Wallpaper clause

Painting is so relaxing and mediatative and it's the perfect activity for anyone at the crossroads of anything in their life. But then standing back you look at the wall and say to yourself "I love this room that color is perfect!" knowing full well you're probably painting it for someone else. There in a nutshell was my weekend, --lots of "ahhh!" "oohhhh".... "agh!"

The decision isn't made just yet and there is always the posibility that other things will come up. Seb is still job hunting as he has been for the last six months but pickings are slim and there isn't much out there. It's not that I'm against going, it's just the international move groan issue. It's paperwork, sad goodbyes, language, internet issues, new schools, moving companies, boxes and all that scratched furniture. And it's all the lost time. It's an entire summer of preparing and then six month of settling. Afterwards it's exciting though I have to admit.

So we're waiting but meanwhile sort of preparing for the move just in case. It takes about two months for contract negotiations so that buys us time to think things over. Meanwhile I'm not buying another car just yet and bummming rides right and left which is awful, and as soon as summer comes Seb has to give back his company car so we'll both be carless which will be funny. Kind of like life has decided things for us. In the not buying a car issue people around us have figured out that our faux checkout visit was for real and so now everyone around us knows we might be leaving. I only said "psst" to one person in the village, the person who usually takes S to school in the mornings, and within two days I had the wife of our carpenter asking me what we'd decided. Within another week people started asking us about renting the house. Welcome to small town life! I have since told everyone that we've decided no because it was annoying to have people surveying our property for potential renters. Anyway we already talked to a real estate agent who told us we'd rent the house easily and for a lot more money than we even thought so no more renting to people we know--huge mistake we won't make again!

Of course like I said we have to finish the house.

The question is would you finish the house the way you had it in your head or would you leave it all white and generic? I was really disappointed with all this news because I wanted to finish the damn house and paint it. In France paint is three times the price it is in the US and England. I wanted to paint and finish the kitchen like I have it in my plans (Ikea kitchen by the way so not super expensive) but then I know that somone who rents can just repaint or *gasp* wallpaper *shudder* right over my pretty mid-century red-orange wall. Oh well, I dove in and painted it anyway.

I keep having flashbacks to when my mil moved in to their house a few years ago and said they hated the ugly peach vinyl wallpaper. While we were in Mexico they told us they'd changed it and we were thinking "good they finally updated it" but then when we finally saw it, it was replaced with this loverly dark blue vinyl wallpaper with a flower basket border at the top. And they were standing there all proud saying "oh thank go we got rid of that awful peach!" When I was painting yesterday the visions of that wallpaper kept floating back in my mind.

Is it possible to put a no wallpaper clause in a renters contract? This is the one thing that will keep me up at night worrying if we leave.

(btw our renter in the other house painted huge black chinese letters all over the kitchen walls--no idea why--yes I know the irony of it, anyway he also has a buddha altar and he installed candle holders in the wall, screwed in sconces right over the cat dish...I thought about that too when I was painting yesterday with my expensive French paint)