Temporary? Insanity

Our house is old. It sits atop a windy hill and its dark brown paint is faded and peeling. Woodpeckers often peck at it hopefully, their tickety-tap-tapping amusing and infuriating all in one moment. Inside, the sunken living room and rough rock fireplace attest to its year of origin, and the rough walls have recently been stripped of the pastel wallpaper the previous owner favoured. All the walls are eggshell white, countered by the warmth of the wood floors, beams, and peaked ceiling. Rather randomly, the trim around the kitchen window is a bright hot pink.

Last year, this house was a constant source of annoyance. I couldn’t look at it without seeing projects that needed doing, ugliness that needed prettifying, roughness that needed smoothing. No matter how hard I worked the house never looked how I wanted it to, and so the work seemed to be in vain. I yearned to renovate and paint and when the thought of that became overwhelming I clicked my way through online real estate websites, hoping to find my Dream House.

As I poured my heart into hoping, I neglected to use it for doing. The more discontented I became the more I scowled at my house. The nerve of it, being all ugly at me! The nerve of it needing scrubbing and painting and renovating. The nerve of it not being what I had belatedly decided I wanted.

Two and a half months away from my family and my home cured me of my discontent. Now, these battered walls are a joy to me. I am enthralled by the view from our windows, the wooded valley so often wind whipped, the cows in the meadow down far below. Sometimes, there is the distant sound of a train whirring down the tracks on the other side of the valley, and always there is the sky with its constant shifting. Today is a windy day. It is the sort of day that tempts me to throw open the windows and doors and invite the wind in to play. It’s too chilly today and so I yearn for spring.

Yes, our house is battered and old. Yes there is so much in it I would change if I could. But it is also brim full of potential and love. Not unlike me, now I come to think of it. And I find that as I love my home I want it to be more than it is. I want it to be fairly bursting with warmth and care. I even (gasp) am tempted to dust the darn thing. And as I look at myself, and try to love the crazy, neurotic, melodramatic creature that I often am, I smile a little and realize that corny as it may sound, love really is the key. We don’t want to fix what we don’t love. We don’t want to improve that which disgusts us.

So I’m going to love my home, and love my “me”. And soon there will be more to love here than just the potential and the view.

And now begins a project I’ve been meaning to tackle here and that Claira’s brief reprieve from teething is making possible. Introducing another Before and After saga! We start, dear friends, with the upstairs office. The part of the house where I moved all the junk and miscellany from the main floor (which I’ll have to post pictures of SOON, because the pictures that follow are really, really embarrassing). It’s a jumbled mess, covered in dust to boot, and it would be nice if it could be functional again. Heck, it would be nice just to see more than a square foot of carpet…

Neil's desk and bookcases (hidden behind a wall of JUNK).

My desk. My computer is noticeably missing. Hmm...

The filing cabinet side of the room. Hey - we could use those cabinets to FILE things (they're full of junk at the moment).

There's my computer! On an end table, even though I have a desk (there's a short but complicated reason for this).

Once the junk is out, THIS will be the focus of the room.

The Closet.

Tune in tomorrow for the after pictures. Or, hmm…more realistically, check back in a month or two…