Making progress
Grania on Sep 18 2009 at 11:27 pm | Filed under: The Journey, home sweet home
It’s been a slow summer as far as getting anywhere with the house. Between the wedding and just generally feeling like crap and wishing the monster that’s got a grip on my left flank would let go because it’s really starting to piss me off, I’ve spent most of my down time either resting and letting my kidney heal when it needs to, or traveling and having fun. All in all, I can’t complain too much, but the grand plans for progress at home sort of ground to a screeching halt.
I did get the new bed, that was a goal for about 2 years before it happened. That was a couple of months ago. I tossed the box springs right away, because the new mattress came with a new steel platform, so even if i went back to the old mattress, the box springs were junk, but I hung onto the old mattress for a while until my body adjusted to the new bed. It took a while, but I’m doing OK with the new bed now, so today, with an assist from Roomie, the old mattress went into the trash. It’s gone, good riddance, creepy mattress that was once my marital bed and was also purchased by my ex-inlaws. YAY.
Also, I’ve been at my company for 15 years now and every five years they give you a catalog to choose a prize from. I chose, and it came, and tonight after dinner, I unboxed my shiny new 1000 watt Cuisinart microwave and put the old dead one in the pile for next weeks trash. I tested it and it boils 1 cup of water in about 2 minutes. That’s about three times faster than the old one. I could get used to this.
More progress: Last weekend I bagged that stack of magazines in my office that I had hopes of going through for the recipes. I hadn’t touched them in 6 months other than to pile on more magazines, so in an effort not to end up like my mother with a basement full of stacks of newspapers that she was going to read someday, I tossed them into the trash pick up this morning. I also went through about 2 months of junk mail and other assorted crap and seriously debulked the layer of junk in my office. There’s still work to do in there, but it’s manageable now.
This weekend, my best friend is taking me up on the offer of some extra furniture that I have, so I’m emptying my property of my mom’s old dining room set, and the old entertainment center that’s in the basement. I’m also having the movers take the 200 pound TV out of my living room and put it in my car so I can take it to the free recycling place next friday with about 4 or 5 old dead computers too. Once that’s out, I can disassemble the huge entertainment center (also marital property) that I hate and is too big for my small living room and get rid of it too. This is also a goal that I’ve had for a couple of years. Mission accomplished (soon!)
This house slowly is turning into MY house and not a house that’s leftover reminder of a bad marriage. Once that behemouth of an entertainment center is gone, I can also tear up the carpeting that needed to be torn up when I moved in here 15 years ago. I’ll have bare, crappy tile floors for a while, but that’s better than the toxic waste of a carpet that’s there now. I should be able to get new flooring in a few months when I get my bonus from work. I’m dreaming about pergo, but we’ll see.
It’s taken a few years, and a lot of help from Roomie, but this place is slowly transforming into the home that I want. It’s not my dream home, and it never will be, but it’s got potential for at least not being an obvious “fixer upper”. I’m working with a mind toward selling it and maybe getting something closer to my dream home. (The next house will have a master bath, a fireplace, and a deck). I have projects lined up that mostly just take work and not a lot of cash. Things like stripping wallpaper, and cabinets, and repainting them, and fixing the plumbing (kitchen), stripping more wallpaper, and tile, and fixing the plumbing again (bathroom), and stripping the bad paneling, patching the walls and repainting (cats room, and living room). It’s mostly just a lot of brute force labor, and I can break the projects down and take my time. As long as there’s progress, it’s all good.
Life is a journey, so is homeownership. If I work toward having a place that I’m proud of, that will contribute a lot to my quality of life and living. I’m probably stuck here in this house for a couple of years until the economy comes back, but until then I can make the place better and more valuable a little bit at a time. That thought gives me a little bit of hope, and I need all the hope I can get right now. I think we all do.
