Making a House a Home

Posted: 2011 07 26 In: staff musings

It’s no secret around here that many of us “SOA-tians” frequently have long to-do lists around our homes and can tend spend a good chunk of our vacation time getting some of our house projects done. Walking around the office every day, you’ll frequently hear about how Brad’s house is coming along, what Matt and Aaron are doing to their basements, or what color Nina is painting her kids’ rooms. This past April, my husband and I took the big leap and became homeowners ourselves. After floating around from dorms to apartments for the past 6 years, we finally have that space to officially call “ours”, and more importantly to me as a designer, that space to have full reigns to paint and design.

Making that decision wasn’t easy, for me especially. Originally from Northwest Arkansas (and where I will always call “home”), I was deep-down only planning on being in Columbia for the two years my husband was in graduate school, especially since my first job here was not even in my degree field of interior design. However, the environment and opportunities at SOA made me re-think my original plan of returning to Arkansas. Although my immediate family is still 5 hours away, the SOA family, my extended family in Missouri, and our new Columbia friends made the jump easier, and I’m more accepting of the fact that I’m now officially becoming a “Columbian” (although, you can’t ever expect me to relinquish my Arkansas Razorback pride – woo pig!).

Now that we have a house, we are quickly seeing our weekends being consumed by yard work and cleaning, and our paychecks are quickly disappearing due to repeating trips to home improvement and furniture stores. The added perks of finally having a garage and the backyard for a dog, as well as a larger kitchen and separate guest room have been wonderful. And, I can finally sleep soundly without having to worry about a party or washing machine upstairs waking me up in the middle of the night. We’ve also welcomed a one-year-old shelter dog into our home as well, spoiled little Miss Lily, who gets us out to enjoy the neighborhood and keeps our vacuums running.

Getting fully “settled” though has taken a lot more time though. I have big ideas for every corner of the house and am anxious to tackle them all, but budget and time have made progress a little slower than I would like. Three months in and I still haven’t even “finished” one room and we hardly have anything hanging on the walls, but it’s testing me to be patient and make sure the spaces truly reflect who we are. I try to frequently remind myself of an excerpt from Under the Tuscan Sun that one of my blogging friends wrote about recently:

The trick to overcoming buyer’s
remorse is to have a plan.

so it can introduce itself
to you.

As painstakingly slow as it can be, I’m trying to embrace that philosophy. My goal throughout moving especially was to simplify and only keep items in our home that have significant value and that we actually use. I’ve recently also become more of a “Neutral Nellie” than I used to be (think a bright blue bedroom with multi-colored bright stripes in one corner – I still don’t know how I convinced my parents to let me do that in high school!), and my husband sure likes to hassle me for all the tan that is in our living room right now. I’m on the search now for more unique, one-of-a-kind, or family heirloom pieces – pieces that have meaning and significance, as well as a mix of pieces with both pop and classic style. It looks like it’s going to continue to be a slow journey, but it’ll be exciting to see the end result.

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