Sunday, May 4, 2014

Home Improvements

Now that I know I'm staying in Basel a bit longer, it's time to spruce things up around here. That means planting flowers in my window boxes and rethinking some decorating problems in my room. Sometimes I think I'll start a decorating and lifestyle magazine called Graduate Student Homes. You may think that would be a catalog of what not do, but I think you'd be surprised. There's no better time to decorate than when you have a 250 page paper to write (also: no better time to write a blog!).

Basically there are two things that drive me slightly nuts in my room. One is all this empty wall space combined with the straight line from my "closet" to my bed. Unfortunately, there is not enough deep space where the clothes rack is to put in a wardrobe; I wouldn't be able to open my door. As it is, my door is already inhibited a bit by my closet. I realize this looks messy, but I haven't thought of any great solutions for the clothes storage part of this situation. It's kinda my only spot. If you have an idea, I'm open to hearing it.




But the wall space...I've been thinking about what do do about that. Do I want to add some shelves, extending my closet area north and making it look more on purpose? Do I want to hang a couple big pictures? or do a gallery wall? For a long time I wanted to draw the st. John's bridge and the Wettsteinbrücke in pencil and hang them up. I still like that idea, but...that would require drawing them first, and that hasn't happened in the last three years. So then, more recently, I've been thinking about doing some word art on canvas, similar to this one below. I think these things are...ok...but a little overdone. However, they're easy, and one big canvas would fill up a lot of my North Closet area. Then I would add a couple small pictures towards my bed, and voila! But I'm not sure I'd like it, and one reason is that I have a lot of other pictures on other walls in my room. I don't have a lot of quiet wall space at the moment, and I think that's probably important to maintain. But then, I often sit on my bed when I'm in room, and that wall would be behind me anyway, and I would only be bothered about the lack of quiet wall space if I thought about it. See my problem?


 I really like this chair. It costs too much. I'm thinking about painting my chair.


Yesterday I decided to try to paint my mirror, which has been irritating me for a long time as the only black thing in my room. Decided to try a distressed pale green. I've had all evening and all morning to look at it, and while I like the color, I don't think I like it here, in my room, on a mirror. My new plan is to paint it off white. :)

Look how inspiring the neighborhood looks!

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