Friday Five: HGTV Edition

1) If you could, what room in the place you are currently living would you redo first? The living room. It's boring. We're using an old bookshelf for an entertainment center, all of our furniture is second hand and doesn't match. We spend the most time in that room. Also, we'd put down some carpet. The church decided to put linoleum down in the living room. Yeah, linoleum. In the living room.

2) What is the most hideous feature/color/decor item you have ever seen in a home? I had burnt orange shag carpet in my old duplex with drop-tile ceiling. Oh, and the walls were half wood panel. That was pretty hideous.

3) What feature do you most covet? Do you have it? If not, is it within reach? A solar powered attic fan. I'll never have it. Parsonage.

4) Your kitchen - love it or hate it? Why? It gets the job done. It has a pretty nice layout, but the oven/range is pretty old-tech (it takes forever to pre-heat and there's no window), there's no garbage disposal, and the dishwasher is loud and inefficient. I think the appliances are original from when they built the parsonage 15-20 years ago.

5) Here is $10,000 and you HAVE to spend it on the place you are living now. What do you do? I have no idea about the cost of home improvements, so here's my wish list: Solar-powered attic fan, a car port that actually fits two cars, carpet the living room, Insulated windows, double doors onto the back porch, Get rid of all the wood paneling, All new energy-star compliant appliances, garbage disposal, a vent fan in the master bath, and a timed thermostat.

The big one would be this: Brick up the garage and make it into some sort of room. Here's why. When the church built this parsonage, someone thought that the master bedroom needed to be two feet longer. So in the plans, they moved all the walls of the house two feet to the south. The garage is on the south side of the house...and the foundation had already been poured. So, our garage is two feet too short. Neither the Civic nor the Mazda3 fit in the garage. There's no garage door, because it'd come down on the back of any car parked in there, save a Smart or a Mini.

BONUS: Why do you think there was such a surplus of ugly bathroom tile colors showcased in all homes built from the 1950's right through the early 80's? In the fifties, they hadn't invented color yet, and so when they made the switch to color, they had no idea how ugly those shades of gray actually were. Calvin's dad explains it a lot better here.