Oh SH-T! We're building a house?

What a crazy and stress-inducing week. Or was that last week? The week before? People just keep showing up to the house on Lot 65 to do work on it -- I don't think a single day has gone by without trades inside and outside the house, toiling away, totally ignoring the housing slump elsewhere. The Browns are doing their bit to keep America strong by providing plenty of jobs. I have a schedule of things that I know need to happen, but time slips away and it's easy to travel along the twin pathways of indecision and procrastination. I'm going to France for 10 days on Monday. It's terrible timing, because by now I'm supposed to know what the inside of the house should look like. That was the deal - Rhett takes care of the outside and and the workhorse guts of the inside and I take care of the glamour stuff like colors and chandeliers. Apparently, no one is going to be waiting for me while I'm touring Reanaissance chateaux and sampling the wines of the Loire Valley. I have until Monday to get it DONE.

I have my cabinets on order, and the company has just called to confirm May 26 as the install date. WHAT???? Now I definitely need countertops! And with countertops come backsplashes. And we need light fixtures so we can all see what we're doing. We do have floors to put this stuff on - whew. That went in last week. Oak floors throughout, except for the bathrooms and laundry room which need tiles. So I need to pick out tiles. And the paint guy wants to know what color we're painting the interior walls. And the tiles need to match cabinets which should complement the countertops which should look good with the paint. If you only have one of the above picked out, making decisions about what goes with what becomes painful for anyone except the truly confident style-hound.

Now this where it's eminently possible to chicken out and play it safe. I've put off making hard decisions for a few months now. This is when it's time to separate the Pottery Barn wannabe's from those bold eclecticists who can blithely throw off the shackles of the word that rolls so smoothly off every Realtor's honey-combed tongue -- RESALE.