I’m stuck at the airport and my plane is delayed…so I thought I’d do some research. What are the current trends in Ranch real estate sales and design?

Maine Today says, “The once-popular home of post-WWII baby boomers is making a comeback as more people discover that, believe it or not, ranches can be cool.”
Northwest Renovation says, “…Mid-century homes are definitely on the up-tick as far as decorating goes.”

These articles are very interesting…only catch is that our house is not a pure mid-century modern design. Built in 1951, I don’t think mid-century modern was in full-swing, and our house definitely has a lot of the 1940’s coziness rather than modern straight lines and hard edges.

Two things:

1) We’ve lost all motivation. We probably have 5% of the kitchen remaining and have no desire to finish up. Luckily my parents (hi mom) will be visiting at the end of February which means we will find the motivation before then.

And 2) We cannot agree in what colors to paint the exterior of the house and are now thinking of looking outside our coupling to a professional. Has anybody out there ever hired a professional to help choose exterior paint colors? Basically we’re dealing with one major issue: 3 colors are already in place. The first is the roof and brick which are both dark red. The second is the Mahogany siding on the west side of the house, which is yellowish brown. The third is the window coverings which are all white from the street, and with such HUGE windows, this is a color whether we want it to be or not, and since they’re new, there is no way we’ll be purchasing different ones. We want to paint the house this spring, but we’ve already wasted a lot on test colors and we’re not getting any closer. I can’t imagine wasting more money on test colors - perhaps it’s better to invest in a consultant??

For years I have hunted high and low for a coffee table. I love the idea of a coffee table. I want a coffee table. But I never see anything I like. It’s either too modern, too traditional, too victorian, too oak, too square, too rectangle, too tall, etc. But, I have finally found the table! The only thing that could use improvement is the color…I do wish it were a little lighter. Oh, and of course I’d need $900! How is anyone supposed to have a nice looking house when a coffee table costs $900? Grumble.

I noticed by our stats that folks might be looking to see what Eric and I look like (I know I do the same when I visit other people’s sites…it’s nice to put a face with a blog). In Flickr pictures of Eric are among the most viewed. So I added a picture to our “About Us” link on the right.

In other news, I’m tired of working on house projects in the cold, and wish the weather would hurry up and get warm. If it were warmer, it would be so much easier to paint the double-hung window. Although Eric brought up a good point…how do we get the top part of the window down? I’ve never really done much with a double-hung window, besides open and close it. I guess we should try to figure out how it works. I guess I’ll visit my favorite site: answers.com. Maybe they’ll have an answer. I doubt it - but google always works. Or another houseblogger.

Next week I will be out of the house on a business trip - so Eric will have to go it alone with house projects. I hope something amazing happens while I’m away. Like a fairy godmother visits the house and finishes the kitchen up. Ah…the dreams. It will be a tough decision for Eric, “Should I rock climb or should I do a house project?” Yesterday I reminded him that I want a closet in the master bedroom - he told me the landscaping comes before the closet . I really want to have my clothes in the bedroom.

Today I continued with the trim. I have to say, the advice I read online, about just painting the window trim and not taping up the window - was BRILLIANCE! It looks great. I scored a line around the edge between the glass and trim before scraping it off, but it looks even better than if I’d taken the time to tape it up - this way it covers every edge and unevenness (is that a word?) that existed before we came along. We also got the cafe curtain shutter in the mail and it’s wonderful (when held up against the window). Only question, when you have a shutter window, isn’t the little dip in the trim that holds the small vertical board to work the shutters supposed to be at the bottom? In the directions it says that dip is supposed to be at the top, but I think that looks silly. Hopefully I can finish painting the trim in the evenings and have the cafe shutter up by the weekend. Hooray!

Eric didn’t do anything with our house today (except some cleaning) because he helped a friend put in a skylight. I told him to take notes, because I want to put in a light tube in the tv room. He just rolled his eyes…I have lots of plans for him.