Our House

“Our house is a very, very, very fine house…”
 
We lived here over 40 years ago. Now we’re building on the same site. 
 
Isn’t it funny how the road, the adventure, plays out? I won’t pretend that this is easy, or fun. We never pictured our retirement days like this. But it is what it is, and we’ve been drawn here again.
 
For those who don’t know the whole story, this is the surviving portion of the house we tore down last summer. Soon, a 400+ square foot mansion will stand here, an abode for us during the chilly months of basketball season. This week, we breathed new life into the old floor by sanding it with a rented deck sander. It was pretty cool to see the grain come to life after so many years under bad 70s carpet. Our other accomplishment was a nasty, nasty job – tearing out the old insulation under the floor, a subterranean yoga practice.  Not a job for the faint of heart, but necessary.

 
This is tough work, both physically and mentally, and the only saving grace is that we’re in it together. This project has revealed to us, for the first time in our married lives, the incredible planning that goes into building a home. The bureaucratic hoop jumping in the permit system is truly mind boggling, and discouraging much of the time. We had no idea.
 
For months, the sun has beaten down on this land, and this parched hill is tinder dry. But as I set up this picture, a cool rain fell on us. Let it bring a new life into this land as we bring a new life into this old building.
 
“…with two cats in the yard,
life used to be so hard,
now everything is easy ‘cause of you.”