Where do I Begin?

There is always a beginning. But we usually can’t remember when it was. Being in the second half of the century of my life isn’t it making it any easier to remember. But sometime around this time a year ago, I began to feel frustrated at our load of debt. I looked around and didn’t see any magical ways of getting more money. So I thought “We don’t need this big of a house anymore, let’s fix up the house, sell it, get out of our debt, and downsize to a smaller home.”

My husband should have tied a muzzle around my face and locked me in the basement. Instead he said “Yeah, we could do that.” This is the hazzard of marrying an agreeable fellow. If I’d married someone as cantankerous as I am we’d have argued about it until exhaustion, never come to a conclusion, and I’d still be living in our roomy, if shabby home.

See, I knew that we couldn’t just put our house on the market as is. I had a friend who had done that with their house of a similar age as ours, and a year later it was still sitting. With that as evidence, I began to use the “R” word. Yes, you guessed it, Remodel (hear the organ music in the back ground growing louder? Dut-Dut-Du-u-u-u-u-u-m....with the emphasis on dumb).

I decided there were three deal breakers to our house. First it was birthed in a manufacturing center nearly thirty years ago when people thought orange was a decorator color, that dark wood was appealing, and that as many small boxy rooms as you could fit in a house the better. There was less of the dark cabinetry than when they built it because God sent me real children, not papier mache children who sit tidily on couches with unbroken springs and watch TV all day.

Not that my children didn’t watch too much TV, but they also got exercise jumping on the couches (hence the broken springs) and fighting, which involved pounding down the hall after one another. The fleeing child gets the bright idea to lock themselves in the bathroom. Hence the holes kicked and pounded into the balsa wood doors.

The kitchen cabinet doors and drawers fell apart under those same fists, each gaping hole with its own story. It’s one of those times when less is not more. Less of the dark wood meant more ghetto. And who would take that on? We of course glued the faces of the drawers back on when company was coming over, only to have it fall apart again at the first pull– imagine our “surprise” when that happened to our guests. “They just don’t make cabinets like they used to.....”

The kitchen was deal breaker number one. So that’s where we began our Odessey. An adult son, who personally did more damage than all the other children combined, must have been salving a guilty conscience when he set himself into business building and remodeling homes. He offered to come home and get us started on our project.

This was the best thing we could have done, and set the standard for everything else that was to follow. He convinced us to make choices I would never have conceived of doing. He taught us that the final result required spending a certain amount of money, a hurdle I had never been able to get beyond before.

I thought “When we get out of debt, we’ll remodel.” Or “When we get out of debt we’ll fix that window.” Or “When we get out of debt we’ll go on vacation. See a pattern? Well, since we never did get out of debt, we never remodeled, never fixed the windows and never went on anything but the cheapest vacations (picture tents and backpacks).

My son ripped the kitchen apart down to and including the baseboards. It never looked so good. At first I thought we should be careful in taking down the cupboards, because they were “imperfectly good” and surely there was a needy person out there who would be grateful to have dark walnut stained balsa wood cupboards They were only missing a few drawer fronts, who wouldn’t want that? Okay, besides us. This type of thinking reveals that I’m a slow learner, remind me to tell you the story of the “needy” and our old couch.

But truth be told, it was much too satisfying to claw, hammer and pound those cupboards to oblivion. “Take that!!!! You hideous thing.... and that!!!!” Of course it wouldn’t work to always relieve stress by ripping your cupboards off the walls. But now and then a little “TaWanda!!!!” is a very satisfying thing.

Disclaimer: Remodeling is not for the faint of heart. Don’t try this without first checking with your doctor for signs of high blood pressure, heart failure and insanity. If you don’t have them now, you soon will.

Oh yes. Be sure to tell your husband you love him before you start! You won’t be feeling like it again, for a very long time.

*sigh*

About deal breakers #2 and #3, never fear-- I'll blog on them another day..... in the meantime......

Joy in the Journey

P.S. I'm alive today to tell the tale, so take hope!