Category Archives: Home

Endings and new beginnings

August 4, 2015 6:43 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve moved about quite a bit since I left college.  I’ve gone from apartments to different houses and I always tended to think of the structure as just a space to hang my hat for a while.  But this was to be the place that I could finally settle into and feel comfortable.

It’s been nearly seven years since I bought my house.

The structure was fine and the roof was new and generally it looked like somewhere that I could call home.  But it has always been slightly “off”.  I couldn’t quite bring myself to get totally comfortable in the house.

A few major “imperfections” existed.  The chief imperfection was the carpeting.  As I’d always rented, I never paid much mind to flooring.  “Not my place”, so it really never mattered that much to me.

But looking at my place, “my place”, I could see that it did indeed make a difference.  Even in its most pristine and new state, carpeting, seems drab and shabby.  A cheap floor covering, a compromise material that makes no one happy.  It had to go.

Before that happened however, the great Houston drought of 2011 took hold of my foundation and wrecked it.  I spent quite a bit of money repairing the foundation and the interior re-decoration had to be put on hold.

Finally in 2013 I began a multi-year project to make this house a home and as of this last week the project is now finished.  I have to say that the results were more than I hoped for.

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I am finally beginning to feel that this is the space that I was meant to inhabit.  The house has a more airy and roomier feel.  It’s almost as if the living space is crying out for me to be more creative and proactive.

Thinking about the old carpeting brings to mind a soul sapping morass that was holding me down.  But this, this cries out for me to be more imaginative, more energetic, and more optimistic.

I know it’s ridiculous to ascribe so much to flooring but I think environment can be important in setting your mental mood for success or failure.

Another thing is that I’ve now finished this long-term project.  That in itself makes me feel good but at the same time it leaves a bit of a hole in my long-term plans.  I have some ideas and no doubt this new living space will inspire me think and plan out new challenges.

This has buoyed my spirits quite a lot.  It has been a bit of a challenging year and getting a success like this under my belt really helps a lot.  I just hope that this is the start of a long series of successes.

Posted in: home, life in general, plans, projects

remodeling

July 22, 2014 6:48 AM , Leave a Comment ,
Phase 1 remodeling 2013

Phase 1 remodeling 2013

 

I just started phase 2 of my long-term home remodeling project; the kitchen, laundry, and half bathroom.  Next year it will be the stairs and the second floor.

This house wasn’t a bad buy back in the Fall of 2008 but it also wasn’t exactly what I wanted either. One thing that immediately struck me were the carpets.  The previous owner had put in new carpets to bump up the value of the home to prospective buyers.  I knew from experience how quickly carpets could get dirty and sure enough after a few years they looked terrible.

I was all set to start remodeling in 2011 when the great Texas drought ruined my foundation and all plans had to be put on hold till I got that sorted out.  Call that Phase 0 remodeling.  In many ways that was even harder to take as the repairs took the better part of a month to finish.  Then in 2012 I had to replace the air conditioner.

But I finally got around to doing the first floor last year.  I was extremely pleased with the results but I realized that the linoleum in the kitchen looked terrible next to the new wood floors and it had to go next.  I had several other changes that I not only wanted but needed to make so that this would truly become my home.

It’s not just a matter of making the place look better, but of actually making it more functional and an appealing place to be in.

We often think of houses as inert pieces of the background but in many ways a home is a living breathing entity that needs to have care and maintenance lavished upon it to keep it living and working properly.  It’s not cheap or easy but it is worth it in the long-term.

It’s always a daunting process when the day arrives and the work crew starts working on your home.  Up to that point I don’t think you really realize that people are going to be literally tearing into your living space with hammers and crowbars.

Once the process starts however you feel better and as the old is ripped away and replaced with the new you start getting a sense that things are going to be much better once it’s done.

I can’t wait for the last of the major remodeling projects to be done next year.  I will finally feel that I’m home.

 

Posted in: home, life in general

rain

July 4, 2014 6:45 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The storm comes on.  Steadily approaching the house.  I wait with anticipation.   You can tell when it’s going to be a good one.  Taste it in the air.  Rain, a good hard rain, has an earthy sharp smell.  I don’t need anything more than a whiff of that scent to know that it’s coming.

A steady patter at first.  The best storms build up slowly but surely over time.  I remember one Summer on the Outer banks of North Carolina.  A hurricane was coming in.  A near miss on the clean side of the storm.  Just a little category 1 so I knew I didn’t have much to worry.  I sat in a reclining couch with a glass of ice tea in the glass covered front porch of my grandparents house and just watched the storm roll in from the Atlantic over the next 3 hours.  Watched the waves rise out by the dock and the rain come down in sheets.  Somehow it was soothing watching it all.

The storm intensifies.  Distant thunder.  The old kids trick of counting between the lightning flash and the thunder. 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 miss….  The next time I barely finish 2 Mississippi before the rumble.  Getting closer.  I see in my mind’s eye a Spring afternoon in New Mexico on top of a mountain with the rest of my scouting friends.  In the distance we could see the lightning strikes of a storm hit the ground.  We could track the storm’s progress as the lightning strikes got closer and closer.  We knew we had to hurry down off this bald mountain and find cover before it arrived.

The storm has arrived.  Lightning in its full glory with thunder accompanying it immediately.  The lights flicker on and off nervously.  Finally as a particularly close bolt lands they go totally off.  Lightning itself is purple when it’s up close.  Driving the back roads between College Station and Houston one Saturday morning.  Miles from anywhere.  No choice but to keep driving.  Literally no one around to ask for help or shelter.  Ahead of me a tree next to the road gets hit.  Less than twenty feet away.  My eyes are saturated by the brightness of the lightning bolt.  A purple after glow dances across my field of vision and I have to struggle to stay on the road.  Wonderstruck by how vivid it was. I don’t even remember the boom of the thunder.

The storm abates.  Somewhat sad to see something so mighty patter out into a measly drizzle.  So tame now compared to what it was moments ago.  Walking cross the polo fields of A&M trying to get home.  No car, no ride, no other way to get home but walk in the storm.  The driving rain lashing at my face stings.  It’s pitch black out.  The only light coming from the lightning.  In the distance the lightning makes all sorts of crazy patterns as it dances in the skies.  Thunder making everything shake.  Every inch of me soaked in rain.  Nothing for it but to put my head down and walk on.  As I get to my apartment complex the rain suddenly stops, the skies open up and a small shaft of sun comes through the clouds.  I have to stop and laugh.  All that drama for nothing.  If I’d waited half an hour I could have been dry right now.

 

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”                                      – Macbeth

 

Posted in: home, life in general, outdoors, prose, thought

confusion

June 2, 2014 6:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

When I used to work at an office I would arrive quite early in the morning.  As I would arrive first in the morning I would unlock the office with my copy of the office key.  Sometimes I would try to open the office door with my house key.  Then sometimes when I was getting home I would try to unlock my door with the office key.

They look nothing alike but I caught myself doing that more than once.  I asked a friend in the mental health field what that meant.  She said it may mean that my unconscious was confusing my home life with work and that when I came into work in the mornings that I was equating work with an escape from my home life.

This worried me somewhat as it made me think of why I would be thinking of my home life as some sort of work.  I sat down and considered what I was going through at home and realized that I was challenged in some ways that I didn’t like and that I might consider my home life to be work.

I’m not one of those “live to work” types that bosses dream about.  For me work is something that I do to make a living.  I don’t really consider it a passion of mine.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t hate work and If I commit to do something I will do it as best as I can but honestly I can’t see how some people get overly excited by office work.  It’s not what I consider exciting or fun.

I find that when I don’t enjoy something I tend to equate it with work.  The really surprising thing to me is that I considered work to be an escape.  Was my home life really that bad?  In some ways it was.

I knew it was really bad when I tried to use my house key for my car.

I had to put the office back into its proper category and to return my home life to the category of being my sanctuary away from the problems of life.  That’s when I sat down and began trying to sort out my life and really see what and who was making my life miserable.  My solution was to begin cutting the problem aspects of my life from my home life and devoting my home space as an inviolable place where the troubles of everyday life would not be allowed.

I haven’t had the problem with the keys since that time.

I think that in some sense we all sometimes have confusion with regards to some parts of our lives becoming blurred and meshed together with other parts of our lives.  Sometimes our subconscious will come up with odd and unique ways to let us know that something is wrong.

Posted in: career, habits, home, thought