Here in Maine–“the way life should be”, according to the state slogan–there is a tendency towards wabi-sabi even if unconsciously. Wabi-sabi is the Japanese art that contradicts feng shui. Instead of decluttering and fixing what is broken, wabi-sabi instructs finding the beauty in leaving things as they are found (even if that means a state of decay or peeling paint for example). Because we are on an island, everyone tends toward saving stuff for future use. We repurpose a lot of things that others might throw out. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And besides, it takes a lot of time to get anything done as the wait list for contractors is very long (and the markup on labor very high).Plus it’s basically just our summer house.
Art work covers most of the ugly wallpaper.
All that being said, this is why we are living with a bathroom in our old farm house that people in the city might instantly want to upgrade and renovate. We finally got someone to repair the leaky roof but haven’t replaced the missing ceiling yet. We did get a new light fixture for over the mirror but the spackle is still visible. The ugly wallpaper is peeling but rather than do anything about it, I recently came up with another solution. I’ve hung a collection of old needlepoint cross stitch samplers and other art work we had so that it nearly covers every inch of the wall. And in the Maine tradition of using what’s on hand, I found we had a pint sized sample of Valspar one-coat paint in Beach Blue satin color. Just enough to paint the yucky wood cabinet under the sink, the doors of the built in cabinet (shown with the crazy crocodile ceramic pull we added years ago), and also enough to paint the surround of the door and the bottom ledges of the windows as well as a stripe around the shower stall.
No need to write in to me that the beach glass blue color is weird with the yellow and brown existing tiles. It IS weird. It’s wabi-sabi. And yet with the accents in the art work and the towel colors, the weirdness works for us. Maybe that’s because we’re both artists and see things slightly skewed anyway. And it is a funky farm house on an ocean bound island after all. You can’t get better feng shui than that in my opinion. Have you done unusual things with your space? Show me!
Feng Shui By Fishgirl 