Home Improvements in a Rental House

I spent a good portion of the weekend painting our living room. When we moved into this house, every room was white. I know that's been the trend for a few years now, and I see the appeal in general, but for me specifically, well...I like color. I thought I could jazz things up by adding lots of colorful elements to the space, but do you know what? That didn't work. I started staring at my Farrow & Ball color card longingly. I knew exactly what color I wanted the living room to be. Stiffkey Blue is the color*, and now that it is on the walls, the room feels right. It's cozier.

I have mixed feelings about redecorating and doing other home improvements as a renter. I don't want to do a lot of work on a house that we have no guarantee of being able to live in indefinitely, but at the same time, I want our home to feel like it is ours. So when I set to work, I consider: if we had to move in nine months (which is when our current lease will end), will this have been worth it to me? In the case of these blue walls, the answer is yes. I felt similarly about the self-adhesive tiles I laid in the laundry room of our last house. These things make the space feel more like home, more like it belongs to us, as opposed to just being a place we are passing through.

Which is why I am also re-doing the flooring in the living room. I've asked permission to put down laminate, but it's a bigger job than I can do myself, so in the interim I'll be pulling up the old carpet and making the floorboards underneath presentable. If both the landlord and I like the floorboards, then I won't lay the laminate. (I'm hoping for this to be the case.) My choice to remove the carpet is both for aesthetic and practical reasons. I find that hard floors are easier to clean, and they also don't absorb strange odors. Aesthetically, they are also far more pleasing to me as well. So I'm going to go for it.

I'm also planning to replace some light fixtures. I haven't asked the landlord about this yet - I find this to be one of the most annoying things about renting, honestly - but I will. Because I already bought a dodgy chandelier that needs some TLC and new glass shades, and it will look perfect in the living room. I've also got a matching pair of ceiling lights that I scored for a song on eBay that will look fantastic in the master bedroom and the study.

But for now, while I am holding off on doing any more work before Christmas (it would be hard to have a Christmas tree in the room where I am removing flooring), I continue to stare at my Farrow & Ball color card longingly. Now that I've done one room, I know how good it feels, and I'm itching to do more - specifically, both bedrooms. For the girls I'm thinking Pink Ground (E wants pink, but we don't need it to look like cotton candy), and for J and me, I'm leaning toward Jitney. I might not paint either of those for awhile, but for now, it's fun to dream.

*We can't actually afford the Farrow & Ball paint, so I had it color matched in a cheaper alternative. So technically, it isn't Stiffkey Blue. But I'm pretending it is.