Sunday, October 31, 2010

5 Years

Five years ago, my old house and David's old house were packed into boxes and bags - much to the annoyance of Henrietta and the confusion of the 3 month old Gracie.
On October 29, 2005, our friends and my mom and dad descended to help move and clean up the old house. The great thing about our friends is that you don't have to ask them for help. They just show up and start.
The night that we moved, David began digging holes for fence posts by the light of his truck headlights. The next day, it was determined that bigger equipment would make that job go faster. Or, David just wanted to drive one of these. I'm not sure which.
Over the next months (year?) our weekends were spent making a minimum of 3 trips to Home Depot and Lowe's every weekend. Goodbye to ugly wallpaper and dated fixtures. Hello paint brushes, wallpaper stripping, and paint chips.I lived with the blue in the cat room until the next summer. My Mom, Aunt Connie, and Grandmother came and stripped wallpaper in that room and in my bathroom.
Oatmeal colored paint and new carpet made a lot of difference!I wish I'd taken pictures of our bedroom on the day we moved in. The curtains looked like 80's prom dresses. They were pretty awful. No picture though as I took them down as David was steam cleaning the carpet before we moved furniture in.Eventually, we added a real headboard and dresser, changed out the wimpy ceiling fan, painted, and hung curtains.I remember my dad shaking his head in disbelief while we were doing all this work. "I thought you liked this house?" he said. "I liked the potential of this house!" was my reply. And after 5 years, I'm pretty satisfied. But...I'm still not finished.

1 comment:

Keetha said...

Happy five year anniversary!

All of what you say is very, very familiar. I was thinking this morning that this time last year, we were hustling to get our son's room done before the middle of the month *and* still had the dining room to finish before Thanksgiving.

Also, love this line: "The curtains looked like 80s prom dresses." Ha!