Inside Job: the house that Charlie decorated

As mentioned in an earlier post, the previous owner of the Lizard Lounge apparently had the creativity of a musk ox. In addition to the aforementioned exterior monotony, every room inside was also spiritless, painted this sort of wan, semi-gloss gray color with shiny disco-inspired wallpaper accents, dog-worn carpet (big, shedding dogs), and brown vinyl cove molding. Just let the image of all that sink in for a moment…

As you can imagine, my first project was to strip off that nasty wallpaper and paint over the pasty gray walls. Let me just stop right here and share with you that, no matter what anyone says or the claims made by any manufacturer of wallpaper stripping chemicals or machines, stripping old shiny wallpaper is hard. It’s messy and moist and I hope I never have to do it again. There – I’ve said it.

However, as the new resident of many a rental and a couple of purchased houses, I will tell you that paint is by far the quickest and easiest decorating fix with the greatest return, both visually and financially. It doesn’t really matter what you’re going to eventually do to a wall or other vertical surface in your house – by painting everything before you move in, you will instantly and inexpensively erase any stains, color-choice atrocities, or memories of past residents. I do advise against being cheap when it comes to buying paint brushes, however. Whether you intend to become the Picasso of the house-painting set or are doing it just this once, invest in some good paint brushes. You’ll find that your walls will practically paint themselves.

Due to budgetary constraints I had to resign myself to living with the carpet for awhile. (I didn’t buy the Lizard Lounge because I envisioned blogging about my “hovel to home” triumph one day or to test my DIY mettle – it was all I could afford at the time.) A rented rug shampooer put my mind at ease (a little) and I just decided I wouldn’t lie face-down on the carpet without something (thick and preferably latex-backed) between me and it. Through an odd twist of fate, however, hurricane Charlie took care of the carpet for me in August of 2004.

Rather than recount the entire, sordid tale of hurricane-induced damage, let me just tell you that the combination of copious amounts of runoff rain water from the storm and a couple of days worth of flushed toilets from all the residents on my street, intensified by a two-day power outage which left no power to process the sewage up and out of the storm drains, further exacerbated by the fact that I live on the low end of the street, eventually culminated in a house full of raw sewage – and the resultant loss of all that nasty carpet. Darn…

Immediately after Charlie plowed through the middle of Florida I would have been hard pressed to find any sort of silver lining. However, admiring my new engineered wood floors and base moldings, all paid for courtesy of my insurance settlement, totally takes the edge off. Totally.

I sometimes find myself walking from room-to-room at night smiling and thinking, “I love my house.” When the lights are set just so it has this warm and comfortable ambience that truly makes it feel like home.

Not that my project list is getting any shorter – it’s just that making that list in such personally satisfying surroundings is so much more fun…