Tale of a First-Time Home Buyer: Making Our House A Home

We have been living in the house for 11 weeks now, and since my parents have gone home after visiting for a month, we are finally settling into a routine schedule. We set last weekend aside to get some things done that we had been putting off to make it a little more comfortable.

First, we finally set up the office. Formerly referred to as the “red-headed step child room,” the office is the second bedroom on the third floor. Up until last weekend, the office was a mess of the last remaining boxes to be unpacked and the leftover furniture that we couldn’t decide where to put. Well, it finally looks like an office now. We switched dressers with the one in the master bedroom and set up the desk. I occasionally work from home, and now I will have a place to sit and work quietly in a room without a TV, which really helps me concentrate. Does that sound responsible or what?

We also started hanging some pictures and decorations around the house. Since the house is so much bigger than our old one-bedroom apartment, there is a lot more wall space to cover. We only had a few pictures, but we still can’t hang them up because it would look silly with one small picture in the middle of a huge blank wall. My wife bought a few new ones and I hung them in conspicuous locations with her direction. As long as she’s happy, right?

All in all, I have hung five items including a picture in the half bathroom on the middle floor, a decoration in the dining room, a mirror and decoration on the front door landing, and a picture in the master bathroom. I have always liked the clean crispness of a blank wall, but I have to say that these rooms look much better and have made the house much more homey.

Finally, we got some plants and placed them in a few of the rooms. It’s amazing what just a few small plants can do to make a room more cozy and comfortable.

Overall, the house is really coming along nicely. We both love it so much, but it seems like we’re always so busy we don’t have time to relax in it and enjoy it as much as we would like. But then I think about how we will be living here a long time and we will have plenty of time to relax and enjoy the space. And there will be much more decorating to come, I’m sure.