I've had a pretty insanely busy month. We closed on a house, I quit my job, and we went to Chicago for a week. Then, as soon as we got back, I was scrounging up freelance work and painting the living room, kitchen, and dining room of the new house. That took me a week and then some, and I was there until 2 am many nights. About a week later, we started moving in. Though we hired movers for the furniture, the move was its own special kind of hell, and it took us a week to get completely moved out of the rental house we'd lived in since December 2010.
As I finally — finally! — loaded the last of our stuff into my car, I started to get a little sad. I wasn't attached to the house so much as the memories that we created in it. It's the first place Kyle and I picked out together, it's where we lived when we got engaged, and where we lived when we got married. It's where we hosted our first Christmas for both of our families, and countless cookouts, dinner parties, and accidental dance parties with friends. It's where just the two of us had a drunken pots-and-pans jamboree on Kyle's thirty-somethingth birthday, and where I woke up the next morning to find my underwear on the stove. It's where we lived when we loved each other so much we couldn't stand it, and where we lived when we wanted to strangle each other.
Plus, it's just a cool old house. So, I decided to document some of what I will miss, like the old door handles that I'm pretty sure date back to when the house was built in 1913.
The remnants of beautiful wallpaper in the two (tiny) upstairs closets.
The old heating vents.
The sunroom off of the master bedroom I didn't use often enough (or really at all, for anything other than storage, sadly).
The farmhouse sink in the kitchen — a kitchen that was open to the dining room.
And the exposed brick flue, that I know also exists in our new old house. I just need to expose it.
Of course, in addition to the tiny closets, there are other things I won't miss, like the bathroom floor that was impossible to keep clean. No combination of Bon Ami, Mrs. Meyer's, and elbow grease could brighten those once-white tiles.
Speaking of the bathroom, it was a construction site for the last year or so. (And while I'm complaining about the bathroom, I am thrilled that we will have more than one in the new house. Not only will Kyle and I not have to wait for the other to be done in the bathroom every morning, I can have a guest bathroom that I keep clean and nice, and a private bathroom that I will try to keep clean and nice but I know will get trashed with dirty clothes and toothpaste splatters on the mirror from time to time.)
I also won't miss the fact that while the house had central air and heat, the second floor was a swamp in the summer time (requiring a window unit to stay cool at night) and freezing in the winter (so we had to use a space heater on the coldest nights). The old, possibly original, single-paned windows also made for shockingly-high utility bills.
Overall, it was a wonderful place for us to live for two-and-a-half years. I'm glad I was able to snap a few pictures before I left for good, and I'm so excited to make memories, messes, and eventually a couple of babies in the new house.
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