The home improvement nightmare.

I used to think that home improvement was fun.

When I was little, I would go to diy stores with my parents and walk down the aisles with paint samples, tiles and curtains and think that it would be so much fun to decorate my own place.

Well, it isn't.

The actual process of painting, moving furniture and hanging curtain rails might not be that bad, but the process of choosing the items that will actually fit together and make the interior pleasing to the eye is really difficult.

I absolutely hate making decisions, especially those long-term ones. I'm not going to redecorate the flat for the next seven years probably, so in the past few week I went through hell trying to pick all those bits and pieces. What can I say, in order to have you dream home, you need to live through the nightmare of making important and expensive decisions.

Starting with paint, I wanted white walls and, guess what, there were about 20 different shades of white in the diy store. I'm not even joking. I've always thought that white was white, but apprently that isn't the case. Thankfully there is a colour called pure brilliant white that acts as a standard white colour, so that sorted the painting problem. Keeping it simple was an absolute priority.

All the lovely shades of white...

At that point I thought I was done with until I came up with the idea of having an accent wall in the kitchen. Luscious Lime or Kiwi Green? Or maybe I should go for blues, rather than greens? Do I want everything painted in that colour, or do I want some tiles on one of the walls? Decisions, decisions.

Didn't go with any of those in the end

That wasn't the end of kitchen-related decisions, because to revamp that space on a budget I've decided to paint the cupboard doors and change the handles. It was much cheaper than having a brand new fitted kitchen, but it required multiple decisions. And hours of inhaling probably toxic cupboard paint fumes.

Because all the flooring in the flat was absolutely hideous, I had to pick the carpets for the bedrooms as well. I highly dislike beige, brown and similar colours and it narrowed things down massively, but still there were tens of grey carpet samples in the store. Given that I finally decided that I wanted carpets with wool and had a restricted budget, we quickly went down to only couple of carpets, but the entire process took two trips to the store (have you ever been to one? They are sad places) and a good few hours.

The floor saga continued when I went to choose the wood flooring. Chevron or straight pattern? Which one of tens of wood colours? How thick should the planks be? And, more importantly, how wide?

My first reaction? Oh my...

And, after making all those decisions, I was down to my last one, which was the tiles for the bathroom and the kitchen. I know nothing about tiles, so porcelain, ceramic or stone, they are all the same to me. Mr Magic was helpful as ever: after I've narrowed it down to two types of tiles he said that they looked exactly the same. I've achieved a compromise by getting bigger tiles for the kitchen and smaller ones for the bathroom. I didn't have to make a choice as to which of the two I preferred.

Clearly two completely different tiles, Mr Magic.

~~~

What making all those decisions in a very short period of time has taught me is that you should probably go with your gut feeling. Your first intuition as to what you like probably points you in the direction of what will bring you joy.

It has also taught me that I had no imagination. My wooden floors are beautiful, but I had no image in my head what the floor would look like in my lounge/diner. I can't really imagine the look of tiles in the kitchen (yet to be done). I'm taking a massive leap of faith with these things.

Anyway, that's the end of my home improvement rant. Look out for the post showing the finished apartment (probably in about 10 years at this rate). Take care and remember to avoid any home improvement at all cost if you value your sanity.