Making a home- Writing love on hearts

 We've lived in our brick rancher for almost 22 years. We moved in during the Fall of 2000, when I was heavily pregnant with Rachael, Emma was a talkative 2 year old, and Jim had a dark head of hair. We had moved from our townhouse in Aurora, CO with the help of family and friends in a Uhaul truck, 6 months earlier. We leased an apartment while we looked for a single family home to buy.

July 2000

Our house wasn't the house of our dreams with a wrap around porch and turn of the century woodwork, but we immediately loved our brick rancher and began to put our stamp on it. Over the years that stamp got bigger. We painted, and updated light fixtures, removed wall paper, removed bushes, and added planting beds. Home ownership gave us the ability to adapt our space to our growing family. We finished the basement, and I can remember painting the walls blue as I listened to Christmas carols and supporting my pregnant belly in anticipation of Megan's arrival. Before refinishing the wood floors, we tore off the living room's wood paneling revealing the fireplace box. Jim and I built a new mantel and trimmed the fireplace after returning from the beach. I was pregnant with Bridget at the time. There were many bedroom swaps and room painting that happened over the years as our family grew. In 2011 we took the wall out between our kitchen and dining room and redid the kitchen top to bottom. I still love our big kitchen drawers, deep sink and peninsula. The biggest change of all was the addition. We found out we were pregnant with Johanna, and we decided new bedrooms and a better traffic pattern for our main floor would make a big difference. 9 years later the office has come in very handy and the circular floor plan makes hosting so much better. Our house has been the place of many smiles, laughs, and love. Lots and lots of love. These physical changes were only a faint shadow compared to the family that was built and is being built here. Every room has markings and memories of them in it, that make it home. Our home.

It makes me smile. I'm so grateful to have had the ability to make so many memories. I'm aware I might lose some memories as I get older, and I do see myself getting much older in this house. But I believe that the feelings will linger well past the memory, those are written on my heart. I'm also confident that they are written on Jim's and the girls' hearts too. I look forward to experiencing waves of joy with  unexpected reminders.

The smell of gardening does that for me. When I weed the planting beds and get a hold of Creeping Charlie, the scent hits me and I let it linger. I am bathed in the love of my Aunt Mickey. It makes me feel content and safe. She spoke of Creeping Charlie with such disdain, that it is ironic to me that I enjoy it so much now. I spent many many weekends of my childhood at Aunt Mickey's tiny bungalow on Longview Drive, just around the bend from my grandparent's house. She was and is one of my favorite people. She had so many skills and was so put together. Proper in diction and manners, and dress. She was a gifted and generous seamstress. She was competent and independent, and could be stern and sometimes scary. She also had a big laugh and loved her family; her love is written on my heart. She was an unmarried woman, successful, modest, fun, and so generous. She suffered a stroke, when I was a young teen and she became dependent on that family she loved so well. We weren't always the best at repaying her for everything, but having the chance to help her get ready in the mornings when she lived with us was a blessing, and witnessing her frustration which she sometimes raged at briefly but most often laughed at her situation, limitation or struggle, was a gift. She was the epitome of grace. Getting a speeding ticket with her stifling laughter next to me in the car after I picked her up from the Senior Center is still an experience I smile over.  Every generation needs an Aunt Mickey. 

A few of our girls have mentioned that they don't want to have children, and part of me feels sad because I know what an absolute blessing children have been in my life, and I want that for them. Then I think of my Great Aunt Mickey and the gift of attention she gave to me, that safety net she was to many, and what a great life she lived. I think of the series of unmarried Great Aunts up and down our genealogy and I am content that each of my girls will take part in the writing on hearts, whether or not they have children, and hopefully some day the scent of some ordinary thing will remind them of home and the love it bears.

Emma's new Apartment

August 2019

With Senior year of college about to begin, Emma's lease was up and she decided that it was time for a new place and new roommates. 4 friends will share a 2 bedroom/ 2 bath apartment but the best part is that it is really close to work and campus and the campus shuttle stops nearby. Her new lease started 2 weeks before her old lease so it gave her some time to get all of her stuff over. 

Moving requires a crew, so Papa, the sisters, and I went up on a Saturday and spent the day working on moving the bigger pieces. We made a few trips from her old to her new apartment and got the big stuff done. The one big thing we weren't moving was a bed. The bed she had been using belonged to Mary Ellen, her old roommate, so Emma was in search of a new bed. 

We grabbed lunch at Panera in-between loads. And although Emma still had many small items to pack and move, we were proud of a hard days work. The search for a bed stayed with me, so I decided to do some online searching and I found a few second hand options. Within a few days I secured one, and Jim and I picked it up and got it loaded into the van. Then on Sunday, the girls (this time including Rachael, who had been working the previous weekend) joined me to meet Emma and deliver her bed.

It didn't take us long to get the bed up the stairs and set up in Emma's room. 

Knowing that she had a good place to sleep let me sleep well that night.

Room Rotations

Sept 2018

Bridget and Johanna have a six year gap between them and a personality chasm. It took a lot of patience for them to live in the same space together. Bridget had been vocally wishing for her own room for over a year. She wasn't obnoxious about it but she did ask "When do you think I can get my own room?" on a pretty regular basis. I had set the expectation that it might be another few years. Then Emma got her apartment and clearly offered her room up, making it available for a big shift in rooms.

It took me a few days to sort through the debris left in Emma's room after she moved out. Some of it was just trash but some of it we added to her storage bins. Bridget helped me with the clearing out and with the clean up.  The paint on the walls had taken a beating so Bridget picked out a pale pink, called Innocence. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend we got busy early and the girls and I painted Emma's old room and turned it into a room for Bridget. Before Jim headed off to work, he did a lot of the heavy lifting and moved the furniture. Megan asked to be done with the loft bed, so we took it apart and set it up for Bridget. We painted Emma's bed white and moved it into Megan's room. Without the storage in the loft bed all of Megan's stuff had to find new places and it was a big rearranging endeavor. There was a lot of packing up and purging that needed to take place for all of them.

Next, with so much of the front shared bedroom being moved, I decided to paint that bedroom as well. It had been 10 years since it had been painted and it was ready. Johanna had a hard time picking a color but agreed to a yellow. I made the suggestion of a butter yellow and Johanna's response was "no butter yellow". She repeated this whenever we discussed painting her room. We went to Sherwin Williams together to look at paint samples and she picked out a really nice yellow. I loved it but immediately told the big girls not to read the name. I didn't want to start the decision process over. She had picked "Butter Up". Luckily she didn't go back on her choice. She was ready to get painting.

  The yellow paint went on and the room shifted to Johanna's room. We finished her room up on Labor Day, with everyone's help. Even Emma pitched in when she was visiting for her birthday. We got Johanna's furniture back in place just in time for bedtime. Our shoulders and arms were exhausted after 3 straight days of painting. It looked great and everyone was so tired that falling asleep the night before the school year starts was easier than usual.

The Great Bed Swap 2016

I feel like we have done this a couple of times before over the years, and this weekends bed swap is ranking up there with the best of them.

There were a number of factors at play this time.
Megan was ready for some personal space.
Was Johanna ready to share a room?
Was Bridget ready for Johanna?
Beds- which ones? where?

We had originally intended to do the swap after Megan's birthday and we began to pick things out and make decisions. We went to Ikea to look at a new storage bed for Rachael, but that trip wound up being too long (I drove to PA to drop off Emma) and everyone was too tired to make a decision. Then my Mom died and the swap took the back burner.

This past weekend we decided to get it done. Jim drove with Rachael to Ikea and they bought her a bed. With the bed in hand, the swap could now begin. The crib would come down and Hanna would move to the bottom bunk in the front room, Bridget moved to the top bunk, the loft bed in Rachael's room would be dismantled and moved to Megan's new room, and Rachael's new bed would be put together.

The bed part of the move went pretty easily. Jim did most of the dismantling and the girls and I held things, assisted and carried things. We then reassembled the beds one by one over the weekend in their new locations. Rachael's didn't get done on Saturday so she slept on her new mattress on the floor.

I was sad to take down the crib, for the last time. It is too old to reuse (doesn't meet new standards) so we can't even sell or donate it. It makes it more bitter sweet. That crib felt like an extravagant expense in 1998, with the drop down side and storage drawer, but it held our 5 little girls safely and I appreciated its features each time.

Johanna was happy to be in the big girl bed and Bridget was happy to be on the top bunk. Bridget was also glad to lay claim to the big desk. Their 1st night together it was getting late in the evening and Jim, Megan and I were still putting together the loft bed. Bridget offered to help Hanna get ready for bed and read her a story. Those two bonded in a new way that night.

Megan revealed in her new room and new space and is looking forward to getting the stuff swapped as well. THEY HAVE SO MUCH STUFF. paper, clothes, toys, stuff. The beds turned out to be the easy part. Megan's stuff is piled in the office and Rachael's stuff is spread out over the whole basement. We still have the bookshelf with the little kid's books and the wardrobe with sheets, the rocking chair, and the changing table all still need to be removed from Megan's new room. I am hoping that pulling everything out will encourage the pruning of what goes back in.

The Great Bed Swap of 2016 is done. Now onto the stuff.

May

We had a cooler than usual May with a good deal of rain with a few incredibly hot days thrown in to remind us summer will come. Time was marching toward the end of school, and the wrapping up of programs. I track down activities and the forms for all of our summer fun. We fill our days with music concerts, dance recital prep, field day fun, scout events, birthday parties, hanging out with friends and school projects including a trip to the state park for Rachael's science experiment on emergency whistle effectiveness.

The many home projects also moved forward. We finally finished painting both the office and Johanna's room. We picked up the base cabinets for the office. I painted and replaced the hardware on them. Jim got a desk for the office, sanded and stained it. We also got the desktop but we still need to put it all together. We moved the old desk into Megan and Bridget's room and rearranged their dressers and toy towers. They now have a ton of floor space on which to play. Hanna's room was finally ready for her to move into. She has been sleeping in her room for a few weeks now and it is beginning to feel settled. Slowly the house is coming together.

Memorial Day rounded out the month with things I value most : faith, family, and remembering the past. Our whole family got up early on our "Monday off" and headed to the cemetery. We each got a bundle of flags and walked the rows of headstones, looking for those who served our country. Each one received a flag aside their grave. The weather was incredibly mild and it didn't take us long before we finished our section. For lunch we went to my parents house for the annual crowning of Mary. This year after we processed and sang Marian hymns, it was Megan's turn to do the crowning. It is always fun to pray and hang out with family. We are so lucky to be able to see them so often. That evening the girls were eager to get to the pool, which had just opened for the summer. Emma, Hanna and I stayed away from the 64 degree water but Rachael, Megs and Bridge all seemed to have a good time swimming with the few other brave souls.

May is an intensely active and vibrant month and already it is gone. Happy June!

PAINT!

I like this part! The new paint colors are on the walls. They will finish painting the walls and trim this week.

mudroom - Watercress (same as kitchen)

mudroom- with the new door installed

Master bedroom  - Passive grey

master

Rachael's room - Belize

Emma's room - Buoyant Blue

Nearing Completion

This roller coaster of home improvement is in it's final cork screws of excitement. The drywall has been put up and the trim is just about done. Marrying the new addition to our 60 year old home has taken some finessing and I am grateful for our skilled contractors.

Rachael's bedroom window

Because this addition is new space and not in our current footprint of daily life I have not been stressed about the progress. Jim and I check in with the crew and add input as needed, but it has felt more like observing a project through our window than an inconvenience. We have our side and they have their side.  The project has created lots of field trips though. We have gone on lighting fixture searches and we have looked through hundreds of paint samples. We narrowed our color choices down to a few per room and painted samples on the wall. The colors have been sent to the painters so that process is over but the fixtures and door hardware decisions are still unmade. Emma and Rachael have had a lot of input and each choose their own wall color. We also told them that they could pick their light fixture and this has created a lot of leg work. Emma wanted a vintage fixture and just today found an old metal fixture that she is going to paint and make her own. Rachael has decided on an antler light fixture, it should be fun.

Emma's closet (and sump pump)

Emma's window

This past week the our side/ their side arrangement changed. They removed the window and brick from Emma's wall to create and install the new 10-lite door, and our protective barrier that was our old back kitchen door has come down and has become a cased in opening. The comfortable arrangement is gone and inconvenience has now encroached. This also means that the end is getting near, we almost have our new space.

mudroom looking out back

mudroom with door opening to new office

Emma's old room blocked off for office door to mudroom

opening made in basement wall to get to the new bedrooms

New back porch and stairs

Today the painters came and began to prime the walls. In just one day the house is completely covered in dust and smells like paint. Next week the carpet goes in and then the finishing touch ups will take place.

Addition continues

Construction has a funny flow, with stops and starts and delays. Construction on our addition progressed tremendously during December and then stopped cold. December saw the framing go up and the roof go on.  They no longer make our current roof shingle and our current roof is 13 years old, so we determined that it would make sense to spend the money now and replace the whole roof. We had to reassess our budget at that point and we decided to cut the bathroom from our master bedroom plans. This gave us a bigger bedroom with his and hers closets and a bigger mudroom. The bathroom would have been a huge plus but hopefully having 2 girls in the basement with alleviate some of the bathroom congestion upstairs.

When they framed the window openings I realized that the mudroom window was too small and we redid all of the upstairs placement of windows. A week or two later when the re-framing and windows were to be put in place I came home from a doctors appointment to discover they had put the wrong windows in the wrong place. They then re-framed them again and installed them.

master bedroom windows reframed and now in the right spot

The electrical and HVAC rough-ins were also done in December but our main power line was still running through the addition waiting for BGE to move it. They installed the siding on the outside leaving one section of soffit open for the power line. We then had a building inspection and it was discovered they had put the windows in to high and the had to lower them again, which meant a siding fix as well. Those windows created lots of fits and starts.

siding and windows are in

looking through his and her closets to the mudroom

the mudroom window and back door

old basement door is now in the closet of the center basement bedroom,
 the crack sealant is on the right side of the picture.

The basement also created some extra work. The new poured basement wall didn't have a good fit to the existing basement corner and it leaked badly into the new basement with every rain. They came back and sealed it up with hydraulic cement. I am glad the rain showed us the weak point before the drywall went in. With the end of December came the end of work. Everything was put on hold until the power supply could be moved, they couldn't do anything with wires running through the space with the occasional dripping off the lines. Work should begin again this week and in the meantime it is fun to be able to walk around in the addition to get a feel for the rooms and envision the finished space.

corner bedroom window

A different kind of addition

Our little precious addition joined our family 2 1/2 weeks ago and since her birth we also started on a different kind of addition. We finalized plans for expanding our living space after a long decision process and the construction began on the same day our little Pumpkin came home from the hospital. Nov. 6th trucks and crew arrived at our house while I was with Johanna in the NICU and Jim was at home with the big sisters. I talked to Jim on the phone and could hear jack-hammering in the background.

The crew jack-hammered and removed our back patio and the stairwells. Then the backhoe excavated 5-6 feet of dirt. The backhoe was just finishing up as the whole family arrived home with baby Johanna. The noise was finished for the day and we had a huge hole where our patio once was and we had a mountain of dirt in the yard.

After the hole was dug the next step was pouring the footing. While they were pouring Jim went out with a St. Joseph figure, Patron Saint of Families and asked the crew to add him to the foundation. They did and made sure he was upright in the concrete. Since the footing they placed wall forms and then a boom truck arrived which had a huge crane that went over the house and they used to pump concrete into the forms.

They put in gravel, and the sump pump system and once it was inspected they then back-filled against the outside wall. Today they removed the mountain of dirt from the backyard. It was been a sporadic coming and going of trucks and machines and workers. Next week the framing begins!