Reno

One of my sets of parents is renovating their new home in Toronto; the other set is renovating their new villa in Mexico.  A good friend is in the middle of tearing down and rebuilding his kitchen.  Even Ken and I are doing home improvements.  We're finally replacing our broken kitchen light, and our water heater is scheduled for replacement next week.

It's about time that that kitchen light finally got replaced.  First it was intermittently flickery; then two of the four fluorescent tubes conked out.  Finally the other two gave up the ghost.  We moved two standing lamps into the kitchen several months ago have have been cooking and washing dishes in semi-darkness ever since. 

I just glad that we're not facing any major renovations in the near future.  I super-hate disruption and mess in my home.

In 1980 when my mother remarried, I was 8 years old.  We were living in a cute little post-war house, all painted white inside, with pale blue carpetting, a bay window in the dining room, and a lovely big back porch.  By the time the renos were done, and it took many long months, the house was transformed.  It was bigger and uglier.  The back porch and yard were smaller.  The bay window was gone.  The carpet was a cool, oatmeally shade of beige, which wouldn't have been bad if it hadn't been combined with a sofa-and-loveseat set in an obnoxious shade of rusty orange.  All the previously white wooden trim was stripped and stained dark brown. 

My parents don't have terrible taste.  Unfortunately they were limited by two things: an interior decorator who was a slave to the latest trends, and the bottom line.  The renovation itself, the bones of it, had gone so over-budget that they were forced to make their decorating choices from whatever was on clearance at the time. Therefore we ended up with materials that everyone else had rejected because they were so ugly.

I was happy with how my own bedroom turned out.  I kept it simple: pale green paint on two of the walls, and a cheap white wooden desk-and-dresser set.  As for the rest of the house, I disliked it very much. It was so different from the old house, my house, that I didn't feel at home there anymore.  I'm sure it didn't help that my step-dad had just moved in and we were all having a hard time adjusting to the change. 

15 years later when they had the money, my parents redecorated again.  The oatmeal carpet was ripped up, and pale blue carpet was installed.  The dark brown trim was painted white again.  In other words, to some extent they returned the house to how it looked originally.  That was after I moved out. 

I understand that the end result of a good renovation is worth all the hassle and expense, but still, I'd rather avoid ever having to live through something like that again, if I can.