Today I received wondrous news. I had emailed our landlord (my beau and I rent a house) and asked if we could remove the wallpaper from the semi-unattractive kitchen. Not only did he give the affirmative to remove diagonal ugly wallpaper, he told us that we should decorate “as if it were our own.” SQUEEEE! I was so excited I felt like dancing around the wallpaper in a sort of “death dance,” but thought it too cruel. But, in my mind, ideas started to resurface that I had held below brain sea-level.

Which brings me to my post today.

It may be kind of weird to post a Top 5 Wish List for our rental, but it will also keep a little permanent diary of how things progress.

Firstly, some pics of the house, BEFORE:

There is the dreaded wallpaper. I’m not sure if the tenant before was going for a Tuscan motif, but they really should have re-thought the Fiesta Ware walls and DIAGONAL wallpaper. I can’t wait to remove it! I might even flip my hair like Amelie’s father. We have no ideas yet about what color to repaint, but we have plenty of time.

Here’s another kitchen shot. We would love to just sledgehammer all the cabinets and put shelves up like this:

thanks, Apartment Therapy!

But, that might be a little much for a house we don’t actually own. 🙂

We are definitely interested in vinyl wall decals though. I found several that I really like here, here, and perhaps a free form one, like you see here.

All the decals and shelving will also depend on the second thing (which I suppose then should go first?) PAINT. I would adore a wall color like this:

I forgot where I got this (beside the obvious domino mag ref)

But we shall see. It might be a bit much in the kitchen and might be sent to the small treasure box corner of an entryway, seen here:

Yeah, beige curtains, plain, musty white walls and a brass lighting fixture: it’s the trifecta of drab suburbia people. Do not make any sudden movements.

Number three on the Honey-I-Would-Love-To-Do list is the bathroom. Yeah, you might say, you don’t spend most of your time in the bathroom so it should be further down on your list. Wait a minute, dear reader, you have no idea what it’s like to be sitting in there and just glaring at this stuff:

Your eyes are not deceiving you, faithful friends. A hint of yellow cupboards at the bottom there, but the rest UNDER THE SEA. Not fun Ariel/Disney/Wonderland, but some fish frenzy bordering on a Lisa Frank fantasy. Thankfully it’s only our guest bathroom, so we don’t have to look at it all the time, but man oh man is it funny.

Fourth on the list would be the backyard. I love that it only has one little small area of “lawn,” so you still have grass, but you aren’t helping contribute that much to perpetuate the desert drought. What I would enjoy is a greener thumb. For some reason I just don’t have what it takes to be a master gardener, a moderate to ok gardener, or even a serf to a gardener. I am excellent at pruning and weeding, but when it comes to cultivating things from pots or seeds, I may as well be salting the earth.

Here is the yard, before I had anything to do with it:

Yum, overgrown poisonous Oleander. Yes, that is my pup Tortilla, checking out all the new smells.

Lastly, my dream is to do this all without stressing out my beau. I adore him so much and want to think that that doing these things will be more fun than anything, because we will be working together to make a home for ourselves, and also use it as a kind of test-run for our own place; what works, what doesn’t. That should probably be bumped up to the top of the list. Yes, even before the almighty Paint. 🙂