They say that your home is your castle.  It's where you reign with absolute authority.  Sure, right.
It seems that lately, our house has been the one calling the shots.  You see, this winter, part of the ceiling in the girls bedroom collapsed.  Bad enough, but it was covered with back mold.  (Side note; my hubby is extremely allergic to black mold.)  Within three days, his vertigo reared its ugly head.  We contacted our insurance company, only to find out that they don't cover the type of damage we sustained.  "So sorry" they said.  We had a few choice words to say.  (Alright, ALOT of choice words).  But the bottom line was, what were we to do about the situation?
We were renting out my parents house to a couple that were in the process of going their separate ways.  So we made the decision to move into my parents house.  All it needs is some cosmetic work right?  A little paint, a little elbow grease and it should be good to go!
Oh, the life of a naive person. 
Little did we realize that time had taken its toll on that house too.  We still had to do the paint and elbow grease parts, but there were buckets of elbow grease needed.  We've replaced floors, sections of ceiling, ripped out carpets, repaired water damage, patched holes, and  re-sheetrocked.  And painted......and primed and painted some more.
When you move into a new house, you want the colors and "feel" to reflect your taste or lifestyle.  That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with another person's choices, they're just not YOUR choices.  The wall coverings had originally been selected with my Mother in mind.  Not bad, but not us.  Our tenants had changed up some of the colors.  Again, not bad, but not our taste.  So we get to pick and choose.  Something as simple as "How about yellow for the kitchen?"  turns into a maze of color chips, samples and lots of praying.  For example.....I had selected a color for the master bathroom that I thought would compliment both the bedroom colors and the existing dusty rose colored countertop.  (Remember dusty rose and country blue?)  So we primed and we painted.  When we finished, I stood there looking at the finished product and said  "Oh no.....I can't live with this color!".  It didn't turn out at all like I had envisioned it.  My Mom probably would have loved it, but me?  Not so much.  So, plan B.  Back to the store, new paint and let's try this again.  Luckily, I was happy with how it turned out.  (You all know the old adage....."if Momma ain't happy..." )
We're still working on getting our new "castle" finished.  There's still lots to do, but at least I feel like progress is being made. 
The photo for this blog is sort of how our castle looks at the moment....a bit rundown and surrounded by water (thanks to all the rain for the past few weeks) but, it's our castle and once in residence, we shall reign with absolute authority.  (Unless you ask the dogs......)