December posting meme: House design

lunabee34 asked: Tell me about your design aesthetic. If you got to build and decorate your own house, what would it be like?

Well, honestly, the house I live in is basically that house. Not entirely; I think if I were designing something from the ground up, I'd want it to be cozier and full of little nooks and cubbies and tucked-away rooms, while the current house is very open with high ceilings. But y'know, in dark Alaskan winters, spacious and bright is better than small and cozy anyway.

In general, though, I really like natural wood and a rustic kind of look. I fell in love with this place when I first saw it: lots of wood inside, big picture windows looking out at the forest. The only problem is that it's a little restrictive to decorate; there's no opportunity to paint the walls (it's all wood) and I pretty much had to start over again on art, because everything I had, from our house in Illinois, didn't really fit with the look of the place. Basically, where most houses have white walls and beige carpets, and generally provide a blank slate that you can do almost anything with, THIS house has an overwhelming enough personality of its own that the decorating direction is predetermined, and anything that doesn't go with its rustic look blatantly clashes.

Here are a couple of pictures from Facebook that give you an idea of what it looks like:





So yeah, I haven't really decorated it so much as just added a few things to what was there already. But that is basically what I would have wanted to create for myself if I hadn't happened to find a place that already had it.

I've also tried to clutter up the place with decorations as little as possible because I tend to like a minimalist kind of look while also being sort of a packrat and pretty lazy about cleaning. So my life is a constant battle between wanting an uncluttered environment and just not being dedicated enough to keep it that way, heh.