Paint the House. Buy the Plants. Live a Little.
You know the saying, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes”? That applies to a lot of interior designers. People assume our homes must be flawless, and we just laugh because... not exactly.
Part of it is that we're busy working on everyone else's homes. The other part? We are absolutely terrible at making decisions for ourselves.
Put me in a room with a client and 200 options, and I can narrow them down in no time. Give me my own house and 10 options, and I'll spend months second-guessing every single one.
Case in point: our little 1938 cottage. (Technically it's a Minimalist Traditional, which is a fascinating architectural rabbit hole involving the Great Depression, the Federal Housing Administration, and the move toward simpler, more affordable home designs. I could happily talk about this for hours, but I'll spare you.)
The exterior hadn't been painted in about 20 years, and as the new person moving into a house that had been occupied by a bachelor for that entire stretch, I gently suggested we might want to freshen things up a bit.
What followed was months of indecision.
We started with blue and white. Then realized half the neighborhood already had some version of that. We moved to green and white, but it felt too heavy. We even talked about pink, because that was the original color when the house was first built. But nothing was quite right. So we sat with it.
Then we took a trip to New Orleans. While wandering through the Garden District, my guy pointed at a beautiful house and said, "I wouldn't mind colors like that." For once, we completely agreed.
We came home, narrowed it down to two similar options, picked one, and finally had our answer. Was it mind blowingly original? No, not at all. It’s cream, white and sage. But the combo just felt right to us, where none of the others quite got there.
When the painters started, I had a brief panic because the main body color looked surprisingly similar to the original. My immediate thought was: Did we really just spend all this money for something that barely looks different?
But we trusted the process—something I tell clients all the time and occasionally need to remind myself of.
And honestly? We love it.
The house feels lighter, cleaner, and still true to its original character. Every time I pull into the driveway, I'm happy to see it. Even the yard feels transformed, and all we really did was tidy things up. Photos don’t do it justice (and they also make the green look…not quite right - but you get the gist).
It got me thinking about how many people save these kinds of projects until they're getting ready to sell. They paint the house, hire the landscapers, fix the fence—and then someone else gets to enjoy it.
Don't wait.
Pick the paint color. Hire the gardeners. Fix the fence. Do the projects you've been putting off.
Do it so you can enjoy it, not just the next owner.
