Sunday, February 03, 2013

Odd House Things I'm Excited About

When I buy this house this fall this will be the first time I've ever owned property. It'll be the first time I'll get to decide what I have on the floor and what colors on the walls (the time I painted my walls in Seattle don't count since I paid through the nose for that...).  I did get some choice in my current apartment. They let me pick an accent wall color from a list of about 5 approved colors, so there you go a lot of choice. But that's not even what I'm excited about since I'm rather meh on wall colors. I've lived for almost all my adult life with variations on the shade of beige or ecru or offwhite and I mostly cover up the walls anyway. They are blank canvases for my other stuff. What I'm really excited about picking out for myself (in the long haul obviously)...

Faucets. I hate the short little stubby bathroom faucets. I don't understand why bathroom sinks are designed with these huge basins but the faucet is almost against the back part of the basin. It isn't like I'm washing my unmentionables under the faucet. I want faucets that extend quite a ways over the basin.

Floors. Eventually I'm going to have either ceramic tile or concrete floors. I'm buying a house in TexAss. It is hot here like 85% of the time. I think ceramic tile or concrete floors will help keep the house cooler than carpet. Plus I don't really like carpet. It is a pain to deal with. It usually looks flat and dingy. It's nice under the bare feet (which I always have bare feet) but I just really dislike it. And wood floors are nice, but I don't think they'll help with the heat factor as much as ceramic tile or concrete. A high school FB friend redid his floors in concrete. They are beautiful and more practical I think than carpet. I can always put down throw rugs or buy a nice area rug. I did have one coworker point out that with tile or concrete floors I'm pretty much guaranteeing anything I drop will break. Good to consider. :)

Shower head.  Almost all apartments and the gyms have the same style shower head. Most of the hotels I've stayed in (except the fancy ones) have had a similar too. It has two settings - awful and awfuler. I want one of those that have the big head and are more like a rain. I know Michelle had one that I loved (and she hated). I will have one of those in a bathroom in my house.

Honorable mention goes to window treatments. In every apartment I have lived in I've had mini-blinds. I hate mini-blinds. Give me a roman shade. Give me a regular shade. Give me a curtain. Just no more metal mini-blinds. This will probably be the first thing to deal with since I'm pretty houses don't come with window treatments. Haha! Since my mother and I are currently doing the 'dance of the birthday present' I may have something for her to do for me.

Taking the "high road"

My current employer is looking at beginning talks with my former hell employer about a partnership for a project to benefit employees. I've been trying to stay out of these conversations because just because I hate my former employer doesn't mean I should make those that work for them suffer. The project would be good for the revenue of my former employer. But as I've thought more and more about it, I'm not taking the high road. I'm doing my current employer a disservice by not being honest about my former employer. To wit, I genuinely feel that the upper management team is not proactive in dealing with problems that arise. They let bad things slide for far too long because they are so focused on their expansion that they can't fix the issues currently in the organization. Their employees are not motivated by anything other than fear. Their expansion appears to be unfocused and they end up with offices they don't know what to do with. And a quick google search tells me that their CFO, the one person I thought was reasonable on the executive team, is gone. Big shocker. It won't be up to me whether we do this partnership. If I had that power, I'd totally go with another group who is larger. But I'm definitely going to bring my concerns to the table.