Bits for Sunday, February 24, 2008

I think I focused a little too much mental energy on that week of watching HGTV over Christmas vacation. I thought perhaps the purchase of the fat chair and the loveseat would have taken all the need to redecorate right out of my system…but apparently that was not the case.

Yesterday, after a stressful basketball game, I found myself making a beeline for the fabric store…the time had come to purchase material to recover the pillows on my original couch. And by recover, I mean “give Mom the sewing machine and the material and let her have a sewing party.” And of course it couldn’t just be as simple as buying some material and leaving the store. After choosing my fabric, I decided it would be nice to add some sort of tie around the pillow…and where there’s a tie, there should be a button to accent it. So over to the button display I trudged…looking for the perfect size and color.

I had enough material that I knew I could probably squeeze in at least one more project (and by I, I mean “find someone with necessary talent”) so I began mentally scheming a cornice board project. I heard (on HGTV…where else?) that cornice boards are the cure-all for a window with a boring rod. Well congratulations to me…I have three of those. So all the way home, I mentally designed some cornice boards.

Mid-design, I stopped at Lowe’s to price just a couple of things…I’m tossing around some ideas for the proper expenditure of my economic stimulus rebate…should said rebate ever actually arrive in my little hands. And of course that led to a whole different train of thought for a whole different day.

Anyway, today I was trying to think of something to write about…and though my week was incredibly busy…it was not filled with writing-worthy moments, so I was very much at a loss. I resorted to searching the bookshelves in the office for something – anything – that might spark an idea.

On the next to the bottom shelf I found a book I’d completely forgotten about…but just flipping through it has made my pillow-recovering, cornice-board-designing, economic-stimulus-spending-plan-dreaming seem like nothing at all.

What did I find? A whole book of floor plans.

I bought it at a garage sale for fifty cents ten years ago (approximately…according to the copyright date inside) and I still love looking at it. Perhaps one of the better spent fifty-cent purchases of my life.

Now some of you are, I’m sure, rolling your eyes, but I’m guessing one or two of you know what I’m talking about when I say that I love floor plans! I remember flipping through Mom’s magazines when I lived at home and ripping out the pages of home design. I made my own little notebook of dream homes. This book contains plans on a much smaller scale than most of those I ripped from the magazines, because this is a book of all single-level homes. But still…a floor plan is a floor plan.

What is it about these things that just makes me want to grab a hammer and start building? (Okay so maybe that goes a bit far.) I just love seeing ideas that never would have come to me.

The house on page 52, for example, has a rather oddly shaped home, but the whole thing is built around a central courtyard with a pool! Pool owners would tell me differently, I’m sure, but I think having a pool at home…well…if I had that advantage, I bet my sister and I would no longer have pictures with such contrasting skin tones. J

And the one just a few pages later – a whole private study directly off the master bedroom. Think of the writing that could be done in that house! I am such a sucker for any house that has a study.

Speaking of studies, I found another plan that has a study – with a bay window. A study with a window seat! How very Anne of Green Gables. All I’d have to do is make sure I had a Lake of Shining Waters out front and I would be all set.

Or how about the house with the entire master suite that has its own private porch with a hot tub! I could get used to that!

I found another one that I had apparently liked once before because the corner of the page was turned down…and this one has not only a master suite, but a private garden for the master suite…and a study just off the “art niche.” Well I suppose if I could afford this home, I could also afford a gardener, because otherwise I’d have to plant silk flowers.

I found more than one page that I stopped to gaze at today…and then discovered I had marked that page before. I suppose I can say that at least my tastes are consistent!

But realistically, I suppose that I should stick with shopping for fabric to recover my pillows…and the dream of cornice boards to cover the boring curtain rods. I’ll probably not give up dreaming about “the house” complete with its hot tub and bay window and private study…because you just never know. “Someday” could come!