Something to Remember You By

These were the professional photos taken of our house for the real estate listing. I wanted to remember just how it looked in its prime state (that means perfectly clean with no kids around). This was the best we had it after 5 years. You can see how it looked when we moved in here, here, and for the most part here. Of course those posts only highlight the house. The gardens were probably the biggest visible change.

Some of the things we did in 5 years were; rip out old bushes and put in all most all new plants, dig up the back yard and put in gravel and gardens, revamp the sprinkler system. A new architectural roof with plywood sheeting. We partially tore out an obsolete chimney, and put in proper ventilation in roof. We also fixed the faulty set up with the bathroom fan. We installed a new high efficiency furnace to replace the old oil burning one, which included installing a new gas line to the house. We also got new hot water heater, and a new fancy schmancy dishwasher. We put in all new plumbing from the kitchen sink to the clean out in the basement where new plumbing had been put in to the alley before we moved in. This included jack hammering the basement floor and then putting in new concrete when we were done. We tiled the hearth around the fireplace and made it level with the wood floor again. I restored almost all the historical storm windows, as well as a complete restoration of the 4 over 4 pane historical picture window with accompanying storm. I also did a restoration of two other widows. We put in new floors in the kitchen and bathroom, and instillation of appropriate baseboards in the kitchen to replace the vinyl wrapping that was put in by the previous owner. We put in a new/old back door to match the existing doors and windows with a screen door on the back porch. We tore out a rotten deck and replaced it with a smaller new set of wooden stairs. We replaced most of the rotten basement windows and a picture window (that had been installed in the 70s in the enclosed porch that didn't open and was stained and discolored), with a widow to match the pane window on the front of the house. We rebuilt the missing medicine cabinet in the bathroom and stripped paint off the baseboards in the kids room and restored the woodwork. I refinished the wood floor in the kids room. We got the house and soil tested for lead and had all the woodwork on the outside of the house painted, and replaced some of the wood on the exterior that had been previously been damaged by ivy. I painted every room on the main floor. Hubbs tore out a bunch of cheap fiberboard paneling and drop ceiling in the basement as well as a bunch of 1x1. He also tore out a bunch of rotten framing in the basement, and disposed of it all at the dump. We took apart an old piano that was left there when we bought it and used a sledge hammer to break it apart so we could get it out. Tore out a strange door frame at the top of the stairs that didn't have a door to match, fixed the plaster on the stairs and repainted. We framed in a bathroom in the basement with existing plumbing. We insulated the belly band on the house in the basement and put up new insulation and framing in the laundry area. We painted all the trim and doors on the garage. We replaced the exterior scary aluminum electric panel from the 70's with a new one in the basement. Replaced the nob and tube wiring to the garage as well as have the entire garage re wired to modern wiring and up to code (that included digging a 12" trench to the garage through the yard). We built a picket fence around the two side yards with gates and tore out the old chain link. We had the house tested for radon, and had it looked at by a structural engineer to determine where the load bearing walls were and if the attic could be finished. I installed new 1930's reproduction light fixtures in the dining room and bedrooms. I stripped paint off of the original hardware in the kitchen. Hubs built a new hand rail for the back porch. I replaced at least 3 windows that broke while we lived there. I dug out the garage as on the backside it was buried by 3 feet from 80 years of garden debris composting down to earth. Hubs built me a clothesline. We built and tore down 2 chicken coops. Paint paint and more paint. This list is not in order, its just a haphazard remembering of our doom.

Phew. Typing up that list was exhausting. I can't believe we did all that work to the house. I feel a little sick when I read through it. I did so much of it by myself and I did it with three kids under 6. When we sold it the buyer had an issue about the air conditioner being old. I was so mad about that as I felt lucky that it even had central air. . No wonder we felt so poor all those years. No wonder I felt so overwhelmed and stressed out. I had absolutely no idea how much work that house was going to take. When we walked through it, it was the only one that was move in ready that we saw in our budget. Now that I look back it was not in our budget. I can't believe my credit came out better than when we started. No wonder I felt in over my head every single day of my life for the past 5 years. Its a miracle I am even still alive after all that stress.

Here is a list of the things we always wanted to do but didn't get to accomplish: refinish the wood floors, do some work to the chimney and bricks on exterior, re-wire the entire house as most of it is still knob and tube, finish the basement to include and egress window, bathroom, updated laundry, storage, and living area. Tile the floors in the kitchen, bath and enclosed porch. And finish the attic to be a master bedroom with a bathroom. I would look at all these blogs for inspiration and pin all this stuff on Pinterest that I was going to do to make it beautiful. I remember many nights lying in bed so excited about my dreams that I couldn't fall a sleep.

That list of stuff we wanted to do is much, much, shorter than what we did do. The lucky buyers get to do all the fun stuff of my dreams. Next time I vow to buy a house that needs less work. I am only buying something that needs aesthetic updates not an entire overhaul. I am happy I got to own an old house as I have always loved them but am not sure I will ever do it again. Now you can see why we are taking a break and renting. When we sold, everyone kept asking us if we were going to buy. We both almost yelled back NO every time. At least not right away.

The End of Days...

We are at the end of our time in our little home. We have lived here for more than 5 years. My husband always said this would be a 5 year house for us but I saw so much farther into the future than that. I saw so many more dreams here than we actually achieved. All these years I could see our basement finished in my mind. I could see the layout of the rooms and the tile on the floor in the laundry room. I could see a bedroom for my son and a bathroom for guests. I spent many nights dreaming of finishing our attic like the rest of the little houses on our street. Like the basement I knew just what to do. 

Over the five years we have lived here I have worked so hard on our home. I have put my sweat, and blood, and soul into the walls of our house. I have painted beautiful hues to fill the rooms with lovely, ambient light. I have spent many hours restoring our historic, old growth windows. Like the basement, I didn't get as far as I wanted on the windows but I did make them better. I fixed the ones that mattered most. I have spent so much of my time working the soil here and turning our yard into a garden. I have canned the vegetables and butchered the chickens that grew too old. 

I had two of my babies in the walls of this home. They came faster than I anticipated, causing us to outgrow our 2 bedrooms sooner than we wanted. In fact when we bought the house I was already expecting our middle child, and first daughter. We didn't know it yet. Sometimes still I wonder if we would have chosen a different house had we known. Here, I have watched all three of my children learn and grow and live their lives. They have played many hours out in our garden and experienced almost all of their firsts, here in our first house. We have had to learn to do with less. We learned about that special bond that grows between a family that lives in a smaller home. We have learned how to be careful about what we buy, and careful about how we walk, as the squeaky boards can wake little people up just before dawn. 

Spokane has been like a desert to me, lonely, difficult, and spiritually challenging in ways I never imagined. For over two years we have wanted to move closer to my husbands work. Each time we tried to work it out in our heads, each time we would pray, we knew that it was not time. That was hard. We wanted to run away but knew that we shouldn't, that we financially couldn't. Then almost 5 weeks ago we received the news that was our open door. Right then and there we knew that it was time to go. It was crazy and fast and exciting. It was also strange and heartbreaking. I get so attached to the places I live. My house feels like more than just a house to me. It is like part of my family, my refuge from the storm, my art to live by. 

I am looking forward to the adventures a head of my family. I am excited to feel freedom again. I will have another garden someday just as beautiful as the one I built here. I know that I will bring beauty to where ever I call home. Most of all I am looking forward to being near my husband for 2 more hours each day. I am looking forward to doing fun things with my kids because we will be able to take the car. I am so grateful for this time I had to live in "an old house." I have loved old houses ever since I was a very young child and this house gave me the opportunity to live my dream. 

Making May

I am still sewing and sewing and sewing. I am still loving it, although it makes a huge mess and I don't want to do any of my housework. I have also been trying to knit here and there. Right now I am on this self imposed knitting project where I am making all of my cotton yarn into washcloths. I am still kind of slow so each one takes me hours. I keep seeing people talk of them in the pattern places online and that they are a quick one hour project. I laugh a little at that. I am hoping to use all that I have up and then move on to little sweaters for the kids.

I had a wonderful Mothers Day with a brand new emergency dishwasher earlier in the week. I also made myself some chocolate covered strawberries. We were at Costco and they were selling these packs of them for what I thought was expensive for 6 berries. Then when we were walking through the produce isle I saw the giant strawberry container for half the price. In a stroke of genius I put it in the cart. I just used melted chocolate chips and dunked them right in. I picked some flowers from my garden and remembered how nice it is to grow my own to keep a constant supply of fresh flowers on the table. I spent a glorious three hours alone in a mostly clean house with no one to mess it up. The next day Hubbs caught us all on the couch and announced it was a Mothers Day picture. He got a few decent shots which surprised me knowing how tricky our camera is. Most of my pictures are terrible.

The weather here has been calm and warm and the windows are open from morning until we go to bed. I love the way the air feels in the spring, all green and warm and exciting. I keep thinking ahead to summer and all the fun things we should do. I have been feeling a huge sense of relief lately as I have been wrapping up some large projects that have been making me feel they are taking up my time. The garden is about to go in and then I am just going to read library books on the front lawn in the shade.

Winter Days

We have kept ourselves busy and winter is rushing by. We are warming up and the garden is on our minds. Already we are starting to spend hours on end outside and the kids are getting dirty again and needing a bath every single night. We have spent a good part of our winter this year pairing down what we own. We live in a very small house compared to what other people might think appropriate for a family of five. I am coming to understand that I can be happier in my home if I have less stuff. Not only does it give me more time as I don't have to maintain so much but my closets look clean and I feel less overwhelmed. I have been contemplating becoming a minimalist. When I really look at the way we live and have lived we are almost there anyway. We are not big consumers and we don't spend much money on possessions. We rarely buy new clothing for ourselves and if I need to shop for clothes I have taken to the local thrift store because they have some amazing stuff (we can thank the limited number of second hand stores in our wealthy neighborhoods for that). I bought most of our Christmas gifts second hand if they were not homemade and we don't own much stuff in order to survive our close quarters. Recently I have found a couple of articles to be very inspiring to me and they got me started on making hard decisions about some of our possessions in the past few weeks. You can see them here and here. I guess all that I need to do now is except that I am going to be a minimalist and move on forward with it.

As I scroll through these pictures I can see that we already have very carefully chosen the items in our home and most of what is left after my de-cluttering makes my heart sing. You can see that my kids have stayed busy and they are often creating beautiful messes. I took some photos of my kids room. They all share it and today I went through and put all of their clothes into that one dresser. My boy's clothes were in cubes in the small closet and I thought I would have to get rid of a lot to fit it all into one drawer per child. I was pleasantly surprised when almost everything fit with room to spare.

I love it when my kids are helpers and I am trying to relax and just let them do what they want to help. I was busy with something else in the house and they got interested in dishes. When I came into the kitchen I found them on chairs and in their underpants washing away. They did a good job and they soaked the floor.

My boy is into pirates from time to time and he recently decided he was going to build a pirate ship. He rounded up the supplies and cut some of it out. He made the mast all by himself and tried to make the ship. When he found it very hard for his little hands and muscles to cut the cardboard he came to me and asked me to help. He told me what shapes to cut and where to put the tape. Honestly I had no idea what I was building I just followed his requests and when it was all done I was a little shocked to see the perfectly formed pirate ship. He had visualized the ship in space and converted it into two dimensions in his head in order to give me the instructions to cut and tape, and put it into 3D. What a guy.

A Magical Christmas Time

We had a magical Christmas. We did lots of fun things to prepare all season long. We drew pictures, decorated our house, baked a ton of yummy treats, and celebrated Advent. 

My girls were super into stringing cranberries. I was delightfully surprised at my oldest girl who really wanted to do it and proved herself capable. Her little sister enjoyed helping her, she mad a great assistant.

It was a lot of hard work. She just barley turned 4 but I can see such a difference in her when compared to her older brother. She is much more steadfast at using her hands. She has a more patient attitude and seems to have the will to stick with things like this for much longer. I am starting to understand the common saying that girls mature faster than boys. My big boy is still very much absorbed by play and doing what he wants. He was not at all interested in stringing the cranberries with us. That was fine though as he was willing to occupy his hands by drawing Christmas pictures. 

We had so much snow this year at Christmas. It was a Christmas miracle. I think that it really helped it feel so magical. It started snowing about 3 weeks before the Holiday and it just kept right on snowing. We ended up with about 2 feet out there. That was the most I have seen since we moved here. 

Of course we had to go out and make a snowman. We used coal from our fireplace (because we had so much of it from the power outage). I finally understood why all the old fashioned songs and stories of snowmen spoke of using coal. It sticks right on the snow and stays there. It was quite amazing really, and it made perfect sense as the coal is dry and porous. We even dressed him in a real scarf and gave him a carrot for a nose.

The snow was super wet. But it was still so much fun. 

We always have to get up so early for opening gifts. I think it was about 6:30 AM or so. I always love how monstrous the gift pile looks. 

And let the crazy mess begin. We start getting phone calls around 10 AM and we always have to say, "Let us call you back, we haven't opened it yet." It takes us 4 hours to get through all the gifts. It works best if we let the kids go slow and digest a little. 

But by the end even I felt like this one did. Tired. Seriously though, we had a great time and received some great gifts. 

This was my nativity table. We did Advent here as well but I forgot to get any pictures of it. I liked how I could write the verses on the chalkboard wall and draw a picture to go with it. It really helped me feel like my decorations were balanced. Normally they are lopsided, all on the other side of the room as the tree is over there and the fireplace too. It always drove me a little nuts but with this new set up I felt so much better. I am weird like that. 

It was so cold and the ice grew long out of our gutters. I was worried about the roof. 

And, our tree, as always such a delight. I am always a little sad to take it down at the end of the season. Every year I try to make it to Three Kings Day, the 6th of January. Did you know that the 12 days of Christmas are from the 25-January 6th? I have never made it that long because when the New Year rolls I get a serious craving for a fresh start and a clean house. Every year I get impulsive and take it down on New Year's Day, it just feels like the right thing to do. This year our tree was super dry. It was the driest tree we have ever had. It must have had something to do with the drought in our state. I had no choice but to take it down within a week after Christmas. 

That's OK, though as we replaced our Christmas decorations with some nice winter window stars. We hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!