The art of compromise

(originally written January 25)

If it’s one thing I’ve learned to be fairly good at, it’s compromising. Not that I compromise myself into a situation where I’m not happy, but more like learning to let go of my obsessions over something that is unrealistic or that Garry isn’t 100% head-over-heels in love with like I am.

Case in point, I desperately wanted to paint the cabinets in the kitchen white and install glass tile. Garry was very much against either of those two options so we butted heads on it. At the time, it seemed like all the options that he “approved” of would only make the kitchen into even MORE of a black hole than it already is, but I decided to run with it.

In the process (somehow) I managed to come with black granite tile (yeah, I know – who would’ve thought?) and white and aqua pebble tile.

Do I still wish that Garry would’ve given into my idea for white cabinets and glass tile? Not really. Painting the cabinets would’ve ended up being a LOT of work and could have possibly been disasterous. Besides, he brought up an excellent point – the cabinets and hardware are in great condition (they just need to be cleaned with a degreaser) so why fix something that “isn’t broken?” Good point – and why spend the money when we have a billion other projects that need to be taken care of?

But, the glass backsplash was a little harder to swallow. More so the reason because glass tile is much cheaper in some instances than stone (and he was fairly adamant that we use some sort of stone) and, to be honest, I really loved the look of it.

So I took the time and looked for other ideas out there that would be unique and to his liking. Eventually I came around to the pebble backsplash, which I totally love. It will be expensive to do though – the tile alone costing well over $300 – but when we’re finished it will be worth the extra cost since we both will be happy.

Another instance, was that I found a gorgeous mirror at Raymour and Flaningan. It was enormous (4 ft diameter) and round. I fell in absolute love with it… except for the price tag. I wasn’t about to pay $200 for a gargantuan mirror (it wouldn’t have fit where I wanted to put it anyway without completely rearranging a bunch of stuff which I wasn’t to thrilled about doing. The shape and design of it was what I was really drawn to - so I started looking for something more affordable and smaller.

Of all places, I found what I was looking for at Joann Fabric on a mission to get some embroidery thread. It was the perfect size and only needed a little bit of spray paint to give it the gold color of the R&F mirror. I picked up that sucker for $15 guys! Sweet!!!

I also found two metal stars – one was bronze with a raised leaf print that is similar to our bedding and the other is a mirror star with a worn bronze border. Those will be hung in our bedroom once I find my hooks.

All of those were 50% off - and I ended up spending a little over $50 for everything (including my embroidery floss for another project) I think that’s WAY better than spending $200 on an enormous mirror! AND – I can finally start getting some stuff on the walls. It’s actually rather bland in my house, nothing really of personal interest is hanging up except for in the living room and in the guest room.

While we’re waiting for our grant renovations to begin, we’re still working out how we want to make the attic master suite function as we have to keep that in mind while they’re working on some of the major projects. On top of that – now I’m wondering what we’re going to do with the other two bedrooms. AJ will be moving out sometime this spring – so that room will be available again. What I’m thinking is that once we have the master suite up and running (which may be a year or two) we turn our current bedroom into the guest room (and eventually the baby room when we decide to have a kid) and the current guest room into our home office.

Once we have a kid we’ll need to figure out some other sleeping arrangements for guests as the current guest room isn’t necessarily “big enough” to harbor the amount of desk space we want along with a bed. The other idea was to turn our current bedroom into the office/guest room with the smaller bedroom (and attached sunroom) belonging to future kiddo. That would make more sense since our current bedroom is a lot bigger and with more wall space to put a large desk, filing cabinets and the full-sized bed. The closet is also much larger for added storage space. And let’s be honest – what kid wouldn’t  want a sunroom attached to their bedroom? Once it’s insulated properly, it would make an awesome playroom… I’m kind of jealous just thinking about it.

Time to bring my head back from the clouds though, and focus on the tasks at hand – insulating the attic, getting the grant renovations completed and finishing the kitchen.