Painted Floors and Struggles with Contentment

Have you ever had one of those days when you look at a room and you just LOATHE everything about it? I did and I was called to action!

We had a dog, dear Chewie, who in his old age, decided that the front room (i.e., the music room) was his personal bathroom. I’ll spare you the details, but this was a constant problem we had dealt with for years. One day, as “scents” wafted into the family room, I snapped, walked into the front room and started ripping out the pee stained carpet! My husband actually quickly joined my carpet removal frenzy. We were like brides at a Kleinfield’s sale…SCARY! It felt so good to purge the home of that carpet, but now I was left with ugly subfloors!

So I did what every normal person does when they are faced with an ugly challenge… I painted the walls! Not what you thought was it? Surely new wall color will distract anyone from the ugly subfloor. Right? The walls were a rich crimson red, but it felt formal and no one wanted to spend any time in the room.  Soft, serene Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams washed away the red. The room instantly felt fresh and new, except for those floors. (sigh)

I pulled the furniture into the foyer, minus the baby grand, and gave the subfloors a good thick coat of KILZ primer. It blocked out all the dog scents that were soaked into the wood. Uck. KILZ works great though! Isn’t the Sea Salt blue beautiful?

Replacing the flooring with carpet was not what we were interested in doing. We wanted hard wood. Two-thirds of our lower level is already hard wood. But a battle started brewing between my husband and I about the subject and cost. I’ll get to that in a minute. As a temporary fix, we decided to paint the subfloors a rich chocolate brown.

Note: painting subfloors is only a temporary solution. I’m also a Realtor and in our state (VA) a subfloor has to have an additional covering over it to be considered a finished space by appraisers. An appraiser could deduct the unfinished square footage, lowering your homes’ value, or also the bank could refuse financing. So before you decide to rip out all our carpet and live with painted subfloors, please look into the real estate laws in your area. You don’t want any surprises at resale!

I adore dark floors! Our previous home was a 1949 Cape Cod and had beautiful dark floors. This new home has butterscotch stained red oak. I hate butterscotch. I don’t like the taste or the look! It’s orange hue is unappealing to me. My brilliant thought was to paint the subfloor dark to show my husband how beautiful dark floors could be in our ENTIRE home, like my beautiful friend Megan has.

Honey We’re Home

Hint-Hint- “Hun…. can we refinish the entire downstairs flooring?”

His answer was a profoundly strong “NO. We can’t afford it and we don’t need it.” I don’t like to be told NO, I never have. In fact, I have a huge problem being told what to do in any respect. It’s safe to say I’m a control freak who likes it my way. So here we contemplate the word contentment.

CONTENTMENT

Contentment: a state of happiness and satisfaction.

Many of us struggle with contentment. We peruse the lovely pins on Pinterest, the images on blogs and magazines, and the seeds of desire start to sprout in our heart and minds. We want more! Being a home blogger certainly does not help mastering contentment!

I had to make a shift in my thinking.

Instead of being bitter towards my husband for what he wouldn’t allow me to do and purchase, I focused on the facts:

1) I DO have hardwood flooring and I should be grateful for that (even though it’s ugly butterscotch).

2) I am blessed beyond words and need to be thankful for all that I do have.

3) I need to model contentment and joy for my children and be less self centered.

We do have enough in savings to add hard wood to the music room and have purchased matching, prefinished flooring which we’ll install soon. Yes, it’s butterscotch, but I’m trying to be content with it. Someday I’ll have dark floors, but until then I’ll make the most of what I have and be happy with it!

Do you struggle with contentment? How do you deal with it?

Kim

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