Decorating Dilemmas

Do any of you get sick of how your house looks?  We’ve lived here for 1 1/2 years and I have never actually decorated the house.  I wasn’t in love with what we had on the walls in our old house so I didn’t want to put that stuff back up.  Problem is, I’ve never gone out and bought anything to put up here that I do like.  Now I’m just sick of how things look and I am ready for a big change. 

We have a huge list of things we’d like to do to the house, but being a stay at home mom means we don’t have a lot of of extra cash flow to devote to all these changes. The short list is:

• hardwood floors in the dining room and kitchen
• a new front door
• 2 new windows (new meaning the hole doesn’t exist as I type this so they will be 100% new)
• putting egress windows in the basement
• doing a GOOD job finishing the basement instead of just throwing down some carpet and saying it’s finished (currently just the poured cements walls down there painted white with a few walls up and NO insulation so it’s freezing cold down there all year round)

That gives you a small idea of the expensive things we’d like to do.  But I’m not willing to wait for all of those expensive things to be done to start doing other things around here to make this our home.  As of right now the Golden Oak that someone vomited up all over this house is on EVERYTHING.  I am so sick of it.  Back in the, what, 80’s (??) Golden Oak was THE THING to have.  Now it’s outdated and I don’t love the look.  Except for the small area around the fireplace where there is hideous marble tile, that Golden Oak is on a huge 8’x12’ area (that’s 96 square feet of Golden oak, minus that ugly tile area).  Eck!!!  So I want to put something behind the shelves to help minimize some of that G.O.  Here are the shelves to the left of the fireplace, the ‘before’.

Below are my two ideas. Tell me which way you’d go if it was your house.

This first one is to show the bead board.  My idea is to put white/off white painted bead board behind the shelves.  So this isn’t exactly what I’m going for but it’ll give you the basic idea.

This one is wall paper (or you can use fabric).  I love the design but I wouldn’t necessarily use that exact pattern and color.  I’m thinking yellow instead of the black.  Sue me, I’m into yellow right now.  I just want something fresh, refreshing and not so darn drab!

Help a girl out and let me know which you’d go with.  Or if you have another idea to tone down the G.O. without painting it.  Whatever I do needs to be easily taken down or removed in case A.) Golden Oak makes a comeback and I want it all over the damn place again, B.) we move the next owners love G.O. or C.) I don’t know what a ‘C’ answer could be, just got carried away with myself.

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On a different note, I’ve set up some page links under my blog title above.  Now it’s easier to find a recipe I’ve put on here or to see what books I’d recommend.  (Thanks, Hubby Jack, for the tutorial!)  The book list is a little short, I can’t remember very far back so those are just a few to get you started.  Currently reading ‘A Most Unsuitable Match’ by Stephanie Grace Whitson.  It’s super good so far, I love her style of story telling.

Have a great Hump Day!

Erin