The Anti-Renovation Fall Reset: What to Change When You’re Craving a New Room

All images c/o House & Garden

What is it about September that makes perfectly reasonable person start looking suspiciously at their kitchen? LOL! 

All summer, we barely notice. The doors are open. We're outside. We're eating somewhere other than the dining table. Then the evenings get cooler, we come back inside and suddenly:

Should we paint this room?

Would the kitchen look better with different counters?

Maybe we should finally redo the fireplace.

This is how a $40 lamp turns into a $14,000 project.

So this fall, we're trying something else.

We're calling it Anti-Renovation Fall.

Not because renovating is inherently bad. Sometimes a room genuinely doesn't function and needs to change.

But somewhere along the way, we've decided that the fastest route to loving our homes is to replace them piece by piece.

New floors. New cabinets. New tile. New furniture.

Until eventually we've removed everything that made the house ours in the first place.

This fall, before we rip anything out, we're putting things in.

Start With the Room You Already Have

There is an enormous amount of possibility between I don't love this room and we need to renovate it.

Move the chair.

Steal the lamp from the bedroom.

Hang the painting that's been sitting on the floor for eight months.

Bring in the table you found at the flea market even though you're still not entirely sure what it was originally intended for.

Put books where books technically aren't supposed to go.

Live with it.

Rooms get interesting when we stop treating them like finished products.

And fall is possibly the best season for experimenting because we're naturally beginning to turn inward again. We're going to spend a lot more time looking at these walls over the next six months.

We might as well like what's between them.

Make It Warmer, Not Newer

The fall version of your house doesn't require an entirely different house.

It might just need another layer.

A darker wood.

A heavy linen curtain.

A wool blanket thrown over the arm of the sofa.

A little more pattern.

A lamp in the corner that previously disappeared after 7 p.m.

A bowl filled with absolutely nothing because the bowl itself is beautiful enough.

This is the time of year when materials start doing some of the work.

Wood feels warmer. Brass looks better by lamplight. Old pottery suddenly belongs on the table. Deep reds, mossy greens and muddy browns make sense again.

The rooms don't need to be transformed.

They need to feel good when the sun goes down at 5:30.

Find One Thing That Changes the Room

Instead of asking what should I redo?, try asking:

What could I bring into this room that would make me ridiculously happy?

Maybe it's an enormous piece of art.

Maybe it's a sculptural lamp.

Maybe it's the slightly strange vintage chair everyone else in your family questions but you know is fantastic.

Maybe it's a wooden cabinet that makes the builder-basic wall behind it suddenly feel intentional.

This is where old things are particularly good.

Vintage pieces have presence.

They bring shape, age, colour, material and history into rooms that may not have much architectural character of their own.

You don't necessarily need millwork to make a blank wall interesting.

Sometimes you need a six-foot cabinet from 1974.

Stop Saving the Good Stuff

Use the glasses.

Put the antique bowl on the kitchen counter.

Burn the candles.

Take the blanket out of the cupboard.

Put the beautiful little dish beside the sink and let it hold your rings, soap, loose change or whatever else inevitably lands there.

A home isn't made special by owning beautiful things.

It's made special by living with them.

And this might be the part of Anti-Renovation Fall that matters most.

We're not decorating for a photograph of autumn.

We're preparing our homes for actual life in autumn.

For soup on Tuesday.

For wet boots at the door.

For homework at the kitchen table.

For friends staying too long after dinner.

For reading on the sofa when it's already dark outside.

For lighting lamps at four in the afternoon and deciding that's actually quite nice.

Shop Your Own House First

Before buying anything, walk around.

There is probably something good sitting in the wrong room.

Swap the bedside lamps.

Move a rug.

Take art from the hallway and put it over the dining table.

Pull the little table out of storage.

Put the chair nobody sits in somewhere somebody actually might.

Homes don't have to remain frozen in the arrangement we originally chose for them.

Moving things around costs nothing, and occasionally it makes you realize you didn't need anything new at all.

And when there is a gap?

That's when you wait for the right thing.

Not the fastest thing.

Not the thing an algorithm has shown you seventeen times this week.

The thing that makes you think oh, there you are.

Let Your House Get Weirder

This is also our official permission slip to stop making every room behave.

Not every lamp has to match.

Not every piece of wood has to be the same tone.

Not every object needs to fit neatly inside the aesthetic category you've assigned your house.

The best rooms usually contain at least one thing that shouldn't work.

Something too old.

Too big.

Too colourful.

Too ornate.

Too strange.

And somehow that is exactly what makes everything else click.

So if you're craving change this fall, resist the urge to immediately start tearing something out.

Bring something home.

Move something around.

Hang the art.

Turn on the lamps.

Add another layer.

Use the good stuff.

Let the house evolve a little.

Because maybe your home doesn't need to become newer.

Maybe it just needs to become more yours.

Welcome to Anti-Renovation Fall.

-Juliette