Six years ago when we moved into this house, we went from the closing meeting to the house and immediately started ripping things down, completely redoing each room in our own style. So we thought. It took six years of living in the place to realize what we really liked, what worked with lighting, our habits, etc and while nothing we did then was bad, a new plasma TV purchase (NCIS on the large screen — YES!) and some other new purchases provided the excuse to completely repaint and reorganize the downstairs. We moved furniture, changed around rooms, and that was just the start of it.

We’ve spent the week in a painting marathon — you know how it is — you buy one new piece of furniture, reorganize some of the rest, and now you have to completely repaint three rooms. I had my latest book in for edits (I’ll Be Yours For Christmas, Blaze, out December ’10!) and finished my proposals for 2011 books, so the idea was to spend a week repainting and getting gardens in shape before we left on vacation (leaving tomorrow morning!) so that when we come home, it’s all done and we can enjoy summer (or at least we can come back to work without thinking about the other 20 things that need to be done).

But even in the process of doing of it, we had to make changes. As I started repainting my kitchen on Wed, I didn’t like the color once I got it on one wall, and so I was off to Home Depot for more paint — a whole new set of colors — which worked perfectly. Saturday, as we were repainting our two-tone living room (upper and lower halves separated by a chair rail) the new cinnamon color on the bottom half worked perfectly — love it! But then we started the upper color, didn’t like it, and realized the original gold we had there worked so well with the warm cinnamon, that we wanted that. Luckily, a local paint store can work magic — we took a chip from the wall and they made paint exactly the same color! It’s gorgeous.

Then, we had two area rugs that we loved — until we moved them to get them out of the way for painting, with the intention of sending them out for cleaning. When they were gone, we realized how much we love the bare wood floors. So one rug will perhaps go upstairs, and the other, a Persian, we’ll probably trade in at a local rug dealer to get a smaller Persian throw. We thought we’d be painting the trim in all of the rooms, but when we saw how nice the natural wood looked next to the cinnamon paint color, we decided to leave that, too.

It’s very much like when I write — you have a plan going in, but you have to be open to changes because you might find something better as you go along.

So…I’m under no illusions that this is the last batch of changes we’ll make to this house. Change seems to be the way of things in life, whether it’s with writing or anything else (speaking of which, I will have revisions/edits waiting for me when I get home from vacation, too, so it’s a good thing the painting is done!). Everything is subject to revisions, our paint colors, gardens, hair color, personal styles, reading habits, etc. What have you revised lately?