I hope to move into a new apartment soon, if I can. There’s some financial issues that bode rather ill, but God willing, I will be home soon.
It’s within a house of a friend from church. She regularly has a caregiving client living with her on the main floor, and there’s two gentlemen from church living in a cottage they made out of the garage. Right little colony she’s got, thinks of it as a Noah’s Ark. It’s lovely.
The walls are freshly painted a gorgeous, sunny, warm yellow that’s completely irrepeatable because I mixed it. I have a gallon of Behr “Russian Blue” to use in my bedcloset (kid you not) and as an accent, hopefully on a horizontal beam running along my ceiling. I want to take the white paint and stencil on something over the blue, perhaps John 16:33. Like the Baumgardners did.
I’ve never painted a place to suit me before. The place is still under renovation, unfinished concrete floors and plastic taped over everything and paint still wet to the touch, yet it already feels…comfortable. Mine.
I’m looking for a roommate. I’ll be putting my bed in a closet off the pantry, mainly because there’s only one finished bedroom and it seems easier to rent that out than, well, where I’ll be sleeping. And, honestly, if I hang some muslin curtains across the entrance, string lights, and a bit of art, I can’t imagine anything more I’d need in a bedroom.
These are fairy lights on a bendable wire, wouldn’t they be gorgeous draped along the ceiling?
It’s a basement apartment, with a handful of windows and glass double doors for light. The walls are yellow, as I said, and the kitchen cabinets (to the right of the entry) are wood with light green formica counters. There’s an island, with this gorgeous round-octagonal wooden pillar, and past that–behind the kitchen–is a wide area I hope to use for Getting Stuff Done. Crafting. Art. Writing. Creating things of beauty, and worth.
The bathroom’s next to that, it’s enormous. Kind of funny-looking, since it’s made to be wheelchair-accessible and, more to the point, made out of scrap parts bought at Waste Not Want Not. There’s a big shower–no tub, sadly–tiled with rounded slim rectangles of grey and brick red 1″ squares and pale powdery blue elsewise. Then the tiles on the bathroom cabinet are a gorgeous, 4″ square assortment of delicate marbled sea-green. It’s an utter mismatch, and there’s no unifying it, so thankfully I have a lovely shower curtain. We’ll likely paint the walls a peachy neutral, and I’ll just keep my shower curtain closed all the time. It’ll be peaceful, somehow, instead of chaotic. It doesn’t need to match to be peaceful. It just needs a little art.
When you exit the bathroom, and take a few steps forward, there’s an old red brick chimney that forms the corner. To the right is the hallway, to the diagonal is the bedroom (color undecided), and straight ahead is what I’ll make the living room. If you follow the hall, I’m going to make that my icon corner. All right, yes, it’s a flat wall. But it’ll be convenient for bedtime prayers and meals alike. It’ll be visible throughout the space. And that matters to me. At the end of the hall there’s a wide doorway, like a rectangular arch. That’s the bedcloset. The pantry’s inside, off a door to the left; it shares a wall with the bedroom.
Once the furniture’s in I’ll ask for permission to put in an indoor swing, and install a hanging under-cabinet spice rack. The living room needs a wood stove, but I don’t have one, so I’ll find something to focus it on. A coffee table perhaps, and a bookshelf, and a rocking chair and comfy chair. It will be a cozy, lovely place.
I haven’t the faintest idea whom I’ll live with or how I’ll pay for this, shared rent or no. But it’s beautiful. I want this.
Pray for my financial health. I want to live here. I want a home.
Brigid, notes to self:
http://tinyurl.com/cheapbulklavender
http://tinyurl.com/filatopaper
http://tinyurl.com/fragranceoils
http://tinyurl.com/glassinkbottles
