What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

Sitting down to write this blog post - gas fireplace roasting behind me, laptop on a beautiful marble island, beer from our precise fridge - it's hard not to get a little emotional. There are so many things I want to tell you, so many things I want to show you, but it's hard now looking back to capture them all.

That's the thing about time. It's only been a year and half, but it's feels like it's been years. I barely remember the things we did last summer or even this spring. I barely remember the work we put in along the way.

I can tell you that it wasn't easy. There were often days at the house that I thought would end me, moments in time where I would be overcome with the desire to be somewhere, anywhere but there. Sometimes it was a freezing, sunless afternoon drilling yet another hole in the joists through which to run electric wires, and sometimes it was one of those painfully itchy afternoons covered in fiberglass insulation, my long sleeves soaked through with sweat in the early summer heat. Sometimes it was shoveling top soil or dirt. Sometimes it was after getting the angled cut on a board wrong three (or four or five...) times in a row. More often than not, it was one of those tedious days where I spent hours smoothing caulk or nailing trim, following Mom's orders with rolled eyes and tired limbs.

But in the end? I can hardly remember what those moments felt like. Sorry, Adele, but time really does heal you.

And so when I look back now, the things I remember most vividly are those positive memories we made along the way. It's rarely fiberglass rashes or bruised shins that I remember. Instead, when I think back on the past year and a half, I remember the sound of the backdoor opening and seeing one of the people I love the most walk through it. I think about Popeyes lunches and finding the best nursery in town. I remember feeling accomplished and proud after stepping back to admire our day's work. And, of course, I remember GYROS.

So before I get too mushy, here we go with the photos...


The Den:

The room most heavily affected by erosion of the ground outside, the entire den was sloping a little when we bought the house. The solution? We used permanent floor jacks to lift up the first story and added LVLs throughout the entire den ceiling to prop up the floor above. We replaced all of the downstairs windows (besides the decorative front windows) with a more energy efficient option and added built-in shelves in the den for added storage space. We left a narrow passage in the corner of this room for basement access. Of course, we also restored both fireplaces to a useable gas version of their previous selves.

BEFORE: DEN

AFTER: DEN

The Upstairs:

Getting two rooms, two full bathrooms, a laundry and ample storage space required quite a bit of rearranging upstairs. To start, we pushed the hallway wall out in the master bedroom, carved up his/her closets, and ramped up the bathroom space for both rooms by moving almost every wall. The biggest changes? Removing the limiting dormer walls to create more useable space and bumping up the ceiling from a squatty 8 feet to a soaring 10 took the upstairs from cute and cozy to fully functional. We also replaced the tiny window and single door with french patio doors to brighten up our master bedroom.

BEFORE: Master bedroom. We pushed the walls out on all sides to expand the size of the room and then carved a narrow closet in the far right wall in this photo.

BEFORE: Guest room. We brought out the wall out by the fireplace to make a bathroom, using the sloping ceilings to create space for a shower and tub.

BEFORE: Guest room fireplace. The only one we couldn't get clean, we had to opt for paint.

AFTER: Guest room finished and ready to host!

The dining and living rooms:

The formal living and dining rooms we tried to keep as historic as possible, leaving the original walls in tact and adding pieces we thought might be reflective of the pieces that were in the house originally. In the dining room we added wainscoting and a gold leaf stencil along with an antique mantel we found on craigslist the first summer. In the formal living, we used a 150 year old mantel top from Houston and built mantel "legs" using various pieces of Home Depot trim.

And do you remember that old mantel from this post??

BEFORE: July 2014 when we put the mantel "in place" to see how it would look...ha....

AFTER: Dining room with mantel actually in place

The downstairs bath:

Everyone's favorite room is house was also Mom's great idea. While resupporting the house last fall, Dad and Todd found the house's first porch ceiling buried in the ceiling in the back hallway. They were able to salvage most of the wood which Mom then sanded and vanished to highlight the array of paint colors the old ceiling received before it was closed in many years ago. You can see the boards now as an accent wall in downstairs bathroom.

The Kitchen:

The kitchen was one of our biggest transformations. What was originally three rooms in the house, we turned into one, removing the longest wall along the hall and opening up the space to the rest of the house. This made a cramped house a dream home without taking away any of the historic layout from the home's entrance.

BEFORE: Looking from the side door into the kitchen

AFTER: Wall removed and well...duh....

BEFORE: Opposite direction

AFTER: Do I need to comment??

The Summary :)

And so here we are. We can call it a transition or a new door opening. We can say that our house journey is really just beginning and maybe that's true, but it's also the end. It's the end of one of most amazing years (or year and a half...) of my life.

But as heartbroken as I am that my parents are leaving, I know that they are finally, finally, beginning their own well-deserved house journey in New Mexico. (Yeah, sorry, go ahead and toss out those applications you were preparing in hopes of being next in line.) I want to thank my parents a million times over for all of their patience and love and help, but I'm afraid that's something that will take many more years to even begin to express. In the meantime, I'll just be grateful. So, so grateful!

So here it is. Here's to the hundreds of pounds of nails and wood and caulk. Here's to the fast food lunches and mexican dinners. Here's to the gyros and all of the exuberant folks we met walking the streets. Here's to the late night grill outs and early mornings working. Here's to the frustrated tears, the happy tears, the downright sad tears. Here's to everything. Here's to the a year and half I will remember forever.

Tonight we went to dinner, and it was both a somber and joyous experience. For the past 18 months, we've upheld our reputation as loudest (thanks Mom hehe), rowdiest, and most giggly group at every margarita joint in town. Tonight we went down in the books as the teariest.

I'm not good at goodbyes, so let's just half-hearted promise we'll call each other and hang out sometime, ok???


....And that's all she wrote.