It is amazing how the little things affect how you feel about your home whether you are just buying it or have lived there a life time. Small flaws or perfect details, it all adds up and affects the overall feeling you have about your home. For me I can go interior to exterior, room by room and point out all that is right and all that needs improvement; how those details reflect my overall feelings when I am at my home.
Let’s begin where every first impression begins, the exterior of the home, the curb appeal and landscaping. With my home I knew from the moment we pulled up that I was in love. We would be purchasing this home. The large, welcoming French doors and the full landscape were all pieces that made this home our home. There were however a few exterior landscape changes that didn’t tickle my fancy straight away. For instance, we live on a river and with any river landscape there needs to be a feeling of true nature and outdoors. This was missing.
The family before us loved a clean kept riverfront. To me this just wasn’t what living on the water was about. So we began to change up the riverfront landscape with assistance from a landscape designer that specialized in waterfront property. It was wonderful to work with someone who could look at the lawn from a landscape and maintenance perspective and bring together exactly what we were looking for. It did take about two years to full cultivate the native plants with the new rocky-river border but the end product, docks and all is the perfect landscape for our home. Every time I come home and see the landscape I instantly feel relaxed and at peace. It makes me feel at one with nature.
The interior still to this day has many imperfections. They truly make the space feel like home. Imperfections in the tiles grout makes me feel like the space is loved and lived in to its fullest. The perfection is in the tiles. They are the perfect combination of rust red, brown, blues and yellows that create flooring that allows you to feel that every detail has been thought of.
One of the homes major imperfections is found in the ceiling. This is the one imperfection, yet to be fixed that makes me feel uneasy. The tape around our ceiling has started to peel. The home is older and we have been told that unless we are willing to peel up the old tape and add new as well as plaster the space again the ceiling will stay this way. This is not happening. The work that would need to be done is not work that can be done in a home that is being lived in.
Knowing that this one imperfection leaves me uneasy I have been diligent in researching easy fixes. One I have recently come up with that I do believe is the perfect fix for the ceiling is to add crown molding. It will cover up the separating tape and it is my hope that it will leave me feeling the same way I do about the tile and landscape; completely at peace.
It is amazing how the little imperfections and tiny pleasures within our home can create such rich feelings that can leave us so complete or incomplete.