Welcome to the Yellow Cottage

My home improvements can be characterized by two words - impulse or immobility. This blog? yes, it would be in the impulse world, but I'm a little tired of immobility. My hope is to find a path down the middle that allows me to arrest some of my HGTV envy and to increase the value of my home through thoughtful, creative, improvements.

Here's the simple, yet daunting plan.

1. For one year, spend time every week in tackling home improvement projects. Some weeks may be research, some may be sketching and planning, some may be shopping, some may be all about the elbow grease.
   
2. Record the entire experience right here -- the ups, the downs, the plans, the lessons learned, the fixes and foibles, the impulse and immobility.
   
3. Try not to lose my sanity or my marriage in the process.

The most difficult thing, thus far, is determining where to start. This morning as I lay in bed (how many Saturdays in my future will THAT be happening?) I mentally inventoried the house and its inexhaustible list of projects. Should I begin with a big bang project to really get things rolling? Or should I start small to build confidence? Maybe I should use some video clips to better show before and after and full 360-degree views?

There are quite literally thousands of opportunities for projects in our tiny yellow cottage. Our bedroom is the ultimate project space - we've done NOTHING with it since moving in 7 years ago. But it boggles my mind and I know the very first step is finding and buying bedding that I love so I can change the paint color that I hate and perhaps move beyond the plastic mini-blind window coverings that haunt my dreams! But then again, maybe...just maybe...I should start with the "workshop" in the basement so I can actually find important things like a screwdriver?

Perhaps, I should even begin with some before-after stories to show that in the first year we lived here, we actually did quite a bit of home improvement (get some credit for effot to date!), but then we got a little lazy, a little complacent, and maybe a little broke.

For now, I'm still all in my head...wrestling with that immobility factor...and this weekend should be all about getting ready for the holidays, gearing up for another long 50+ hour work week, and reading/assignments for my next semester of school as a grad student.

[sigh]

So...welcome to the Yellow Cottage...we'll be installing color coordinated padding on the walls soon. Stay tuned.