First, there are the lists. And lists of lists. And sub-lists. And endless ordering and re-ordering of the lists, the things that need doing. The stuff that needs purchasing, for example. That's a big one. And it's one of the Six P's. See, we close on the house tomorrow. And after that, there's the Six P's. They start with the grunt work: painting, packing, porting. Then there's the practical stuff. A little plumbing, along with some powering, because there's an electrician coming out at some point. And that brings us back to purchasing. All of these P words are bound together by one other: pain. And that's especially true with the purchasing. The endless sweaty craze of purchasing. 'Separation anxiety' is one phrase that comes to mind, though I don't think the term is meant to be applied to one's wallet.

But it's necessary, the purchasing, unless we want to live in an empty house. Because, for the first time, we're upsizing and it feels kind of weird. In the past, we've had to sell things every time we move so that we'll fit into our new spaces. But now we have strange new spaces with names like 'Dining Room' and 'Office.' And some areas don't even have names yet. So we just use phrases like 'Back Bedroom,' or 'The Small Room.'

I'm just glad to know C and I actually have a nesting instinct. Because I was beginning to think we were genetically handicapped in this regard. I guess we're just late bloomers. Because we've definitely sprouted one of those things. Big time. And it's kind of making me crazy. All this nesting is tiring stuff. Because, let me tell you, there is this matter of the love seat. And you'd think, how hard could that be? The answer is tremendously. Because we've got very specific criteria for this thing. Width. Color. Aura. It's all been decided. It's in the cards. And now we just need to locate the right one. Only somebody's tossed 'em all across the room, willy-nilly. And actually, if I could, I'd do all kinds of things 'willy-nilly' as long as it gave me the opportunity to use the word 'willy-nilly' in a sentence. So the cards, yeah, they're willy-nilly, and it's not just one deck, it's twenty. And you can only look at one card at a time then you've got to throw it back in the pile. Willy-nilly.

But you keep at it, man. Because this shit is important. This is, after all, where you're going to be resting your ass for the next several years. And you want it to be comfortable, right? Exactly.

So, right now BoConcept is a very strong contender, mainly because their sofas look great and you can customize them to your liking. But it's also nice that you can order one and have it delivered in a reasonable amount of time. We've had two primary problems with the love seat. One is that nobody seems to make small love seats anymore. It's all huge sofas. And we're selling our huge sofa this week. We don't need another. The other problem is delivery time. Did you know that if you don't want one of the pre-made models at stores like Crate & Barrel or Pottery Barn or any furniture store really, you're looking at waiting 3-4 months for your furniture to arrive. This is unacceptable in the I-want-it-right-now age of the Internet.

We did knock out one big decision this weekend: the area rug, which we found at this great rug place out in Sterling Virginia. If you're in DC and looking for just the right area rug, you should definitely check out RugHome. They have a great selection of contemporary and oriental area rugs. But what sets them apart is the level of service they provide. They're very knowledgeable and helpful and will take the time to help you find the right thing. So we got the rug yesterday, which is great because now we have a template of colors that we can use to choose paint for the living room.

We've also got to decide on a primary piece of art for the dining room so we can select colors for that room, too. We've narrowed it down to a few Rothko's. We'll just have to see which one looks good in the space tomorrow when we do our final walk-through.

And now I have to give giant kudos to C. She's putting a lot of thought and effort into this whole decorating process, which is good, because I've discovered I only have a limited amount of patience for it. It's because I want to hurry up and get to the good stuff, like looking for a new stereo!

Some photos to come later this week . . .

link to this | comments (1) | File:  House