First, a little back story. I am, much to my on-going surprise, a "woman of a certain age." As most people my age will tell you, I feel like I'm about 35 or 40, but the mirror says otherwise. (However, as "women of a certain age" go, I get along with the mirror pretty well.) I have worked as a professional writer since I was 24, and I am now what I like to call "half-assed retired." Meaning I don't want to work full time, but I'm nowhere near ready to be put out to pasture, so I work when something good comes along. When I'm not working, we live on a pension that is sufficient, but doesn't allow me to shop at Gumps. (However, I still have the monkey lamp I bought at Gumps in 2004. And it will be with me in the nursing home. More on that at another time.)
My husband and I have four kids: his, mine and ours. Three of them are adults, with jobs and apartments, in Atlanta, Orlando and Los Angeles. The fourth, our mutual son, will be 16 in June and delights in reminding us that he will be gone in two years. When all four kids were at home, we bought a four bedroom house in an Orlando suburb. Our plan was to sell it when the oldest three went to college, since there was a 12 year gap between our youngest and the three oldest. However, the last of the oldest graduated from high school in 2007. That's right, the year before the housing collapse. So when it came time to downsize, we couldn't find a real estate agent who would even consider listing our house, unless we wanted to sell it for much less than we owed.
We made a decision to rent the big house out and move into our cabin in the North Carolina mountains. That's right, the getaway cabin. Four rooms, less than 1500 square feet. We've had a great time here for the last 7 years, but for a variety of reasons, it's now time to go back to civilization. And the big house. (The new plan is to live there for two years and then downsize when the youngest goes to college. But we've learned not to take plans seriously.)
In the pre-2008 days, I would have given the mountain cabin furniture to charity and bought all new furniture once back in Florida. But these are not the pre-2008 days. So my task has been to decorate the empty Florida house on a VERY small budget (basically, what I could get by selling the cabin furniture) while making use of everything we currently own.
So, first I decided to attack the master bedroom. Our (very nice) furniture was made to look good in the woods, and nowhere other than in the woods. So I had to sell all the bedroom furniture on Craigslist, for about 1/10th of what I paid for it. And nowhere near enough to replace it. Therefore, the bedroom will be a work in progress for awhile.
To be continued...