Decorating the New England Home (Mexico: house, house inspection, living in)

[Bydand]

Your house is your decorating palette. Really there is a very wide mix of different styles from house to house and nobody I know visits each others paint and furniture .

If you want a true Northern Maine house decorating scheme, you need to get a few broken down vehicles (cars in town, pick-ups - fringe, Potato trucks - county) and place them along the back of your property like you really do intend to use them again, even though the tree growing in the bed of the pick-up gives away the real decorating aspect of that particular vehicle. A ratty old couch on the porch helps bring the outside close to the house and can be an excellent tie-in to a well done interior. A slightly better set of mis-matched color and style chairs and a sofa or two cement the living room. For the dining room you need to really go all out and try to find one of those dining tables from the 60's with the chrome accents surrounded by padded chairs from a Service Merchandise sale 25 years ago (a few with torn plastic seats, really sets apart the professional from an amaturistic copy.)

Just kidding of course on most of this. Really there are plenty of "Old World" style interiors around. My best friend and his wife have done this in their home and it looks really nice. Like I said before, here, friends don't visit to see the house, they visit to see you. Here there are real friends, who don't care if you have every room perfect, or if every room is in disarray, but the company is good and the conversation warm is what counts. Do the new house so it is your home. Everybody will love it!

[mollysmiles]

Originally Posted by Bydand

...Here there are real friends, who don't care if you have every room perfect, or if every room is in disarray, but the company is good and the conversation warm is what counts. Do the new house so it is your home. Everybody will love it!

Exactly! Make your home fit you....it will be perfect

[Elcarim]

I'm wondering if the landlord of a lease home, which we will be starting out in, will let us paint? I don't think I could stand to live in pink or orange rooms!

[tlb71]

Bydand is actually right on both accounts, kidding or not. There are a lot of trucks, washing machines, etc. in yards here, but that is the case in probably every rural area. Mainahs love to "repurpose" things and are frugal which are great characteristics! We used to go to yard sales in Virginia Beach and you wouldn't believe the STUFF people were selling. Most of it looked brand new/never used! Crazy IMHO to just buy, buy, buy.
Having moved here from a very materialistic area it was great to find a place where people don't care what color your livingroom is or if you bought your furniture at Pottery Barn, Ethan Allen, etc. They truly are there to see you and I wish this attitude would spread. I know there are a few here who care what your house looks like as we lost a sale on our house because they didn't like my neighbors color choice or his van and actually picked a fight with him about it, but they are in the minority.

[mollysmiles]

El, I think most landlords prefer that things be kept to a palette that most people can live with, so you may find that there aren't a lot of rents that are the bright, garrish colors. The being said, I don't think most landlords mind if you paint, some will even spring for the cost of the paint, as long as they can approve the color choice.

[mollysmiles]

tlb along with the "repurpose" idea, I know people who have basements or sections of a garage, or a whole entire shed filled with things that "might come in handy someday". In an age of "declutter", and "organize" they would definitely be in trouble with the decorating police. BUT, they're the first people you call when you're looking to borrow something--my best friend's Dad found us two old stove racks in his shed which were perfect to grill on over an open fire on this summer during the Jeep trip!

[elston]

When we closed up my Grammy's house, where the family had lived since Maine was part of Massachussets, the collection of things that were "too good to throw away" and the things that "were too good to use". Many of the things too good to use, were years of Christmas presents still in the boxes that my folks had given Gram. I can't tell you how many pair of "snuggie underware" as well as shelves filled with jelly glasses mixed in with hand painted antique glassware, colonial highboy chests and a very ornate Victorian piano. There were paintings of people on the wall who hadnt been alive in a couple of hundred years and the bedside table held those old fashion photo's of civil war dead. The house was a testiment to the idea of "don't throw anything away".

[mollysmiles]

My parents and grandmothers also did the "too good to use" thing.....even as a child I just didn't understand. I made my mother some pottery pieces that she put away on a shelf, as well as a long cabin style quilt that went straight to the cedar chest. It bothered me that I'd worked on them to get them just right, only to have her never use them. Finally once when I was visiting I took out the quilt, and put it on the bed and slept under it. She left it there (and now I'm here trying to remember where it is now!)

[Maine Writer]

My house is kind of "lodge." I have antique wooden skis and snowshoe on the walls along with pictures of wildlife, a fishing creel with a gorgeous birds eye maple cover, Steve's grandfather's pack basket and old ice fishing tilts and similar things. One of these days I'll have had enough of this and change the whole house. Decorate in whatever way makes you smile!

[tlb71]

In our short time here we have already benefitted from the "too good to throw away" pile. Our furnace was acting up the 1st year and DH mentioned it to a friend at work. Sure enough, he had a friend that just replaced his and gave us the motor out of his old one. Ours is about 30 yrs old, so it was "new" to us. DH went online and found some manual on how to install it and we haven't had any trouble since.

The "lodge" theme does seem very popular here. We noticed in looking at houses for sale online that a ton of houses up here have "v-match" pine walls instead of plaster or drywall.