Layers

When I painted our dining room two years ago, I didn't know there was a tear in the wall until I took down the curtains and exposed the area beneath the windows. I kept going, though, and painted through it, around it, knowing that we'd address it someday. That someday was last week, when Phillip tried to superglue the paper down and instead the paper fanned out and cracked some more. It's tearing and fanning because it's eight layers thick: decades of floral and horse and who knows what else that no one has bothered to mess with since 1933. Not even me. 

I love this house. I love those eight layers of wallpaper. But all I'm doing and all anyone has done so far in this house has cover up, make pretty, what actually needs redone. The house needs someone who's going to be here a while, who will reconfigure the kitchen, who will scrape the white back to wood, who will finish the basement. 

We were going to be here a while longer until a few months ago when Phillip said the house was feeling too small. It's ideal for one, lovely for two, crowded for three, and over-crowded for four, based on how we use the house. It's small, which means sound travels very well. Which means Phillip can hear most things when he's sleeping during the day, even downstairs. And we want Jack to have his own room, to not feel like a guest when he's here. I want two bathrooms. I also want a front porch and a second story and a dishwasher and four bedrooms and an attached garage. But this is where I get nervous because bigger isn't always better and dream houses aren't always tomorrow houses and we're three/sometimes four but the bulk of our clutter right now is bulky baby equipment and we seem to be rushing now because our realtor told us she wants to put it on the market by May. 

There's a house in Countryside we're interested in. It's a ranch with no front porch, no second story, no fourth bedroom, and not much character. But it's walkable, spacious, updatable, quiet. With appropriate bathrooms, covered patio, sleeping basement, fenced yard. It's not at all what I pictured for our next house, but it's practical. And the next house doesn't have to be the dream house. Or it could become the dream house if I adjust my dream to practicality. 

We could put an offer on the Countryside house. We could finish up our house. We could move in the next few months. Or we could keep working, keep looking, ease the stress. 

Does the stress increase by nature in a house that feels too small? Does the stress increase by nature when you buy a house worth more than double your current home? Does the stress increase by nature when you have a five month old and sometimes a five year old and you and your husband are working full time on different shifts and you're trying to connect and trying to grow and trying to be everything to everyone and feeling like you're failing? 

Wherever we go next, I want to take the time to do it right. If there's wallpaper, I'll strip it. The kitchen, I'll reconfigure it. The floor, I'll restore it. Our next home will be where our kids grow up. It will be a place that Phillip and I choose together for the first time, where we say this is ours together. It feels--it is--big and confusing and exciting. 

My perfectionism isn't helping, but I hope the next owner appreciates that my paintbrush has touched nearly ever inch of this house, that I'm putting it back out into the world with as much love and pride as I have to give. It will shine. 

P.S. So much this: "A Letter to my Husband: The First Year of Parenting" 

Our cottage this Easter morning.

One half of our adorable living room (I'm taking photos as I get done)

Five months in

Paige has discovered Scooter, the large living, breathing being in our home that doesn't look like her mom or dad. She studies him, she grabs for his nose, and, tonight, she squealed at the sight of him catching popcorn Phillip tossed to him.

She's starting to laugh, straining to sit up, bringing her toes oh so close to her mouth. She is such a happy baby. My joy.

As she grows, we're outgrowing our sweet cottage. We love this house, its charm and its surprise, but it's not functional now for how we use it, with Aunt Darla here during the day with Paige, with Jack part-time sharing her room, with Phillip spending his second and third shift weeks downstairs. So we're painting and touching up. We fenced in the backyard, and we're renovating the bathroom. The house is going to be just the way we want it right as we're leaving it.

But we're looking for our next heart's home that we can make our own.

Instead

There are at least four layers of wallpaper on the living room ceiling. Cracks threatening to split it inch their way over, and several bubbles have formed at the curve. I'm not going to touch it.

In an old house, you pick your battles wisely. You decide what you spackle and what you reinforce. Especially if you know you won't grow old in it, you change colors and pretend the new layer will hold.

The bathroom floor is leaking upward. The vinyl tile is somehow swelling--off and on--and spills over a seam when you rise to flush. I don't want to touch it.

I wish I could say better for myself, but fudge is easy and quinoa is hard.

Abode

I've lived on Lakeside for eight months now, enough time to paint the walls and watch kudzu claim the gorge across the street, to get used to the refrigerators' hum and the basement door that I have to kick in through spiderwebs every time. I'll be here until the next step comes.

You've already met the living room. Here is the rest of my little home.

We depend on our surroundings obliquely to embody the moods and ideas we respect and then to remind us of them. We look to our buildings to hold us, like a kind of psychological mould, to a helpful vision of ourselves. We arrange around us material forms which communicate to us what we need--but are at risk of forgetting we need--within. We turn to wallpaper, benches, paintings and streets to staunch the disappearance of our true selves.
--Alain de Botton, from The Architecture of Happiness

Walls: Tranquil Bay. Prints: Mark Rice. Cat: Snickers.

Scooter claims the only rug in the house, and Snickers cozies up to her favorite lamp.

Tree print: Tess Ellis. Broadside: HC Palmer. Goat in the Cusions: Mark Rice (HUGE WEATHER: DATA #14).

Desk: Where the writing sometimes happens. Postcards c/o Diane, Shannon, Roanoke, and Texas.

Walls: Oyster Bisque. Collages: Kerri Ammirata and Corinne Manning. Write, Learn, Read: Beth Rankin. The rest: office, life.

Where visitors sleep.

Doilies, koala hankie: a tribute to Grandma Lentz, all hers.

Snickers' perch above the backyard kudzu.

Two rooms. Chinese animals: a former Chinese student.

Walls: Crushed Cumin.

Home, Where Your Story Begins: c/o Mom. Others: reminders about living.

Peaches. Snickers. Haires. Home.

Room by Room: Living

Scooter

 

 

Snickers

Room by Room: The Outside

Home

Scooter

Out back

I live here now

Acts of happiness today: green paint in more places, hike to the Pacolet River, tired puppy with muddy paws, leftover sandwich from last night, four hours of reading Quiet and Self.

I've been sighing at blue tape and green paint strokes in the kitchen for over a month now. The attached dining area has been finished since before Christmas, but I lost my drive and stopped (not even) mid-way in the kitchen. To my defense, it's incredibly time-consuming, not necessarily a job for a weeknight, and my weekends have been busy and precious. So after four hours of more work, all I have left is the joyous section behind the refrigerator.

Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in that House

When I think back on the places I've lived, I now wonder this: I wonder if the real measure of "home" is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating. Maybe you've never really lived there until you've thrown its broken pieces in the garbage. Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just how to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home.

--Megham Daum, from Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in that House