Seeds

Mom sent seeds from their garden down south. Each delicate seed packet came with instructions and a description of what the plant looked like. Mom's writing on the outside of package matched the tissue paper wrapped around each seed cluster.

This is my first in the ground garden. I don't know that much about plants except that last year Sam and I had a container garden and I have recently watched Life. When I proved that we could grow tomatoes in a red radio flyer wagon last year, I felt confident enough to start brainstorming an in ground garden. After seeing Life it seems plants will grow no matter what. This explains the reappearing weeds in our garden area.

We are not far along on our garden. Not far at all.

But what I have learned is that gardening is much more like a discipline than a project. It requires some peace of mind to put aside everything else everyone else pressing in and just pull up weeds or make sure everyone has enough water. I am not great at this discipline yet. But I am looking forward to peace.

Blue

When Sam and I finally gained possession of the house, we did tons of bleaching. Then we got to buy paint!

Deborah and I hoarded books and folders and cards of paint chips for weeks prior. I think this might have been my favorite part of home renovations: the paint chips. The smooth, not always glossy texture. Colors changed, muted, intensified, just waiting to be selected. Each perfect square means something slightly different than its sister to the left or right.

We went to Home Depot to place our paint order for the entire house at once. 2 hours later we walked away with 2 full carts filled with sturdy gallons of salvation. By standers gawked and wondered who we had hired. "Oh, no. We're teachers; we don't work over the summers (which is a lie- but anywhoo...) we are painting!" Chuckles and well wishes as we threw our body weights against the wobbly carts.

When I wake up in the morning and see the blue kitchen... it was worth it.

There are two blues in our kitchen. Three walls are a translucent robin's egg blue. And the third wall is bright and bold. It was difficult to capture the translucent blue with the camera.

Stoop Garden

Some things came with our estate.

These bleacher/benches that sit outside our front door are an example. They used to be a dull gray. After a quick coat of primer and paint they're ready to greet spring with plants.

We are trying to buy as few decorative plants as possible. We want to save time and money for a vegetable garden. So most of the plants here are from our neighbors or the backyard. We did purchase a few ivy plants and the pansies.

I am hoping that the ivy will wrap its tendrils around the bench. I like the overgrown beauty especially here in an urban area, it's nice to see "too much" green.

Kitchen Painting

One of the projects we did over spring break was painting most of the fake wood in our kitchen. Because we had so many different shades and varieties of the fake wood we went ahead and painted over almost everything with the same colors we used on the walls and cupboards.

We don't have any matching pieces in our kitchen, so painting the various a unifying color has really helped the room feel calm and more grounded.

Changing My Mind

As we got further and further along in our painting projects, and now after the bulk of the initial work is complete, I am still surprised when people say we have a beautiful home.

Recently the plumber was encouraging us that there was no way we could've known something like that was going to happen when we bought the house. "You know those home inspectors. They don't really do a good job."

It took a moment to realize what he was perceiving. "Actually our home inspector gave us the address of another home to purchase." Not to mention the selling realtor asked Donna, "Are they sure they want to buy the house?" Not just once, multiple times.

In some ways it is hard for me to let go of what the house was. Because when I let that go, I let go all the blood, sweat, tears and stench that we worked through. But shouldn't I want to let that go?

I guess I find myself still wanting to say to everyone who comes over, "I know it's not perfect yet! But look at what we had to deal with!" I should probably let that go as well.

Dog Urine

The pungent smell of urine remained in our house even though we had capped pipes, bleached and bleached some more. We began tearing up the tiles in the kitchen. This seems to be where the dog was left to do his business.

We spent 3 days hacking away at the glue forged in Satan's bowels. The glue was stronger than the cheap squares of vinyl it affixed to the subfloor. After feeling like mice on a glue traps for three days we finally declared the kitchen floor conquered! We left for the evening knowing that when we returned in the morning a fresh clean day would be waiting for us. The smells would have time to evaporate and we could walk in to our home without getting a punch in the gut odor greeting.

The next morning we discovered we were wrong.

Plastering our floors with dryer sheets, shoving them in every gap in the walls finally liberated our home from its urine odor captor.


A tangential note regarding the dog:
The dog resembled a large-long-haired-white rat with red eyes. The rat/dog yapped its way around us when we came to see the house. It snarled and chewed Sam's pants. Sam and Donna, our realtor, were so distracted by the four-legged nuisance that they missed the cockroaches on the walls.

Weekend with Dad

During our 27 hours of work Dad and Sam worked on the more technical aspects of home improvements. They capped and vented some pipes, checked on the wiring situations, tore out counter tops and sinks.

I manically scrubbed all the cockroach excrement that I could find. The red bucket pictured above bares the fruit of my labor.

You would think that after the venting of sewer pipes and the all the bleach we used the fecal smell would have been erased. Not so.

Where to Start...

It all started with the down turn in the housing market...
It all started when we walked in to an open house and met our future realtor...
It all started after our 7th bid...
It all started before we killed our thousands upon thousands cockroaches...

It all started when Sam said, "It's just a house." I began sobbing, hysterically pounding the steering wheel. Cursing mixed with blubbering and my hysteria spewed forth.

How could they do this to us?
Banks- stupid banks!
Let us close already!
Sitting on our offer for 4 months!
We're doing you a favor!
No one would want to walk in this house much less buy it!
Sell it to us now before I change my mind!


The blubbering subsided Wednesday evening, Thursday we thought we would close, we didn't. Picked my Dad up from the airport Thursday evening and hoped for a closing on Friday.

By Friday at 2:00 we started fixing up our house! Dad was in town for 40 hours; we worked for 27 of those 40.

He helped us understand what was logical for us to complete over the next month.
He helped us know what to salvage with paint and what to throw away.
He helped us cap the sewer vents leaking insidious vapors
He helped us start