How to make a house a home

Cole and I are taking a little afternoon break.  He is writing an essay, he says it is called “what not to do at a stoplight”.  That will sound familiar to those of you who watch Spongebob.

As I was sewing along a few minutes ago I started thinking about how we have been trying for the last three years to make our house our home.  When we bought this house, we had it narrowed down to 2 different houses in two different parts of town.  Both houses were the same price, older colonials, one a little older than the other.  The other house was smaller, only three bedrooms and pretty much needed an instant addtition.  It had already had an addition put on the back that had eaten up most of the yard.  Still, we were pretty sure we were going to put an offer on it.  It was in a part of town that we really thought was our first choice and this house offered us a chance to get our foot in the door of a very nice old neighborhood.  I remember being up late one night (which was probably 8pm or so but felt like midnight to my pregnant body) looking over the pictures of the house we are now in.  The yard was/is perfect.  Extra big with lots of large trees.  The house was so not our style.  Every single room was wrong, stuck in a 60’s time warp.  But as I slowly looked at each picture I could see the possibilities.  I knew the whole house had hardwood floors under all the nasty carpet.  I loved the screened porch and the buillt-ins next to the fireplace.  I loved the large bedrooms with large closets.  The fact that there was a bike trail at the end of the street that winds along a major river was a huge bonus but I had no idea how much at the time.  And the good thing was that it was big enough for us, at least for a while.  It was close to a library, community center, community pool, historic downtown, and elementary school.   I called Andy over and told him that I thought we may need to re-think our choice.  We did, and here we are.  A million little projects later our house is slowly, very very slowly, becoming what we want it to be.  This morning I met with another architect to talk about our ideas.  I am so ready to wrap up the house projects and just enjoy living in a house that is my style, comfortable for all of us, and fun to live in.  I don’t want a big house, I am not a McMansion kind of girl.  But I do insist on charm and character.  And function.  It has to function well.  Nothing bugs me more than rooms that no one uses.  We use every inch of this house, and that’s the way it is supposed to be.  So as we plan out the next phase of our remodeling we move another step closer to this house truly becoming our home.