We made a minor change in our home layout recently. Wait, that’s a lie. We made what started out to be a minor change in our home layout recently. That’s not quite right either. We made plans to make what started out to be a minor change in our home layout recently. The whole operation snowballed to the point where my dream to star in an HGTV show is now Making a Murderer II.
We were done remodeling our house. Done, I tell you. It had taken more than two years, a period of time where I had on speed-dial an electrician, a plumber, the Pottery Barn store in Corte Madera, and a crane operator. Our dog got so attached to Ben, our general contractor, after five rooms remodeled, she slipped into a depression during a 60-day gap between projects. For the record, I was against this gap. I would have preferred to steam ahead because I’m a get-it-over-with-kinda gal, but Ben quietly and with much restraint reminded me that I’m not the only person who needs work done on her house. Also that he has a life outside of us and our dog.
As we neared the end of 2015, I went into overdrive and was double booking painters, window treatment installations and floor refinishers. I was determined to be done. Every time my husband looked up from Flip or Flop and started a sentence with, “Hey, what do you think about –” I would interrupt him with, “No. But maybe in 2017. If you’re good.” I was really looking forward to a solid 12 months where I could eat ice cream straight out of the carton without having a construction worker right outside the bathroom door. People can be so judgmental.
Theoretically, we did get it done. I was so done, in fact, that I had cleaned and staged each room, and took After pictures. I was compiling a photo book showing all the work we had done to transform this house. The last page was going to be me, wearing not sweats and holding a champagne glass. And then, while I was waiting for my husband to hang a couple pictures in my project room – the coupe de gras – something happened.
My daughter moved out of our top floor and got her own apartment. You could say this set off a domino effect, but I prefer the snowball analogy. The snowball started very small: My daughter’s rooms innocently enough became our rooms again. But when the snowball started rolling, it picked up a lot along its path. Like a new closet where none had been. And a built-in book-nook. Paint samples, arguments about paint samples, rebuilt cabinets, new decisions about wood stain, and arguments about those decisions. It sped through the whole house, picking up a lot of while-we’re-at-its. While we’re at it, let’s get rid of these 1995 ceiling speakers. While we’re at it, let’s relocate the cable lines. While we’re at it, let’s rebuild these old built-in bookshelves that have cut-outs for things we don’t own. The snowball not only picked up new furniture (“Hello! Pottery Barn, Corte Madera! How can I help you?”), it spewed some old furniture out. Right onto MoveLoot.com, where I hope to sell it off without getting murdered by the Craig’s List Killer.
Things were getting complicated very quickly and weren’t we supposed to be done? Did I not make myself clear? What part of We are done did everyone not understand? All this because we lost a person in our household. If someone had moved in, I can’t imagine where our dining room would be right now.
Because our house is about three times as tall as it is wide and deep, repurposing a room meant that my job was to carry things up and down steps. Everything in the study was going up to the top floor, which required carrying 1,300 books up the steepest staircase. It took me about 70 trips. Or was it 50 books in seven trips? I’m not great at estimating. I’m good up to about six and then it may as well be in the hundreds of thousands. If I had to judge based on how sore my thighs were the next morning, I’d say I carried about 150 books upstairs in about 13 trips. But my thighs have been known to be a couple of drama queens.
The remaining work is up to the contractors, who will be back in a big way for the next few months. Then I’ll snap new After pictures, have another bottle of champagne, put out my home reno book, sell all that furniture, and use the money to pay Ben, who is putting his two nieces through college on a These Fitzpatricks are Never Happy Scholarship. And I hear the electrician has a son who would like to go to med school.