Floor philosophy, the zen of it...

Well a long tortuous project of painting the floors upstairs has made some progress. They look great, but they don't wear so great. The paint adheres pretty well as long as you don't put a ton of abrasion on it...like a rolling suitcase. Yeah, I messed up the floor trying to roll a duffle bag, and the paint had even cured for several months before I did that. So it wasn't a matter of drying time, it is a matter of painted floors not being such a great option. (I don't want carpet!) The lesson learned is that what you see is not what you will see five minutes from now, when you are dealing with painted floors. They are an aquired taste, or in this case the lesser of two evils. I would not choose them, but I have no choice. So, the floor had to painted again. No big gig because it wasn't completed correctly the first time around. It was painted like a cheap apartment. It didn't have enough coats and it was painted around the furniture, leaving spots of brown on the floor when the furniture was moved. Hey, it was better than brown floors!

So to start out here is a photo history of this area. First pix is what the space looked like when we took posession of the house. Note the lovely mustard colored 1960s carpeting and dreary old shutters falling off the window and then there is the stellar designer ceiling, that is another issue..not dealing with it now...Second photo is a better shot of the mustard wall to wall. It just has to go. Good news is the space has good light.

Picture 3 to the left here is what the floor looked like after the wall to wall carpet was ripped up in 2009. One day Mr just couldn't stand it anymore and he ripped up all of the old carpeting. He lived to regret it because the carpet was on there to keep warm in the winter, and we froze our butts off last January and February in the blizzards.  Oh well, we sometimes have to pay for impulsive choices...he paid alright, he spent a month under the house correcting the worst heating system planning in the universe. So the pix put a frame on what it looked like before the floor was painted again. You can see why I am so disenchanted with those mud brown floors!

AND NOW FOR THE REVEAL!!

These photos show the current look. The job was pretty inadequate to begin with when first done a couple of months ago, it needed more coats. ( I actually think it also needs a coat of polycrylic over the paint but the manufacturer tells me not to do it.) The paint under the new beige color (which actually looks like pale yellow) is the mid to dark brown muddy color seen in the photos above. Pretty damn ugly. Never in my life have I willingly chosen the color brown. It might have to do with the fact that my childhood school uniforms were brown and I wore brown everyday for ten months of the year, every year for six or seven years. I guess that would make me have an aversion to it. Just how much brown can one life tolerate, anyway? When it is mine...not much more. We were going for warm beige, we got yellow/beige/off white. Not the best, but who wants to paint this thing again when it was done already and is an improvement? This is one thing I am going to have to tolerate.  (Like there aren't 200 other things around here in the same catagory!) The bad part is it could be a bit darker or tanner, the positive is it looks clean, fresh and sparkling. We are going with it. Think Zen.

That is the thing about this old farm house. We can never seem to get what we want, it always is a choice between several alternatives we did not have in mind and would never choose willingly. Life here is toleration. Toleration of dust and drafts, toleration of no storage, toleration of things fallling apart, toleration of a lack of choices (most choices being 19th century choices) toleration of isolation living out here on the edge....you get the idea. The good part is I look out at that amazing broadwater view, then feel the wind lifting my hair and spirits and I decide that trumps all the other choices there are for right now.

Living here is like AA, you do it just for today, and worry about the future when you get there....and preferably you don't worry at all because it doesn't accomplish anything.  If you start keeping score on the possible worries of an antique dwelling like this, you are going to melt under the possiblities.  Melting down isn't in my plan, so I am ignoring the possiblities and forging onward. Today's onward is that damn floor upstairs.