As a person with PTSD, I definitely appreciate the accuracy of this post's comparison. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes decorating styles that came from the eighties or earlier. Those cringey little details that people hate? I love them. My fondest dream is to someday own an ugly house that was built between the 60s and 70s and looks like it, burnt orange, harvest gold, and all. I often visualize the confused looks on my neighbors' faces when they see a house that looks like the 70s threw up all over it, hear a random mix of big band, classic rock, and nu metal coming through the windows, and realize their neighbors are - GASP! - Millenials! These daydreams are how I cope with living in an apartment full of beige, beige, and more frickin' beige. That said, even I've got my limits: Carpet in the kitchen. My grandmother (God rest her soul) had her kitchen floor covered in some sort of flat indoor-outdoor carpet in geometric patterns of green, gold, and black...or, at least, I remember the shapes being green, gold and black. It was very old carpet, very rarely vacuumed, and always dirty. Sure, that's bad enough, but you know where the trauma came from? Well, Gran grew up in the South during the Great Depression and came from a dirt-poor family. You never got caught wasting anything around her; she even washed and saved disposable straws for future uses. During one visit with her, I was helping her prepare a modest lunch. (Green beans with butter and garlic, a small burger patty on white bread, and white rice with butter and salt. Yes, heart attacks run in the family.) I turned away for a moment, can't recall why, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the butter fall off the knife halfway to the green beans. It landed right on that nasty, ancient, smelly carpet...but you don't waste food. Gran picked it up with her bare hands, looked it over, and brushed something off. Maybe it was gravel, maybe it was a hair, or even a toenail clipping - all were entirely possible in that house. And - AND! - she tossed it right on the green beans and stirred it in like it was completely normal. I suddenly "got a stomach ache" and went home hungry; after my mother heard the story, she started sending money for us to get takeout so Gran didn't poison me. To this day, the idea of carpet in the kitchen makes me want to sit in a corner, rock, and whimper. Spherical knobs on cabinets. Like stick a marble on a bolt and it's a knob shape. This one's simpler. When I was in fifth grade, my parents bought a fixer-upper dating back to the twenties. It's a beautiful house but as the kid (read "unpaid manual labor assistant") I got a good close look at all the horrors from the renovation. Over twenty years later, I can still recall the obnoxious shiny round 'clown nose red' knobs on the kitchen cabinets...which, by the way, matched the 60s era strawberries-on-butter-yellow wallpaper...so Bozo nose knobs and butter color on the walls, double-whammy. The horror! Wallpaper in general. Sure, I don't mind having paper on the walls, but if there's any possible way, I'm leaving that wallpaper up until I die. I can't stand the wallpaper? I'd almost rather not consider the house. This, too, dates back to that 20s era house. Previous owners, instead of removing the paper and starting over, put layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint on the walls...and it took my parents three rooms of countless layers of painted paper to decide to leave it in place and paint over it. In the half-bath alone, we found about a dozen layers of wallpaper and painted wallpaper dating back to the 20s...and one of those papers had simplistic designs of women in bathtubs, all with beady eyes fixed on the room. I still feel watched anytime I use that bathroom. Lastly, this one is actually literally a PTSD thing. Buildings without a safe room, basement, windowless interior room, external shelter, or other ideal place to take shelter during a tornado. To simplify a too-complicated explanation, in 2011 the apartment building I lived in was in the direct path of an EF-5 tornado and I was home when it hit. The building had the latest in hyper-paranoid fire safety but it had no posted plan for a tornado in the vicinity. My neighbors and I wound up sheltering in the corner of the hallway just yards from several big glass windows and four all-glass doors. Needless to say it wasn't pretty, and most of the buildings in that neighborhood were either flattened or nearly so. I won't go into detail beyond this: our building was brick, and there was non-brick construction obliterated for about half a mile in each direction of us. None of my neighbors were injured or killed. We were so far beyond lucky it's dumbfounding. Ever since then, my first response on entering a new place or checking out a house is "where will we go when s**t hits the fan?" Not if...when. The tornado in 2011 was only the second or third in my city's history; we've had two more smaller tornadic events since 'the big one' and I've lost count of how many "once in a decade/lifetime/generation/millennium" storms have happened since. Missouri isn't known for calm weather, after all. There was such rampant PTSD around here from the tornado (and so many people who ignored the sirens) the city upgraded to new models that test silently. People are finally building safe rooms into most new structures, but it shouldn't have taken that level of destruction. Put your mark on your place - include all the little details you love and ban those you hate - but for the love of Mike, when you're building, buying, or remodeling, seriously ask yourself where you'll go and what you'll do if your region's form of natural disaster happens, and consider whether or not your plans will keep you and your loved ones safe. That got heavy. Here are my cats modeling the latest styles in boxes and bags to lighten the mood. Goldie's sitting in three nested boxes. Those proud cheeks! Skidd just wanted to remind me that he's the present.

Gwendolynne, I LOVE your choice of colours. I wish my furniture and decorating could mathc your colours. They are soo soo nice! I am completely colour challenged, and I have seen all of these wonderful rooms posted with fabulous colours, so I need your help with choosing colours for my rec room, bathroom, and kitchen. 1. REC ROOM/LIVING ROOM: We live in a side split house and are wanting to redecorate our rec room area, which is half in the basement but with full windows and still with lots of natural light. The bottom half is with cedar / oak wainscotting and the carpet is a blue colour. I have no idea what colour to paint the top half. Our furniture conssits of beige couches, wood coffee table and end tables. Our theme is going to have bar and sports paraphernalia (and we have a foosball table). I dont want to go with a blue paint because two of our bedrooms are painted blue and I would like some different colours in the house. I love colours but have trouble picking out colours on my own. Since this is the main room where we watch tv and hang out while the kids play, I would like a warm colour that makes the room cozy but fresh and new/classy. Someone suggested yellow or beige to me, but I am thinking I want more colour. What about red (Benjamin Moore Northern Fire) or would that be too dark? 2. BATHROOM: For our bathroom, it has a "teal-like" colour for the countertop and gray-blue cushion flooring. I have no idea what colour to put on these walls. I know green is not good to put in the bathroom. Someone suggested white, but I want colour! However, I know that the green counter top probably limits my wall colours. Am I stuck with white walls? 3. KITCHEN: Our kitchen has wall paper on the bottom half and a beige on the top half. Our counter is a pink (UGH!) and our back splash has pink, browns. Our theme is a country kitchen. I would like a dark warm brown for the bottom and a lighter colour for the top, but I dont know if this would work or not with the pink countertop. Any suggestions are very much appreciated. I have pictures of all three rooms, but I dont know how to post them. (Can someone tell me how?) THANK YOU SO MUCH!

"She said that people will rarely set aside $50K - $100K of purchasing power for furniture when it can get them more house." Then again, it's worth noting, (and a realtor probably does not bend over backwards to point this out to clients) the need to set a sizable sum aside for home maintainance and improvements. The costs of home ownership include ongoing, never ending upkeep tasks, necessary fixes, and usually at least a modicum of "remodeling." (As Kswl brilliantly noted on another thread, "Every house is a fixer upper!") Suze Orman regularly reminds potential buyers that they need to "add in" such costs to the ticket price and down payment amount to get an accurate view of the "real" price of a house. AND...Suze also points out that a house will need to be *furnished* too (oh, the "hidden" costs of owning a house!) Some have the philosophy that they prefer to spend more on what "they can take with them" when they sell, such as...furniture. I like that idea. It sounds like a heck of a lot of fun. But, it doesn't work with my uptight, not-fun personality very well, so while I spend conservatively on furnishings, I spend like a drunken sailor on maintainance and improvements of the actual house (relatively speaking!). I agree that there has been a phenomenon of buyers emphasizing square footage over other attributes. It's also true that it's hard to find really nice smaller houses in well tended, safe, "desirable" neighborhoods. I don't have a huge house (2600 sq. ft.) but I really wanted something with 800-1000 fewer sq.ft.! I couldn't find such a house in a location I'd be comfortable living in, and dh & I aren't ready for condo living just yet. The "jewel box house" is a niche that I wish designers and builders would address. It's not only people who demand 4,000+ sq. ft. who want quality built houses with nice finishes, attractive lots, in safe, sought after neighborhoods. ( But I digress.)

egads... does anyone 'let' their kids destroy their things?? we did have a recliner broken once in the basement during a sleepover when some kids were tackling each other on it... oh well... my kids weren't destructive alone, but during sleepovers when there was a larger group of kids, some got carried away. I and I don't think my kid/s knew about it when it happened, but I imagine the kid/s that broke it did... I was disappointed the child/ren didn't come to me and let me know, but it also was a basement furnished with kids in mind and things happen... kswl-- lol--- that's what one of our garage doors looked like and I did put a stop to hitting the tennis ball against the garage when I noticed the dents! we always let our kids drive one of the older cars when they got their permits/license--- cannot imagine buying a teen a brand new car!!! we hold onto cars a long time and I don't worry about them after the 1st scratch or 2!! I actually like it when the car is no longer new because then an inevitable ding in a parking lot, etc doesn't irritate me so much! i want to be able to enjoy and use my cars as well as my house without getting stressed out... i try to get quality items that will hold up to lots of use... i hate to see that 1st ding in my car, the 1st scratches on my wood floors, the 1st cat scratch on my leather sofa, etc, but it also relaxes me a bit! and, to be honest, my hub has broken more dishes/glasses than the rest of us combined in our family... I'm very selective about using the good stuff and insist that i be the one who washes it!! colored sheets and towels have been damaged by both guests and my kids because of face products... oh well... they were added to the basement closet or kept in the kids room/bathrooms for continued use-- they didn't mind! (i found over the years that certain towels and jersey sheets maintain their color very well!