The boob is staying. Or at least that's what the popular vote dictates, much to my dismay. I'd like to thank everyone who voted in last weeks "au natural or cover that shit up" vote in regards to our feminine looking (in my opinion) Victorian doorstop, despite the fact that my preference of breaking out the paint didn't come out on top. And to be honest, that makes me a little grumpy since I really like to be right.

Sore loser? Maybe. But given more than 200 readers took the time to voice their opinion, I have to respect that and go against my instinct to paint the doorstop. Naked boobs are in the hizzouse, and they're staying. For the time being at least. Oh the horror.

We still may experiment a bit, whether it be wrapping the door stop in white tissue paper (thanks to a commenter for that awesome idea) or even Photoshopping it to see how the color change might play out, but sadly I don't see a full blown makeover (and by that I mean a coat of paint) in the near future, I guess that's what I get for allowing us to put the decision in the hands of our readers.

In all honestly, I find the idea of inviting readers to vote on aspects of our home to be a lot of fun. We already welcome you into our home and lives in a virtual way most days of the week, and share the things we work on or plan to work on, so why not involve you all in some of the decision making that goes along with the process?

As novel as it may be, the idea of allowing someone else, or a group of someone elses, to make difficult or even simple decisions at critical points is obviously not a new concept. There are movies, books, websites, and even entire civilizations dedicated to this approach to decision making, but our blog and a relatively consistent daily readership has opened this world for us to implement in our home. Though I may not be particularly thrilled with the outcome of the poll, it's very cool to me that so many people would take the time to register their opinion on something as seemingly mundane as whether or not to paint a doorstop. After all, like any one of the thousands of large or small decisions needed in a home renovation or DIY project, something so small and theoretically unworthy of real debate can easily cause hangups and rethinks.

Perhaps this new mechanism for decision making could have greatly benefited our cause back when we were trying to decide what colors to paint our old bedroom when I took the unfortunate misstep of "ripe wheat." 

Or maybe it could have steered us in a different direction when we opted early on to strip every door casing, window casing, and piece of molding in the house. Knowing what we know now, we would have appreciated a, "NOOOOO!!!! Whatever you do don't strip the paint, it's a form of hell there is no reprieve from!!!!" on that decision). Yep, we could have used some better guidance on that one.

However, this begs the question, what drives your vote? I know it's different for many people, but are you driven to cast your votes in polls like this based on your personal preferences, or do you tend to vote based on what would work best in the owners' home? Or perhaps you tend to vote on the option that requires the least or most effort by the implementer, just to make sure they're putting in the necessary level of effort on a project? 

There are so many things that can drive a decision, but crowd sourcing that decision when we can't seem to agree on one internally may be our new go-to move. I mean, we're obviously far from infallible and don't always know what's best, so why not? But if we do ask for help in decision making, we just need to be ready to commit with the knowledge that sometimes we will need to just go forward with the decision, even if it deviates from the path we'd prefer. Fair is fair, and as I always say, "Don't ask the question if you're don't want to hear the answer."