Slow Burn…

 I am slowly, but surely, falling in love with our house. It’s been such a long (at times completely demoralizing) process. The road ahead still feels so very long. But all I know is I look around at things beginning to take shape, and I feel myself sinking into a happy place I haven’t been able to find for a very long time. 

For instance, today I walked past my dining table. And my first thought was “I have a working dining table.” My second was “…and I can walk past it!” For those who don’t know my last house, it has good square footage, but is broken up into tiny little spaces, as was the way homes were built at the time (to be able to close off rooms to heat as needed). Even a modest dining table doesn’t fit in the dining room, and when we added French doors to have access to our back yard, we turned the dining room into a makeshift office for me for years. This way a table or desk against the wall didn’t block walking to the back doors. 

When we bought our gaming table, it took up a full 1/3 of the living room because we couldn’t use it effectively in the dining room. When in place, it left about 20 inches of space on either side to squeeze by. For a time I even used it as my desk, and we didn’t get to use it at all as a gaming table. That plus low ceilings and small windows, it always has felt a little oppressive, darker than we’d like, and pokey. It’s been a lot of shifting around and making it work. For 21 years. 

I love my old house for so many reasons, and for a young couple—sans pets or kids—in their 20’s, who mostly went out dancing/partying and dined out, it worked fantastically. But as I grew up, my interests changed. Now I am someone who owns three dogs (and fostered more and wants to do it again), loves to cook and entertain large groups, loves epic gaming…that was not ideal.

Now I have the dining/gaming table in the middle of this beautifully spacious great room. I can walk right by it. LIKE WITHOUT SCOOTCHING. Tall ceilings. Expansive windows letting in so much natural light, I don’t even put on lights until the sun starts to set. I can walk right past my dining table into my kitchen, which has an embarrassment of counter space compared to my not-quite 10X10 kitchen at my old house. I used to have to use my stove as prep space because I had about 2 feet square of counter to prep on that wasn’t taken up by drying rack or necessary small appliances.

I’m sure I will discover limitations here. I am sure I will clutter it up in time. It won’t always be this shiny and new. But I look at it and see a culmination of a design process trying to solve so many “problems” we had in our old house and…it’s beautiful.