What I Love About Our New House

Since we're ripping out a LOT of what could be seen in the house (i.e. the wood paneling), one might wonder why we chose that house in the first place.

The thing is, here and there, there were bits of the original character peeking out from behind the 70s decor. Original trim, vents, the staircase, two stained-glass windows, and a whopping total of one original door. I just had to see what lay underneath the paneling.

One of the Stained Glass Windows

Original Banister

The only original door left, also the original trim untouched

An Original Vent

It turns out the original plaster walls covered with (most likely original) peeling wallpaper were hidden behind the updates. They wallpapered the ceilings, which is actually kind of cool. Also, I nearly cried when I saw the original window trim, hacked away in places to make way for that wood paneling. We discovered a hole in the bathroom wall where an original medicine cabinet once stood, as well as a boarded up window, which now leads to the fourth bedroom. A large window in the dining room was covered and turned into built-in-shelves because of the laundry room addition.

The built-in shelves are covering the original window trim

The original trim was trimmed for the wood paneling

A hole in the wall for a medicine cabinet

A boarded up window

I'm going to try my hardest to restore that trim, because the one window and the multiple doorways where it stayed intact are beautiful. I'm also hoping to find some five-panel doors and a front door at the local architectural salvage warehouse to replace the hollow doors that replaced the originals. I'm also hoping to restore the trim around the old dining room window/built-in shelves and create a more era-appropriate built-in.

The house was really dark with all that wood paneling. It's already brightened up since we took it down. The living room will also brighten up once we put a light in there.

I found out the house was a brick house just by looking around the enclosed front porch. The wall of brick was unfortunately painted an ugly tan and brown, but the original columns are still there, untouched. Un-enclosing the front porch will also help a LOT with brightening up the living room, even though it'll be some time before we can do that.

The vinyl and stone facade that covers the house

Painted Brick in the Front Porch

I'm really excited about how it'll look when all the work is done.

House Remodel Journal Part 2

When we bought this house, we knew we’d need to work on it. Before we put in an offer, I had a list of all the work I’d want done on the house. We planned out how to finance said work. But, as is typical, we may have underestimated exactly how much time it all would take. This isn’t HGTV, after all. It’s real life.

I’m a planner. I plan things until I can no longer plan them. I’m not much of a doer. The follow-through is not my strong suit. I live in the theoretical. There are points where this serves me really well—problem solving, planning a remodel. I make very detailed plans, but sometimes my plans don’t take into account my present reality. I am newly a mother of 2, healing from a C-section that I had three days before we closed on our house. My plans involved me doing a large chunk of the work on the house—not exactly realistic. We also currently live with my grandmother, 40 minutes away from our house, which makes meeting contractors and going over to do work tedious.

The Living Room

A pile of wood paneling in one of the bedrooms

We discovered the drop ceiling in one of the bedrooms covered ceiling tiles, yippie!

After tearing out all the plaster in the attic

Instead, my husband has been making the drive five nights a week to work on the house after putting our son down to bed. He spends 2-3 hours at the house—sometimes with help—while I care for our newborn and go to sleep. It’s taken a toll on our relationship. We only see each other for dinner and a few minutes in the morning as he gets ready for work. Juggling the house, two kids, his job, and our relationship has probably been harder on him than me.

Peeling Wallpaper and Original Trim

Living Room's much brighter without paneling

So, where are we currently? Benjamin’s still peeling off the layers of remodels the house has had in its hundred years of existing, and I’m meeting with plumbers and an electrician this week to get quotes on those jobs. We’ve sent a down payment to our A/C contractor and are waiting to schedule that work. Our 22-month-old is adjusting to big-brotherhood pretty well, despite bouts of jealousy. Our newborn is 1 month old and refusing to sleep in his own bed. And Benjamin and I are strangers sharing a bed (with a baby) at my grandmother’s house.

Despite all this, I am hopeful. This is just a short chapter in our lives, after all. I’m going to push to get this house done as soon as possible, so we can move in and reap the benefits that this house seemed to promise us when we bought it. Things we are currently sacrificing, like time together, we’ll be able to have multiplied to us when we are finished.

House Remodel Journal Part 1

We bought a house--a month ago!

It's a brick American Foursquare built in the early 1900s. We actually bought it from the grandson of the family that built it. They immigrated from Poland and built this house to raise their family. His parents were the last to live in it before he inherited it and rented it out. His parents updated it a few times in the 70s, built an addition and inserted a LOT of wood paneling.

This house caught our eye because of the location and size of the house. It is near schools, parks, and restaurants in a town that is very walkable. It's age appealed to me because I love old houses and have been playing with an idea to start my own business restoring old houses and buildings. This seemed like the perfect way to get my feet wet.

We aren't planning on doing anything to the layout of the house, but instead plan on updating the cosmetics--or, more accurately, restoring the cosmetics to reflect it's original beauty.

We are starting with the interior and working our way out. We may not get to the exterior for a few years, but I fully intend to un-enclose the porch and peel off the vinyl siding and fake stone facade to reveal the original brick one day.

Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Attic

Here's the plan:
Remove ALL wood paneling and worn-down carpeting
Install central A/C
Update electrical (we found knob & tube in the attic)
Insulate attic and basement
Refinish attic to make playroom for kids
Finish the rest of the basement for Benjamin's music studio
Fix plaster walls
Restore trimwork
Install new light fixtures in most of the house
Install new flooring
Paint
Move in!

I know it's a bit unrealistic, but I'm hoping to be finished with the interior and move in by our son's second birthday, which is mid-September.

Wish us luck!

A Happiness Project?

A couple weeks ago I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, and although it seems a bit vain to focus on my own happiness, I do like some of the ideas she has.



Rubin focuses on making tangible resolutions to - in essence - be a more pleasant person to be around. She also forces herself to accept her preferences without giving in to the need to feel legitimate (An example she gives is her love of children's literature.) and to make time for enjoyment.

After reading it, I'm feeling motivated to work on my own character.

I am a perpetual critic. Perhaps it's because I like to feel superior to others - no, wait, it definitely is because I like to feel superior to others. It's terrible. I hate it. I've been "working on it" for a while now.

Philippians 2:3 says "Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.

Knowing this, I despise my critical heart. I despise the part of my nature that insists on being self-important. But hating this part of me just isn't good enough. I realize that I need to make tangible efforts in "counting others more significant." Of course, praying for change is just as--if not more--important.

Enter Rubin's "Resolutions Chart," as mentioned in her book. The idea is to write down specific resolutions and measure how you are doing with each resolution every day. I think I will start doing this, and we'll see how it goes. I also like her idea of writing a novel in a month. I might just try that one, too.

My main goal won't be to become happier, per se, but rather to be more intentional in my pursuit of good character.

I'll let you know how it goes.

My Secret Garden Dream

Watching, and then reading The Secret Garden as a kid sparked a desire to create secret garden of my own once I grew up. I love flowers and enjoyed playing in our backyard growing up. I wanted the same experiences for my children. The problem with this desire is that I'm not very good with follow-through. I start things and have a hard time keeping up with them through completion.

I started a vegetable garden in our backyard this year in hopes of being able to live off of our small plot of land a bit. It's a 12x4 raised bed garden that I planted via the Square Foot Gardening method. Unfortunately some of my older seeds didn't take, so only about 75% of the garden yielded anything. I was pretty surprised with myself that after planning it out all winter I actually managed to build and plant it. That's exactly the sort of thing that I would start and give up before any real progress had been made.

My husband owned this house before I met him, and the yard wasn't exactly something he focused on. There's a raised garden bed lining the front and side of our house, and it was overgrown and a bit scary when I came around. I spent a year or two planning out what I'd do with the garden and weeded, trimmed, and planted it last year. We also started utilizing our yard last year, enjoying our make-shift fire pit and playing lawn games with friends.

The thing is, we have all this lawn (that's mostly weeds) that neither of us really like to mow, so (after reading two books) I've decided that I'm going to replace the entire front lawn with a cottage garden. But maintaining a garden is a lot of work. I barely have energy to maintain my vegetable garden. 

I read Eco-yards: Simple Steps to Earth-Friendly Landscapes earlier this year, and I'm sold. The author encourages people to use native plants in their landscapes to encourage healthy eco-systems and help the environment.



I also read The New Low-Maintenance Garden, in which the author argues that filling your yard with hardy plants and architectural elements will allow for more enjoyment and less upkeep.



I like the ideas that both authors present - I desire to have a positive impact on the environment without putting in too much effort. I found a few native plant nurseries in my area and hope to start working on this project in the next few years. Question is, is it an investment that I'm willing to make? We'll see.

My Minimalist Journey: Diet

I grew up on Hamburger Helper and On-Cor dinners with the occasional chicken and rice. I had the typical american diet of packaged foods and minimal vegetables. We weren't very well off, and for a time some of our food came from the church food pantry. My family loved our sweets. Ice cream, Little Debbies, and store-brand chocolate chip cookies filled our cabinets and freezer.

I was not off to the best start.

I believe my parents did their best to give us what they believed to be a well-rounded diet. The canned vegetables and applesauce are a testament to that. I was a picky eater, though.

I didn't know about whole grain bread or the existence of various fruits and vegetables until one time when my parents went away for a week and left my brother and I with a family friend. She stocked the kitchen with foods I'd never seen before, and I liked them. At that point I decided that I would try anything at least once before deciding whether I liked it or not.

Working at McDonald's every night limited my options for dinner in high school. I almost always had a side salad with grilled chicken (believe it or not, you could probably still order that even though it's never been on the menu) and two "pies." My sweet tooth was (and is) still very prevalent.

In college, I lived off of Ramen soup and PB&J.

When I got married, I decided that I would only make our dinners from scratch and that we'd have a salad for dinner at least once a week. I started going through my Pinterest food board that had filled up over four years with hundreds of recipes.

Planner that I am, I laid out every single meal in an excel spreadsheet covering the entire year. I based my grocery lists off of the spreadsheet and continued working through the recipes. I decided to cook three night a week since most recipes were 6 servings (4 for our family, hubby has a big appetite), and we eat dinner with his family every Monday night.

I quickly realized that I was wasting a lot of food. I found recipes that used a portion of what I could get from the store, and I had no idea what to do with the remnants. I also realized that I wouldn't be able to keep it up when we started having kids.

I watched a number of documentaries on Netflix (believe me, there are a TON) on our diet. I'll probably list them in a future post. Two stuck out: Fed Up was the first one I saw and it talked about the unhealthy amounts of sugar we consume, and Forks Over Knives discussed a plant-based diet based off The China Study.



Another documentary discussed the food industry's impact on farmers and how it exploits illegal immigrants (the only people willing to work for such low wages).

I realized that my diet can have a negative or positive impact on the environment and the people working to bring me my food. I decided to stop buying meat mostly to save money but also to force us to eat more vegetables. We still eat meat when it's served to us at our parents' homes or when we're out. I also chose to try to buy with the seasons, getting organic produce based off the dirty dozen list and buying frozen vegetables and fruit in off seasons.

I'm currently working on simplifying my meal plan. I'm starting to put meals on rotation rather than trying something new every night. I've made a broad theme for each night I cook to narrow down ideas and keep it interesting. (If you're wondering: Tuesday is Latin American, Thursday is Western European, and Saturday is Asian) I'm also looking at the ingredients and trying to have some overlap within the week. I'll probably explain my food choices more in-depth in a future post.

I still need to work on cutting out added sugars and wasting less. Since I started a vegetable garden, I started composting this year - that helps.

I have more energy (which those who know me know is a big deal), I don't really want meat much anymore, and I lost all the baby weight by eight months postpartum. It's also easier to feed the baby people food when I can grab almost anything from the cupboard and give it to him. I don't know if this is a permanent change, but I'm happy with it now.

My Minimalist Journey: Possessions

About a month ago, I helped my parents move for the first time in almost 30 years. It was a frustrating experience for me because 30 years of accumulation filled their house, and the new, smaller home would not fit all of their stuff. My father in particular did not want to get rid of anything even though he "did not want to trash the new house" like they had their previous one. I grew up in a hoarder's house, and I could barely think straight while living there.

I had my own problems, though. If anyone asked me what my favorite form of exercise was in high school, my answer would always be shopping.

I loved going to the mall, scanning clearance racks and sales for a good deal. It was the best high my little good-girl self could get.

My closet was relatively small, so I'd go through my stuff and donate a trash bag full of clothes at least twice a year, when switching out seasons.

I was a collector, though. My bedroom had more books than everything else combined. The best shopping sprees were the ones at Borders, Walden Books, or Barnes & Noble. I'm getting excited now just writing about those hauls. I was the proud owner of two copies of my favorite book, Pride & Prejudice, thank-you-very-much (although I lost one copy by lending it out to a friend). I was my friends' library, although I was never really any good at keeping track of who had what. I still took pride in my extensive collection.

My school would have an annual auction and flea market at the end of the year, and in the last hour of the flea market, they gave away bags of stuff for $1. I filled mine up with glassware and knickknacks for my future home. I was prepared for life on my own.

Although I held on loosely to my stuff, I still accumulated quite a bit. I was a retailer's dream consumer.

In college, I heard about human trafficking. It's a cause that I became very passionate about. I looked at my Slavery Footprint and was astounded that I was a part of the problem, but I didn't know what to do about it.

A few years passed, and I had my own place with my husband. We became pregnant with our first child, and I wanted to give him a fresh start. I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo this time last year and promptly got to work.



Kondo's method is pretty straightforward. Pick up everything in your possession (one at a time), and keep it if it brings you joy or discard it if it does not. Useful things, like tools or kitchen utensils can be kept if you actually use them. The joy is found in their practicality. She dives deeper into her method in Spark Joy, which I would highly recommend to anyone drowning in clutter.



I actually went through all of my possessions last year and got rid of quite a lot - donating and selling on craigslist. I read Spark Joy earlier this year and realized that I still had quite a bit that I needed to discard. We had a yard sale and donated what didn't sell.

Now, I think about future purchases for at least a month prior to making them. I don't go shopping for fun, but instead find entertainment in other things, like reading the shelves of books I still own and never got around to reading. When I do make a purchase, I research and try to buy ethically sourced, high quality goods where I can. I shop thrift stores for specific items and don't bring anything home unless I absolutely love it.

I have space to think, and I'm beginning to love my home. Plus, baby-proofing is a whole lot easier without clutter.