I had a dream.... to one day find an old house and fix it up. I love finding old abandoned items to return back to their glory... that was the basis of the antique business my hub and I were doing right? I figured that one day AFTER my kids were out of our home, I'd find THE house and just go to town fixing it up. When my bestie told us about the property next to hers being for sale a year BEFORE my mental timeline... I figured I'd look to make HER happy because I had no intentions of buying now... but mid way through the walk through I felt the internal "click".. the house felt like home. I may have to blame my mother for that because the layout is similar in front to hers in Half Moon Bay.... but either way... I was on the phone with the bank trying to see if I could afford a second house for a year. I could and I bought the house with my husbands blessing... remodeling a house was something he wanted to do too... He's good with his hands.
Today we're a year into the renovations. We're finally putting the building back together again. We're doing more than we thought we would to start... some things we thought we could put off for a couple of years.. like the roof... and it's turning out that we need to bite the bullet and just do it now. Finances are getting tight and there are days I just have to breathe to not panic. I need the house done by July... maybe October... When I think about what it will look like when it's finished, I find my inner zen... but then I open my eyes and see the open walls and start tallying the budget that is always running in my brain like a stock market ticker and I need to breathe again. I highly recommend Lamaze for anyone in this process.
The hardest part about doing this renovation is the distance between the old and new houses. It's a 90 minute drive to the farm, thus my hub stays at my friends house when he's working there to be able to use the 3 hours he would have done commuting. I can't stay there all the time as my daughter is still home and we have fur babies that need to be taken care of. Thus our already minimal time we have together because of our careers is now almost non existent. I'm not going to lie, it's caused a few arguments. Truly our date nights now consist of going to Lowes and me being on the farm working in the garden while he bangs and swears in the house... I've told him we just need to keep pushing through... the end IS in sight. We just have to get to the end, so that we can move there and be in ONE home, while we do part two of the renovations. It WILL be easier then. Until then... he has to soldier on down there, while I take care of animals, kids and work on getting our current house ready to sell. It's a monstrous project that we will survive but I would not suggest anyone with weaker genes to take on.
I've been working through my head on things to do to help relationship build when this is over... Don't get me wrong, we've done fun things in the past year, like Italy for two weeks... but it's easy to forget those when you're back in the midst of sawdust and paint. I may have to swing a weekend up in Virginia while he's working during the summer... give him a break from traveling in between gigs... maybe head to our favorite salvage place there... or go to the wine country that we visited last year... We both need a bit of peace... but what I think we'll do when we've moved into the farm, this house has sold... and the addition built... is head to Chacala again... where we don't do phones or internet... where we wake up to roosters... and we found peace on our honeymoon... Maybe both make sense... Maybe more... We met in Richmond... a beginning... and our honeymoon was another beginning... and the farm is another beginning...
It'll work out... especially after... when Bill has a barn he can scream in to his hearts content... no HOA complaints... out of his wife's earshot... Focus on all that Bill... we'll get there... it's a short term pain in the ass but our future there will be fabulous... xoxo
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