Nesting. Thwarted.

I had Columbus Day off from work, which was swell, and with an unquenchable desire to make this apartment not ugly, I vowed that I would get my lovely silk red drapes hung, come hell or high water. Hell came approximately 2.75 hours into the ordeal. I had about 1/12” of drywall to work with before I would hit concrete. Nothing I tried worked. Finally, I had to give up. Completely frustrated and a wee bit psychotic at this point, I called Chris in tears and declared that I hated this apartment and its walls so blindingly white (think primer white mixed with bleach) that I can read by their glow in the middle of the night. With its two tiny drawers that have relegated all 24,321 of Chris’s kitchen gadgets to the countertop with no future plans for them in sight. Or the electric stove with its tilted burners. Or the chaotic guest room that I can’t finish unpacking because there is a giant bookshelf taking up all the space in the closet. Or the tiny bathroom with the tiny sink that Chris and I race to call dibs on in the morning. Or the cold stark room I’m going to pass off as a nursery when we bring our baby girl “home.” Oh, I hear you. Poor, poor Ashley, living in a perfectly nice apartment for a few months. That condo spoiled her. (Yes, it did. I admit that freely.) But on Monday I was so frustrated and tired of trying to put lipstick on this pig. All I wanted to do was make something pretty and organize everything else, but I didn’t have the space or tools to do it. More than anything, I wanted to walk into at least ONE room in this apartment and not think about how much I detested it. So poor Chris got an earful. Fortunately, he had just read about nesting syndrome in So You’re Going To Be a Dad and very wisely did not tell me to calm down. He did not tell me that this place is temporary. He did not say that women have spent their maternity leave in far more depressing holes than this one. Most importantly, he did not tell me to get over it. He suggested—and this is a big deal for him—that we paint. I loved him for suggesting it because I know he thinks it’s absolute madness to paint a place we’re leaving in the spring and that we’d have to paint back to landlord white. I won’t lie. I was tempted. Mighty tempted. But I knew it was asking too much. It just doesn’t make sense. As though the decorating gods knew that I was about to burst and start rearranging Crate and Barrel displays down the street, along came our flooring and tile appointment for the Poolesville house. It was supposed to be 2 to 4 hours long. We were there for 6 hours. And although Chris and I were antsy throughout the appointment, checking our work e-mails and calling to check in at the office (not to mention Chris’s meeting that he called into while I drove him back to DC), the fact that I got to pick out SO MUCH in an absolutely giant showroom—that we had to ourselves—was magical. If you don’t care about home décor, stop reading about HERE. For the rest of you, I warn you: This section is LONG. First, we picked out hardwood floors. We chose these amazing multi-toned floors made from trees in the rainforest (don’t judge, all you environmentalists). They’re very grainy with varying warm tones and we just loved them. Unfortunately, they looked like crap with the original granite we picked out, so we spent some time (and, it figures, more $$) on upgrading our granite to a pattern we had loved all along. For the kitchen backsplash, we chose a 2”x8” cement-based brick-like material that is sort of gray with some browns and burgundy subtly coming through. Purdy. Then we selected carpet: a nice but neutral woven carpet for the study, a slightly speckled “conservative shag” carpet for the family room (I imagined lots of spilled drinks from both kids and Chris alike, plus I wanted something squishy on which Charlotte could play and learn to walk), and a creamish beige for the rest of the house. We upgraded the padding a few levels as well to allow for falling, stumbling toddlers. Next came bathrooms. If you recall from my earlier post on house decorating, I had announced that I wanted “vintage farm” but had no clue what that was. In preparation for the big design appointment, I had spent some quality time in Barnes and Noble going through bathroom decorating book after bathroom decorating book. I didn’t find an overall design I wanted to emulate but I had a better idea of the general tone and feel that I wanted to create. I told our VERY patient sales rep that I wanted flooring that looked like distressed wooden floors such as you might find in an old Connecticut farmhouse—but (and here’s the kicker) I wanted them to be made of a material that would wear like tile or stone—and not be cheesy. And, ta da! The showroom had JUST received samples of tiles that were in the shape of wooden planks and actually look like wood. I was amazed. I have never seen a material like this before and I’m wondering how on earth this could have slipped by HGTV. I loved it. Better yet, Chris loved it. We picked a dark chocolate-covered tile that appears like old, distressed wood. It’s not cheap and I don’t care. Nothing else can compare to this tile. (And again, it could be worse!) We picked a warm sort of terracotta-colored tile for the bath and shower and a super cute stone border that has a copper sheen and echoes the larger brick pattern we selected for the kitchen backsplash. Our sales rep was impressed. Okay, maybe she was just really excited because she just made a ton of money off of our master bathroom, but she said that we were quite unusual and that most people who came in play it very, very safe when making their selections. She finally got a sense of our style (after butting heads for 2 hours earlier during the kitchen selections: “No, we want warm colors and tones. No beige. Um, this is beige. This is beige too. This? This is in every newly remodeled kitchen. It’s nice but it’s boring.) Now that she knew how our decorative minds worked, she pulled out the more “daring” options. I could have gone on for hours longer—I had dozens of samples spread out on the floor and was suddenly wishing I had 13 bathrooms to decorate. When the sales rep pulled out the large tray of grout samples, I stole a look at Chris. The poor man looked like he was about to cry. The rep noticed he was fading on us and ordered takeout, which miraculously brought my dear husband back to life. He was able to buckle down for the last two bathrooms and the laundry room. For the kids’ bathroom, we chose a black and white checkerboard pattern with a cute miniature checkerboard border along the rim of the shower. The sales rep tried to tempt me with glass colored tiles for the border (colors! And they had hot pink!), but I can’t predict if kid #2 will be a boy or a girl, so it seemed best to not go girly with the kids’ bathroom. Next, we tackled the guest bathroom. We’re doing a different granite countertop than the other two bathrooms, but still have the antique white cabinet. A gray version of the fake distressed wood/tile looked amazing when paired with the granite and cabinet and I instantly made my choice (Chris had tuned us out at this point and was busy checking e-mail on his phone). The gray wood sounds weird but it totally, totally works. Trust me. Finally, all we had left was the laundry room/mudroom. I was inclined to keep it vinyl for the sake of cost and, well, because it’s a laundry room. (Besides, I thought Chris was going to strangle me if I upgraded one more thing.) Then the sales rep made the point that it’s a high-traffic area (it connects to the garage) and will be butting up against our beautiful, overpriced wood floors. “Besides,” she said, “You won’t want it to look like you ran out of money by the time you got to the laundry room.” “What if that’s precisely what happened?” I almost, almost shot back—but this woman had been so patient with us, so I refrained. Then something strange happened: Chris agreed with the sales rep. He wanted to put in NICE floors in the laundry room. At this point I was a tad ashamed. I knew I had completely dominated the appointment. Sure, Chris trusts my judgment and will generally go with the decorative flow, but still. I felt guilty. Since nothing in the laundry room needed to coordinate with anything else, I told Chris to look around and pick out his very favorite tile and that’s what we’d use. Then he surprised me again. He selected a gorgeous slate-colored 12”x12” tile with blue, tan, and just a hint of coral hues that reminded me a lot of Hawaii. We held it up against our pretty hardwood floors and the transition from one to the other was flawless. Who knew he had it in him? Better yet, the tile is made of porcelain and is insanely durable. After one final grout selection, we got the green light to LEAVE. (Chris practically ran out of the building.) Afterward, Chris felt drained but I felt calm. Like my nesting need had finally been satisfied, even if it was all kind of hypothetical. It was like nesting now for the future. Or something like that.