The fireplace mantel had become the horizontal surface I was most embarrassed about in my house. Not because it was neglected, I had been actively decorating it for three years. The problem was that every time I decorated it, I…

Movie night in our house had become a negotiation with the living room rather than an experience in it. Someone always had to move the coffee table to get comfortable on the floor. The overhead light that we forgot to…

My bedroom had never been a room I looked forward to entering. It was where I slept, where I charged my phone, where the laundry staged itself before making it to the closet. The walls were the same agreeable nothing-white…

My bedroom had been waiting for a decision for three years. Not waiting in the way that neglected rooms wait, waiting in the active, accumulating way of a room that had been partially improved so many times that its layers…

The spare bedroom had been a holding pattern for four years. It had a bed, technically. A mattress on a frame purchased in the early days of the house when spare bedroom ideas had been on the list and the…

The old deck had been on borrowed time for three summers. The pressure-treated boards had gone grey and splintery, two of the joists had soft spots that flexed uncomfortably underfoot, and every spring I told myself I would refinish them…

The large living room was supposed to be a luxury. More space, more light, more room for the furniture and the life that happens around it, that was the idea when we chose the house, when the estate agent walked…

My bedroom had been white for six years. Not white in a considered, deliberate way, white in the way of rooms that have never been decided about, rooms where the landlord’s paint is still on the walls because repainting felt…

For years, the living room was the room I could never quite get right. The freestanding bookcase was too narrow to hold everything and too bulky to look intentional. The TV was mounted on the wall but floated there without…