our house
-
the condition: week one.
Two expressions that we use a lot around here these days are: “The condition” (addition) and “The instruction!” (construction, coined by Noah and always said with an exclamation mark, as in, “The instruction is digging!!!” or “Those little boys left their instruction at our house!!!”) Here’s our house on Day One. After we posted that the addition had started, lots of people said, “Wait, you didn’t mention that this was finally happening!” The truth is, we didn’t know it was finally happening until Monday morning at 8:00 am, when the crew arrived. Last fall-ish, we thought we’d finally found a builder, and scheduled him to start the first of the…
-
this is happening today!
-
backyard progress.
I’ve had these photos in the queue for a couple weeks, waiting for a blog post, but David’s been working so hard that they’re are already outdated. Ah well. I’ll show you what I’ve got and next week I’ll post some more! But first, a quick trip down memory lane. We bought this house because we had a vision for our backyard. We hoped the fact that the house was small (1,450 square feet) would give us a good nudge to spend more time outside. In essence, we wanted to make a little homestead, complete with an “outdoor living room” where we could read and play and work and be.…
-
fall back porch.
-
around our house at the end of summer, 2016.
If you’ve been following this blog for awhile you know that I like to do a little house tour every summer, because first of all: it’s fun! And also in order to chronicle the way our home evolves, bit by bit. I forget the little details if I don’t take pictures, and while this is my favorite it’s ever looked, there are memories in each of it’s stages, things that make me smile (and sometimes groan). Mostly things that make me thankful that this is where we wound up putting down roots. We’ve owned a home for three years. Wow. Sometimes I still can’t believe we’ve managed to stick…
-
big kids’ bedroom makeover.
I’m so excited to finally share with you our big June project! Since we realized that we can’t have a second bathroom or a fourth bedroom this year, David asked me, “What’s a smaller change we can make that will help our house feel more livable?” Well, I instantly knew the answer to that: “A bedroom makeover for Judah and Amelie.” I knew they’d be fine with sharing a room awhile longer if they only had more space in their room, and if it was a peaceful, inspiring space that they actually wanted to spend time in. In fact, I’d been secretly plotting out the makeover for months — just…
-
summer garden.
-
house therapy.
If you remember my recent house update (and the update-to-the-update here), you know we’ve been waiting all year to hear back from contractors about our master bedroom addition. Well here we are in June, still waiting away. At this point, we’ve let go of the hope of breaking ground in 2016 and we’re looking towards next year. But by now we’re at peace with that. One of the best ways I know to find contentment in my house is to take a step back and say, “____ is what I really want to change right now, but that’s not possible. So what are one or two things I can change…
-
house update: let’s try this again.
Well, you guys, I wrote the previous blog post this weekend, and then one of my holds came in at the library: Raising Grateful Kids in an Entitled World, by Kristen Welch. I started reading it hoping to find some practical tips to help me teach my children to complain less, but what I didn’t expect was to crack open the book and immediately feel convicted for my own complaining. Reading Kristen Welch’s description of our entitlement culture exposed my own subtle feelings of entitlement, which I’ve been blind to of late. I realize that underneath my so-called “disappointment” with our house process is a belief that I deserve better.…
-
house update: may.
Here’s the front of our house as it currently stands, in all its patchy sadness (the roof looks like it’s plain given up, the yard is sandy, even the plants on the front porch are drooping). At the beginning of the year, I wrote about our Great House Addition plans: to add a Master bedroom/bathroom in 2016, increasing our square footage from 1,470 to nearly 1,900. I know you’re wondering about the progress, and unfortunately I’m here to report that there’s not a whole lot of it. Here are the things we have done in the past year: – Hire someone to draw up building plans – Remove the tree…