My friend Kerry is a real go-getter. It feels to me as though she’s forever buying a new apartment, upgrading it and selling it off for more than she paid. It kind of infuriates me because she’s lucky enough to be in the position to do this), yet she never stays in one place long enough to actually enjoy owning her own home. But I guess she sees it as a business venture, and that’s fair enough.
At the moment, she’s deep in the midst of a laundry renovation. Melbourne homeowners, have you ever contemplated such a thing? I mean, seriously, how much improvement can really be made to a laundry? It’s a purely functional room, isn’t it? According to Kerry, that’s precisely the point – good design, she says, is about more than just making stuff look nice. She’s always telling me that I need to learn to differentiate between interior design and interior decoration.
Maybe she’s onto something there. I mean, my kitchen looks really sharp at the moment because it just got a fresh coat of paint, in on-trend charcoal and moss, no less. But that hasn’t changed the fact that there’s not enough counter-top space for me to comfortably create the complex meals that I love to cook, especially not while Christine is trying to squeeze past me to the inconveniently positioned wine rack.
So, yeah, I’ll pay Kerry’s point about functionality. Personally, I’d still rather focus my energies on a zone I use more often, like the bathroom. Renovations and design could really go a long way in mine – the bath is one of those half-sized jobs, which I’ve never understood the point of, and don’t even get me started on the 80s tiling. That’s one area that could really use some aesthetic attention.
But, unlike Kerry, I’m a renter, so there’s not much I can do about any of it for the time being.