Front Door Mania

Last month, in a fit of impatience, I cut my hair.  And when I say "I cut my hair" I don't mean I went to a salon. I mean I took the scissors and, Psycho music playing through my head, lopped off my own hair. This is a lot easier than you'd think if you start with very long hair like I had and if you don't care about it being model perfect or, you know, even — then it's a quick and easy (and cheapo) change. Just tie your hair back in a pony tail (I did pigtails) and lop it off. Instant layers! My hair is curly so choppiness there is disguised and it grows fast.  And what the heck, it's just hair, right?

When my mother-in-law visited for Christmas she said it was pretty and that it really opened up my face.  Which:

This is how I look in the mornings pre-coffee.

Yeah.  

All that is just to awkwardly lead up to the idea of letting the front door open up your house.  Or, at least, that's what I've interpreted the design blogs as saying.  And I wanted to put up a picture of a Predator.

The front door to our Old House Back in Texas was a traditional mahogony-stained door with a pretty glass insert. I picked it out when we built and at the time it was one of the only non-painted door in the 'hood. Then I noticed other stained doors cropping up. Dude, I started that trend.  I am so cool.

Well, maybe not. It was actually a pretty standard door.

Now that we've moved to the Pacific Northwest and got over the inevitable culture shock I realized that you need color here in order to survive.  The sun?  She hides. A lot. And the resulting soggy, grey skies and the soggy, grey roads and the soggy, mossy ground can be one soggy downer.

I've been taking note of interesting houses (something Seattle has in abundance) both on our long drives and online, making mental lists of what I want the next house to look like and how we should decorate it. I've noticed people's front doors can get lost in the pervading gloom.  Good when you have unwanted visitors — disastrous when you've ordered a pizza and the guy can't find you.  Their faces needed opening up.

I've just started organizing my saved links onto Pinterest (such a cool site) and I started with the front door  (I'll probably need twenty for the dream kitchen).  This is just for starters. I'm sure I'll have another two pages filled in a few months.

http://pinterest.com/springm/front-door/

I didn't realize I was so drawn to yellow. Maybe it's the lack of winter sunshine that's catching up to me.

Differing opinions

Because of course what the world needs is another blog about houses and house hunting and house decorating and house renovating and house, house, house (only with a distinct lack of Hugh Laurie in its contents).

What I'm attempting here is a way to keep my thoughts in order as my family and I wade through the massive amount of homes for sale in the Seattle area. Some are gems and some... okay, a lot are real stinkers.  But at our price point, we're going to be holding our noses a lot.

The biggest hurdle, other than our budget, is that my husband and I have differing tastes. My ideal house would be something like a farmhouse or cottage and his ideal house would have a moat and ramparts and cannon or possibly a machine gun nest (or both) and a giant vat of boiling oil to pour over unwanted visitors' heads. I would actually be okay with the boiling oil but only if we could use it to fry doughnuts with.

We both agree that a small tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific is our ideal location.

So, somewhere between my cottage and his castle there has to be a reasonable compromise.

Stop laughing at me - it could happen. I just have to finish rubbing this lamp I found. :)

Houses seen this week: six.

And for the record: