The House of Many Angles

I'm linking up with Jules every Thursday as part of her 2012 William Morris Project.

 I live in a tract house in a "planned community," meaning there are pathways (or "paseos" as they're called here), and tot lot parks and a swimming pool and a tennis court. We pay a modest monthly HOA fee for all these amenities. I tell you this, because sometimes I really, really wish that I could go back in time about thirteen years to when this tract was first built, and tour the Model Home version of my particular floorplan.   Because I'm very curious how a Professional Decorator would have dealt with all the random angles and cut-outs in my house.  My house has a LOT of weird angles, and the majority of them are in the entry-way and stairs area.  And the upstairs landing. And the bedroom walls. You get the idea.

Over the years, I've struggled with how to decorate and best utilize the spaces in my home. And this past week, I sort of threw in the towel on a couple of my old ideas. First, is the entry way. I talked about my pesky shelves before, especially here, where I say that basically the shelves are ALL form, and only 1% function. I'm tired of dusting them and arranging them to be "seasonal." Here they are in half-hearted "Valentine" mode this month.

Well, enough of all that.  Out they went. Leaving holes. Big holes, from the anchor bolt-thingies my husband used to hold up the weight of the shelves.  Oh well.  (My husband has a good system for covering up all the holes I leave behind: spackle, then re-texturize to match the orange-peel wall texture, then dab with leftover paint that is hopefully still hanging out in the garage.) This is my entryway now, the first thing a visitor sees (next to the Useful Hook): 

Then there was this area upstairs, right outside our double-door master bedroom, and across from my office nook.  I put two leftover Lack side tables up here, as a place for Tucker to sit and draw, usually while I'm on the computer and he wants some company.  Except that lately, he sits there maybe one or two days out of the month. The rest of the time, these tables and the area around them become just another landing spot for random kid-junk.  It was looking worse than usual this past week, which I guess was my inspiration to Deal With It.

I cleaned it all up (well, the Lack tables are down in the kids play room, waiting to be dealt with. One is trash and the other goes in the donate pile).  I unscrewed the magnet strips that held kid art (kid art that never really rotated out), and now it's nice and empty.  I WAS planning on screwing yet more things into the wall here, with some ledge shelves purchased at Ikea this weekend.  I was going to put some kids books face out, and put the bean-bag next to the shelves, as a kind of reading nook. But as of today....I dunno.   I think it's another "fake" area that I'm creating, that won't really be utilized.

Let me add, standing right here is one of my favorites spots in the entire house: I really love all the windows, and though you can't tell here, there are several large pine trees out the windows, giving the space an airy, treehouse kind of feeling. 

So this is where these areas look as of today. No brilliant "After" photos yet.  Maybe the upstairs area won't have an "After," and it will just stay clean and empty. Because that's probably how the Professional Model Home Decorator would have it, right? 

Some more views of the upstairs angles:

One of the things I liked most when we bought this house was all the natural light and the high windows in the stairway.  I still like those things very much, but did the architects really have to create all these angles in the name of "visual interest?"  I don't think so.