I can’t sleep.

I thought I tired myself out surfing the net & watching last night’s SNL. Nope. As soon as I put my head down, I start sorting through decorating options for my possible new house. 

The kitchen may truly be a struggle for me. I wished I had more counter space in my Charlotte house. HA! Wait til you see this one. It’s like, an entire kitchen squished along 1 wall. The sink is next to the stove. How bizarre is that? I just looked at it again, and I don’t have enough room to have a coffee maker, utensil jar & spice rack out. I get to pick 1 – – 2 if I don’t mind it being slightly crowded. THAT is how bad it is. The only upside is that they are giving us ALL of their appliances, and the microwave is mounted over the stove so at least that won’t eat up our counter space. I asked my Uncle Barry how expensive it would be to add in an island or something – he gave me very general ideas but suggested that we wait a while to really see how we use our kitchen and how we need it to flow. We are thinking of buying one of those temporary islands….ya know, the kind on wheels? (actually they make them without wheels, too)….at least to tide us over until we know what we want and have some money to work with it. Ugh. Struggle. I can totally deal with the small bedrooms even since the living areas are so huge in this place. But the kitchen? That is a blow. I traded my kitchen for an immaculate yard and a pimp ass basement and an amazing school system. I gave up my kitchen to have the party house.

It’s okay. I think I’m okay with it this way. You can always fix a kitchen. You can’t add more yard. I’ll survive.

I really need to start brainstorming decorating ideas. I have a feeling this is going to move quickly if all goes well. Since we have no deadline to be out, we are thinking of going in and painting everything before we moved in. We did a lot of that for our Charlotte house and we loved having it done beforehand.

This lady had a very country decorating style. Modern country, I’ll give her that. There weren’t fake flowers or any annoying trying-too-hard-to-be-funny signs. But there is wallpaper (barf). In a veryyy country pattern. That needs to come down. I wanted to have a yellow kitchen at some point, but I’m not sure if this kitchen is it. I may actually re-do my coffee theme in this kitchen. I know that sounds lame, but. Today was an insanely Buffalo-esc gloomy rainy day, and somehow this house was still BRIGHT. There are lots and lots of natural light sources in this place (windows everywhere!) so re-doing a brown color wouldn’t look dismal at all. I feared that here. I think it may look classy. It’s just that, there are no easy cut off lines in this house since the living space is all open, and I’m not sure if I want it ALL to be that dark. I have to take more pictures when I go back to get a better idea. The other thing is, I picture this house getting lots of action in the summer with all our backyard has to offer – and so I want the kitchen to be something fun & inviting since it’s the main exit to the yard. Not so sure that a dark coffee theme would fit that. 

I think I want to make the full bath off the kitchen a really fun, bright one. I imagine it will be the one used by visitors. I even thought of making it look similar to the kitchen I drooled over in the Pendleton house (BTW, Matt suggested I try to replicate that, at least in color and style in this new kitchen – but I don’t think it will work. And it’s toooooo big of a space for that bright of a color). I’d use a tiffany blue-ish color and then maybe use my black & white accessories from my ex-purple bathroom. Only I’d add in a few splashes of those bright colors they used in that kitchen. 

Matt personally requested the same exact color for our bedroom as we had in Charlotte. It was an extremely easy yes because I was hoping he’d be okay with that. It was THE best color in the whole house. We absolutely loved it, and while I thought many people would consider it too bold, I often got compliments on it! The only thing I worry about is how it will look in our MUCH smaller room in comparison to the cave our ex-master was. 

The other bathroom? No idea. Maybe I’ll do something a little more romantic in there. If I do something lighter for the kitchen-dining-living room (like a dark beige or tan maybe, instead of the brown?) I’ll do the brown in the other bathroom & add in light pink. It will probably be MY bathroom, so that would be fun. Or maybe I’ll do grey walls and purple accessories. I have a feeling I will end up in an all-boy house, so maybe it would be fair to keep pink out of it. At least until I have a girl, if the day ever comes. At which point she will have the pinkest, frilliest bedroom a girl has ever had. 

Then there’s the basement. It’s brown. Like, DARK brown. Much darker than my ex-kitchen. It looks classy, in an expensive night club kinda way. But that’s not what we’re going for, obviously. It’s only the Rec area that looks like this – the laundry & storage rooms are lighter colors (though I can’t remember exactly what they are at the moment). I suggested a light grey that we could dress up, but Matt thinks we’ll just be making it look like a dungeon – even if it is lighter than the color that’s already down there. What the heck color would you paint a basement rec room that will eventually house a pool table, a tv, couches, and crap a la man cave, with one corner sectioned off as an office and one corner acting as a craft space? White is coming to mind…..

Then there’s the mudroom. And the front entryway. I think I’ll probably have the mudroom just match the kitchen/dining, and I’ll either leave the entry the way it is or have it match the living room. You would think with all of these houses I just saw, I’d have some better ideas!

I really, seriously….need to sleep. I was up late last night, slept horribly, and day light savings had me all over the place. I was tired all day….and now here I am. It’s 12:30. GIR!

I’m going to scour HGTV.com or something…