Home Sweet Home

This blog isn't all about love. I mean, if I were to live my life solely in search of a mate, I'd miss out on all sorts of other things like...

1970s wallpaper.

As I mentioned, I just relocated to Raleigh for work. I can't actually talk about work because it would be a breach of my confidentiality agreement. I do top secret government work. Not really. Most of what I do is public knowledge, I just can't go around blogging about it. I'll let the media do that for me. Please don't take my silence about it as a lack of passion. I love what I do and the difference the office I work in makes for education.

But there is an issue of 1970s wallpaper. In 2009, I purchased a fantastic new home in east Asheville on a half acre of property. It was new so it had new everything. I've spent the last 2.5 years making it mine. So now (actually next Monday), I will have left this home for a rental home here in Raleigh.

I try to see any glass as half full (ok, you got me, it's always half empty-- I'm a realist). This rental home has all sorts of good things going for it. It hard lovely old hardwood floors, it's located on 12 acres of forest, it's within 15 minutes of downtown Raleigh and Cary, it has a charming woodstove in the den, there's tons of space...

It was also built in 1975 and hasn't been updated since. Now the good thing is that the land ladies gave me permission to de-1970s the place. The areas that need a new paint job like the bedrooms are quite easy. However, half of the house is plastered in 1970s wallpaper. The kitchen was brown and orange with drawings of counter canisters in a repeat pattern. Other areas have garish, glittery textured print. The two bathrooms feature green and gold in one and orange and gold in the other. It's a nightmare.

Thanks to the help of family, we were able to take care of the kitchen, and two of the three bedrooms. I've half-stripped the dining room.

I just can't bring myself to even touch the bathrooms. Besides the gilded wallpaper, they have gold-flecked counters (which sadly, I will not be investing any time or money into removing). I have this dream that one day as I sink down into the rather large, deep bathtub, that I open my eyes to see that some gnome did all the work me. But then again, if I had the power to conjure up magical gnomes to do man-chores, that I would be able to conjure up an actual man.

Gnomes are cute, but I'm not into beards.