This week's journal prompt from Suzanne at Quietfire Designs.
Do you remember the very first room you decorated?
Were you an adult or a teenage?
How did you do it--plan, budget, makeovers?
I do remember the first room I decorated. My sister Barb and I worked at Fabricland, we were probably 16 -18, and got these floral bedspreads for our twin beds. We were not allowed to paint our rooms any color we liked, but we did have an old dresser that we "antiqued". We painted it moss green (my mother let us do that because moss green was her favorite color) and then you streaked it with this chocolate brown stuff to simulate woodgrain. It was really stinky. We changed the knobs and "viola". We got shag scatter rugs in purple, and fish net curtains with shells on them (real fish net). We had bookcase headboards, so of course mine were stacked with books, and musical figurines.I think Barb's was quite uncluttered. Still have all those books and figurines. (almost40 years can you believe it.)I then decorated my room with my sister Alice, we were a little older. Once again we didn't get to choose the color of walls, my mother always painted every room different shades of pale green (horrible). So I painted a trellis with purple clematis trailing all around them, free hand. So that's the doorway, and closet doorway. This was in oils. A great number of years later when I married these flowers were still wet. I have no idea how my mother got rid of them. I guess if that's the most disastrous thing I did she must have thought she should have let us paint the color of our choice. Just and FYI in one of our early year of marriage when money was really tight, I got a gallon of paint cheap, it was a miscolor, thought I'd paint the powder room turned out to be that god awful green. As soon as I got some cash, changed it. Hated that color. My rule, if it's green, it has to be alive to be in my house. My last thing of green is a love seat that my mother chose the color for (one of her castoffs) I'll be re-upholstering it next fall. Also, my kids have always had a say in the color of their rooms, Sasha's room is a flaming orange, (I'll be neutralizing this soon, it's so hard to clean in there, I almost need sunglasses) Daniel painted red celtic circles and red doors in his room. Funnily now his room, away from home, is beige.
