up in my home and it really keeps things fresh. It might be part of my personality but I get bored with "everything in its place".
I like what Jezebella said - for me, the idea of re-doing a room once a year is just wierd. Besides, I don't think I could live in a room, with no changes, for a full twelve months! I'm a constant redecorator: small changes (flowers, arrangements, linens) weekly, and bigger changes (rearranging furniture, getting new furniture, changing rugs, painting a wall or trim) almost every month.
My dream would be to buy a flat and have the time and money to decorate it piece by piece before moving in... but even then, I'm sure I'd always be changing things!
just once, It's been a ten year continuous process that we are behind on.
I'm feeling spring purge time coming on, too.
I have moved every two years or less. I get rid of things I'm tired of, worn out, etc. I guess its the blessing/curse of being in my 20s. You tend to be more transient. I moved half way across the country a few years ago. I donated or sold a lot of stuff. Its been fun re-inventing myself here.
I've never stopped redecorating. Most of my childhood photos are me redoing my bedroom. I am constantly on the lookout for the perfect thing but I tend to stick with one style for about five years at a time. Right now I'm switching from all mod to a mix of mod/natural. craigslist has made it even easier to redecorate.
I never consider a room complete. I'm constantly changing things out or upgrading pieces here and there.
When I get bored of a piece of furniture, I will try using it in a new room or painting it a new colour or giving it a different stain.
It seems that everywhere I've lived, I've stay long enough to paint the walls, and then move on to somewhere better, with new walls to paint! I never stay long enough to paint over a previous paint colour.
My home constantly evolves. Moving things around to offer them a new existence. A low bed side table becomes a pedestal for an alter or statue, a stool an end table, lamps move around the house like ghosts, reinventing themselves as reading lights, reflecting lights etc. A tray becomes a deck table over an iron plant holder etc. I am a strong believer in re-use and it's great to use your design skills to give things new lives. Painting and papering is another way to redecorate. For me the most important thing is to not add on clutter.
same here cassandraellen...and any new place is a new deco scheme..new colors, little bright and inexpensive touch ups..to go with the new color schemes..(paint)..and keep trying to throw, throw, throw..
I have never finished. My style and ideas change as new items or circumstances come into my life, but there are always projects that I never seem to get around to. I took the pictures from my walls 3 or 4 years ago when I painted and I haven't managed to put them back up yet. I've planned and re-planned where they *should* go as I acquire new stuff or other aspects of my house change, but as soon as I get the hankering to finally put them up, I start second guessing myself. I don't know why this has become a mental block.
I've recently been spurred to complete old projects and start new ones because of the purchase of a 37" TV that didn't fit on my Ikea Ivar bookcase. I was too broke to buy a new armoire or bookcase, so I ended up cutting the bookcase in half, down from 70" tall to 35" tall, and putting the TV on top. That meant that I could use the other half as a buffet in my living room (I've needed one for 8 years). Which made my dining room too small now since my dining room chairs sat out too far from the table because the arms didn't fit under. Which spurred me to finally get the dining table legs lengthened. And while I'm at it, I might as well re-open the doorway between the living room and the kitchen so I don't have to traipse through the dining room to get to the kitchen. But I have to finish this before the birthday party I'm planning so we'll have good circulation during the event. And I might as well paint the bathroom before company comes.
This is how I redecorate.
And these projects are done impulsively and never get fully done either, so during the party, my bathroom smelled like paint, the kitchen doorway had jagged, unfinished drywall, and the first guests had to help me assemble the dining room table and clean my house.
I have seasonal decorations.
Christmas
Spring
Patriotic
Fall
Redecorating? Well, either never or constantly, depending on your interpretation. Once I get my rooms painted and arranged, which I always imagine to be the optimal setup for our lifestyle and furnishings, I never change anything.
Except, as a flea market fan and thrift shopper, when I get something too cool to not use! Then I shift to make room, or replace something older. And I add new vases and interesting objects now and then. (I too seldom eliminate, though.)
I haven't changed anything just for the sake of change or trendiniess: my (and my "domestic partner's") taste is pretty stable.
I am continually adding and subtracting to the "decorations". But once I find a way of arranging my furniture that works, I tend to leave it there. But then I get bored. That's a good thing about apartments though - I can move and then rearrange in a new apartment. And then move again.
I'm still young though and in the mindset of college living, when I moved every year.
i too am decorating for the first time... and its been an off and on process. im 25 and been married 2 years and started buying "real" furniture the past year and already having some buyers remorse though :( but we are laying off of adding to what we have because we would like to buy a home this summer. once we do that we can get to the real decorating! i cant wait... hopefully everything goes as planned!
I'm with those who are never finishing/always retouching things. I would go off my nut if I had to live with things exactly the same way all the time, but I limit any spending I do to smaller items like cushions and rugs and lampshades and pillowcases.
A friend used to redo her bathroom (buy new shower curtain, bath mat, maybe a couple of accessories) every time she broke up after a major relationship. She had to wash that man right outta her hair!
In my first apartment every Fall and Spring I used to rotate the furniture arrangement of my living room to prevent obstruction of the radiators. Other than that, once I get a room decorated it doesn't change unless my needs change. I believe in creating as timeless an eclectic a design as possible so that the room never looks dated. Interior design of a room requires too much time, work and research to change frequently and I have other interests.
mmm... if I say every week, would you make fun of me...Even though I bought my apt 2 years ago, I am still on the hunt for beautiful objects.. and if I cannot find anything, I rearrange the furniture to feel better..
I generally concentrate on one room every year - Last year was the den, before that was the living room...
...but the room that needs help most desperately this year is the kitchen - so I think I'll be concentrating on that room this summer.
updates in our house is usually paint and new comforter and sheet sets.
everything is constantly changing. like today I bought a new couch...even though I already have one. but I couldn't help it! so now this means new end tables, new art above the couch, and a new rug. and I'm totally broke, YAY!