One Year In

Day one.

We've been here for a year now. We still don't have a spot to drop our keys or store our shoes. But it's slowly becoming home.

We might not have a useable yard (yet), but we do have a basement you can stand in. 

Progress.

A Year In Our House: A Horror Love Story

A crew dug out the basement. It was supposed to take 3 and a half weeks.

It took six months.

We tore down 8 layers of wallpaper in Gil’s room, then Matthew repaired and skim-coated the plaster walls.

I painted the room the week before Gil was born. I barely fit inside it.

We had a home birth. Before we had a washing machine. (Great way to purge old towels, by the way.)

The basement crew replaced our lead water pipes (from the house to the property line) with copper. The city replaced the rest.

Our backyard and front yard were totally destroyed by the basement reno and the pipe-replacement.

We left them like that.

We painted the living room walls. 

We painted the living room ceiling the wrong colour. (Benjamin Moore’s fault. They gave us a free replacement can. Unfortunately, they didn’t give us free labour. So we still haven’t repainted.)

The electrician down the street put a ceiling fan in the bathroom. 

We returned home from Christmas away to a freezing cold house and a clogged sewer pipe.

Enter: emergency furnace repair. And an emergency plumber.

I tipped the Home Depot appliance delivery guys in candy canes. So much for laundry in August, huh?

A friend of a friend hooked up the laundry tub and washer.

An HVAC crew gave us a working dryer.

We saw mice.

We killed mice.

We tore down a kitchen wall and a new friend helped Matthew rebuild it.

A window installer complained about our difficult old house as he replaced two problem windows.

Shower tile crumbled during window-installation. 

Matthew fixed the tile.

We painted the entryway and installed hooks for our hats and jackets.

We saw more mice.

We hired an exterminator. 

We heard noises in the ceiling.

I saw a tail in the hallway.

Squirrels moved in.

We paid all the money to make the squirrels move out.

The exterminator came back. Because the squirrels ate the mouse poison.

We celebrated Ursula’s third birthday.

During a heat wave, Matthew moved his office out of the attic.

We installed an A/C unit in the attic window.

He still hasn’t moved back upstairs.

We hung art on the wall.

We made a lot of lists.

I cried a little.

We laughed a little.

We promised to be more patient with our home.

(And to maybe make more money. Somehow.)

Here’s to another year in this old house. May we know no rodents, and always have laundry.