And Wouldn't It Be Nice to Live Together

Today is the 9th anniversary of me closing on my house. I had rented apartments my entire adult life until I bought this house when I was 44 years old. Even though we will be working on it forever, there really is just THAT much stuff to try and fix.

It's just about 1,200 square feet without a basement or air conditioning. It was built in 1950 and it's layout is as simple as can be, which is exactly what I want. I never wanted a house brand new house that looked like every other house and had way too much space to clean.

The above photo was what the dormer room looked like when I first bought the house.

And this photo is the after. I pulled out the brown carpet and painted the old wide wood plank floor that had some lumber yard name stamped on every board a light gray. The next time I repaint the floor, I think I'll use a medium gray, to give it a little more color and definition.

I like to describe our interior design "style" as weirdo, poor person chic (with cats).

We were supposed to get a new roof in early October and the roofers were going to put some sky tubes (like sky lights, but much less expensive) in during that process. It still hasn't happened, and we're hoping they are able to work us in sometime in the next couple of weeks, but at this point, what's another couple of months, right?...Anyway, I'm excited that the sky tubes will give us more natural light and I can use the dormer/reading/spare bedroom as a studio as well.

The above photo was what our living room looked like before we moved in. What you can't see is how grimy the walls looked in person.

One of the first things I did when we moved in was paint the living room. There isn't much natural light and I wanted our living room to feel warm and cozy - hence the camel colored paint I slapped up on the walls.

You can't tell from the above photo, but the old counters in our kitchen had the quaintest cigarette burns about the same color as the cabinets before we replaced them.

Last winter, we finally scraped the popcorn ceiling, replaced the ceiling fans and painted the walls. This winter we hope to finish this phase of the kitchen redo. We hope to retile the floors and replace the appliances and call it good for a little while.

Like I said a couple of weeks ago, we also replaced our toilet to one of those low-flo dealies. Of course, our house being our house, no house project is ever easy.

We found that someone had cut out a piece of the wainscoting to make room for the older, larger tank. So, we're just going to let this sit here glaring at us until we finish the kitchen and can start on the bathroom. After nine years in this wonderful little cottage, I've resigned myself to the fact that it's always something...

Here's to another nine years of "interesting" home improvements and loving our flawed little cottage.