Oh yes, I understand that. I suppose I'm fortunate (?) that budget constraints often keep me from knocking over that particular set of dominoes! Sometimes I go backwards. I want to do thus and such but if I am going to do that, than I better do this first.

Funny that when you paint your room, the furniture looks shabby. If you buy furniture first, then looks like the walls need painting.....and even one piece of new furniture makes the other things look shabby. Hey...that is just the way it is....budget is always a problem....

I won a painting in a raffle at a charity event. One of our friends said to DH, "You know that painting is going to cost you a fortune. She's going to want to redecorate the entire room now." He was so right!

I feel your pain. A small sewer clog turned into a major (and I mean, five figures!) MBR remodel. New lighting system, new flooring, custom bookcases, new closet organizers. But that led to new bedlinens.

And boy, those cheap plastic mini-blinds were old and dirty. Wouldn't wider, plantation style blinds look better? Well, they would on the two narrow windows, but on the big wide window over the bed, a REAL plantation shutter with the slide-in frame would look soooo much nicer. And it does - some $340 more nicer. For just one of three windows!

But then all the classic Danish Modern teak bookcases that were in the MBR had to go upstairs to the LR (we've got a small cottage, only the LR and MBR are sizable). So that meant the old-but-totally-solid white-painted particleboard modular bookcases in the LR had to go....but where?

Some got stuck out in the backyard storage shed. But some went into the spare bedroom, to better organize that big closet. My DH moved his desk from our MBR to the spare room, too, since the new decor downstairs looked so spacious and light, he didn't want to have a big dark wood desk spoiling it.

Wow...those bookcases look great in the LR. But I hate the couch and sofa. They're comfy but very old and starting to go. And they've always been too big for the room, which is long and narrow.

So there goes another few thousand for the new seating units: a short chaise lounge, an oversized ottoman, a used-but-perfect leather club chair that was a steal at an estate sale, and two new side tables.

"We need greenery or flowers or something," declared my DH. So a few hours of shopping on-line and another eye-popping amount of $$$ later, silk flowers and a 6' artificial bamboo tree are adding color to various rooms.

Let's not even talk about the pillow covers, Heaven forbid. I remember buying entire bedlinen sets for what one Euro pillow sham costs nowadays. Sheesh!

And the new sets of artificial candles (my DH adores them, so I ended up buying not just one set as planned, but four). And the shelf lights I still need to install. And all the new organizer storage boxes so I could hide stuff in plain sight for easy access (like 3 different sizes of cell batteries for all those new fake candles!).

Oh yeah, it all makes the old wall paint look a little tired. But I've settled for repainting the trim - and THAT'S a job I'm not enjoying, LOL.

My only consolation is that at least I don't have to buy any new rugs. We've collected so many beautiful handmade rugs over the years, all the redecorating has inspired me to just rearrange where we put them, so at least it's like looking at them with 'new eyes' for a while.

....and did I forget to mention the new vacuum cleaner, because I'm tired of lugging the old one up and down the staircase?

I'm beginning to think it may never end. Somebody stop me, I'm running amok!

Welcome to our world. :-D

I have managed to avoid being enabled throughout the years but lately I want what everyone else has. I want a rug from erugsale.com. I bought those martini tables from west elm. Lol

I am am moving out of my sensible neutral phase. Now I want color and florals.

Lol

Well, who says we can't go through phases, right? ;-)

There was a little recession around the turn of the Millenium (years before 2007) and a friend whose husband is a painter said that usually his clients call because they bought a new sofa and now they have to paint. But no one was buying new sofas for a couple of years! So yes, the "give a moose a muffin" syndrome.

Oh, I'm playing dominoes, too!

After some deliberation, I decided to "flip" a brand new chair with the current living room chair. I thought the chair was too "wild" for the living room, so I earmarked it for the the lower level. Chair crisis averted. I will need a new kitchen window topper, touch-up the paint, rug, and accent pillows.

I am no longer in the neutral phase of life. I have firmly moved into the not-so-boring phase. My co-worker's eyes widened (and not in a good way) when he saw this chair. lol

Very good taste mick-mick! You may have surprised your co-worker.;)

Mick-Mick, I love that chair! It would go so well with my new gray rug ..... just saying. I'm thrilled that some people here have gone even further than I have so far. I've only bought new wall-to-wall carpeting, three new area rugs (one has been returned), umpteen pillows, a little side table, a new couch (the old one IS literally falling apart), hmm, I feel as though I've left some things out....yes, had a big rug and all the soft furniture shampooed because the new rug would make them look dirty, I think that's it! I don't want to remember any more.....

I really like that chair!

I'm not a "floral fabric" person, but I like that chair, too. (What is happening to me?) Had to laugh about your slippery slope. One fluorescent light ballast bit the dust, so we gel stained the cabinets, changed and finished the recessed florescent lighting and box, put in can lights and a ceiling light, installed a backsplash, changed out the cabinet hardware, outlets and switches, painted the ceiling and wall, textured and painted some bronze window and post strips and built a tall custom cabinet for two microwaves and the toaster. It cost under $1700 because it was all DIY, but I just could not convince myself to replace the ballast on that hated florescent lighting!

Well I love that chair too! I am definitely in a colorful phase. I just posted my new bright andand festive bedding believe me I am there lol.

Love that chair. And yes, change one leads to another and the vicious cycle never ends!!!!

It's like pulling a thread on a sweater...it just keeps unraveling. Before you know it, you've got an entire new room (or a large pile of yarn and no sweater) :)

Sueb20 coined a phrase that should sound familiar to you now, mick: project scope creep.

It's what keeps me up at night!

Thank you for the compliments on the chair. I am very excited to see it all come together. Of course, I will share the finished results.

Oh yes the dreaded scope creep. One year I bought DH a large flat screen tv but never bothered to measure dimensions on the existing tv cab. Well the new tv was 2" too large. WE needed a new cab. While looking I found office furniture that I loved so we ordered it. Then we decided before the furniture arrived we should replace the carpeting and since we were going to carpet the one room we should also re-carpet the bedroom. Well new carpet and old paint doesn't work so we had the whole bedroom wing of the house repainted. We finally found a darn cabinet but in the process spent a lot of money.

I think the chair you chose is so gorgeous. I would use that in a heartbeat! You have great taste!

Mick-Mick -- who's the manufacturer of the couch you selected?

Thanks Holly-Kay. I definitely no longer feel bad about all of the work that I am about to do to make my vision come true.

Jewelisfabulous - The sofa is manufactured by Lee Industries (1935-03). It is the Trevor sofa at Crate and Barrel.

Slip sliding away....

So so we needed to fix a wall by the fireplace in the livingroom, we found that the problem was with the false front so why not add those two small windows. Of course they need to match the style of the house and SO wanted to build ($$$$ on tools)

So we might as well fix the ceiling too, thankfully that hard job was not being done by me. And since I was paying for the help I opted to only recover the back pillows and bench seat on my existing sofa, $200 later well...those older pillow inserts need to be replaced too. A trip to Ikea and of course way more than just pillow inserts. Then I decided the old couch should go in the sunroom instead.... And since the guy doing the work was so backed up I ended up doing it myself and since I was not paying him, well I could afford two new cheap love seats and a chair to slip cover. But ya know an ottoman and a second chair would be good in that sunroom and they might as well all match since I already am most of the way there...

and the fabric for the slip covers I made for the dining chairs is not singing to me, so let's make a second set. And then the youngest moves back and suddenly there is no room for that first couch... And it ends up cut to bits and in the trash

Should I mention the quilt set I got for my room after all this repaint and refinishing is done? Ya I am not bonding with it and since I have the extra chairs, ottoman and pillows from that couch. Let's not talk about today's purchases

This reminds me of a book/ story that I read when I was probably ten years old. Someone gives a couple a pot of pinks (flowers). They live in a rather shabby, messy cottage someplace. The wife puts it on their kitchen table. Hmmm, those pretty flowers now makes the table look shabby, so she paints the table. Next the pretty flowers and freshly painted table makes the room look shabby, so they paint to room and clean it up. Next thing you know, they've spruced up the entire house, inside and out. And it all started with a pot of pinks. That story really resonated with me and I've seen it in action throughout my life. One small improvement has a snowball effect on a room, a house, a person, etc. I'm now enjoying more examples here of that same thing!

Hmmmmm. Methinks gardenweb might help push us down this particular slope. LOL

Update. I learned that the sofa is ready. It took about a month to fabricate! It will be delivered on the 26th.

Operation Scope Creep is on and poppin'!

I decided to get my existing chair recovered. I would like to keep the patterned chair (above) in the recreation room. I have a bolt of brown P. Kaufmann Groupie (who does that?) waiting for a project. I am not sure about it, so WE (catch that?) will figure that out once the sofa is delivered.

In the meanwhile, I am going to:

• touch up the walls
• clean the baseboards
• buy/install a new foyer light
• install new dining area light
• steam clean the carpet
• figure out an area rug (erugsales.com?)

The sofa is here!! It is very much a taupe, but reads gray in the pictures. I will take photos once I get more sunlight.

The couch is beautiful, and so is the pillow that looks so perfect on it. I like the fabric on the couch, it looks almost velvety and soft to the touch.

My saga is still not complete. The couch we picked finally arrived and would not fit through the doorway into the TV room (always, always measure). What a bummer! Instead of going to the store and looking at fabric we instantly bought another one over the internet, with a different fabric and a flowery pattern, have no idea what the color really looks like, only that the dimensions were smaller. If this one does not fit I will do myself an injury.

After having decided that the living room looked better without an area rug it only took me a week or two to decide that I was wrong, and I bought one on-line that was bigger, hopefully nicer and way more expensive. I've sworn to myself that I will not buy so much as a pillow insert for the next few years ..... honestly, I mean it.

The bird fabric is wonderful! And your new sofa is lovely too.