It’s not haunted. Probably.
The kitchen is new. The bathroom too. Those parts make sense. But the rest of the house? It is like living in a renovation fever dream from 1976, where someone’s mum won a Mitre 10 voucher and absolutely went for it.
The carpet in the hallway is orange and cream, in a pattern that looks like a bird flew over and lost control mid-air. It is the kind of colour combo that makes you question the sanity of everyone who ever said “retro is back.” If Mitre 10 ever exploded, this is what the debris would look like.
Then there’s the living room, home to a beige shag pile so thick and stubborn it laughs in the face of modern vacuum cleaners. Whoever installed it deserves an award, or an exorcism. It is literally unvacuumable. Every attempt just builds static and regret.
Beige walls, blue curtains, orange carpet. I do not live in a colour scheme. I live in a hostage situation.
I have tried to decorate. My husband calls it a “work in progress,” but I think of it more as a slow-moving cry for help. I have hung art, added plants, bought cushions that tried their best. But you cannot decorate your way out of beige.
I would not die in this colour scheme. I would paint it first. Any colour. Magenta, swamp green, radioactive turquoise, whatever it takes to feel alive again. Beige just whispers, “Don’t bother.”
And while we are here, can we talk about the layout? Because whoever designed this place clearly hated peace. The main bedroom is right at the front of the house, like an emotional speed bump between me and the highway. You lie in bed at night wondering if a log truck will take you out in your sleep. Nothing says “sweet dreams” like the Doppler effect of timber freight.
The living room faces the wrong direction. The hallway could host a small parade, and every doorway is placed just slightly off-center, as if by someone who thought balance was a government conspiracy. If you close all the doors and turn off the lights, you start seeing glow worms in the dark. Or maybe that’s just your soul trying to escape.
Yesterday I caught myself staring at the neighbour’s house, judging it like a jilted architect. Their place has small, sensible front windows, the kind that say privacy, insulation, inner peace. Meanwhile, my house has long, narrow front windows that make no sense. They are the design equivalent of bell-bottoms, dramatic, drafty, and totally uncalled for.
Do not get me wrong, I love the frosted 70s window glass. It has that perfect retro shimmer, like someone poured milk into a disco ball. But without an HRV system, it is a full-time job to keep them dry. Every winter morning I wake up to condensation climbing the panes like it is trying to reach salvation. I have had less water in my kettle.
I have started to think this place might have been an early prefab, the kind of house they built fast, before anyone could ask why. I am the tenth person to live here since 1976, which says something. Most people would kill for 715 square metres of land, but apparently not enough to stay.
I do not know if it is haunted, or if beige just slowly eats your will to live, but something about this place has a way of testing people. Still, here I am, patching, painting, half-renovating and half-recovering, trying to make peace with a house that feels like it is always halfway between eras.
I found out recently the house started its life painted sky blue. Sky blue. On a 1970s prefab. Somewhere between that colour choice and the shag carpet, something dark clearly went down here. You can feel it in the walls, like every past owner left a bit of unfinished business and an outdated curtain rail.
So yes, I have been casting out demons and closing portals like it is 1999. If holy water came in a spray bottle, I would be on my second litre. Every time I repaint a wall or fix a leak, I am pretty sure I am sealing another dimension shut.
One last thing. It is a piled house, and honestly, during that big earthquake a few years ago, it held its own. Credit where it is due. It swayed like a drunk uncle at a wedding, but it did not fall. I do love that “at sea” feeling during a 1.7 quake, where you question both gravity and your insurance coverage.
Sometimes I wonder if I am high enough for the house not to flood, but when you step off the deck you could just as easily end up on the actual ground in a heap, so who knows. It is all part of the adventure. Beige or not, this place has personality. Questionable, slightly possessed personality, but personality all the same.
And I love my home. Even though my mum once referred to it as “the dog kennel” because it is only 99 square metres, it is mine (Ours). Beige, weird, squeaky, slightly haunted, somewhat unsubconsciously green in decor, and apparently decorated entirely in the one colour my husband hates. Marriage really is about discovery. Funny though because he has to wear poop colours and green to go hunting i must add…
The home is still ours and still waiting for redemption least a finished one, whatever that is.
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