A few years before our house burned down, we had completely renovated our house. We took a tiny little house that was stuck in the 70s and welcomed in 2019. We planned on doing the job at some point, it just started off a little different than we planned. I dreamed about everything I would do for 10 years. We were supposed to get our house paid down and save up a little bit to do the project. My emotions/hormones got the better of me, and thus the project started.
As a stay-at-home mom there are days when you just can’t handle another thing. In those moments, you sometimes act rashly and out of character. So one fine spring afternoon while my husband had my oldest son at baseball practice my youngest wanted salsa. It was the good stuff that we bought from the Mexican restaurant that they send home in a Styrofoam cup. Well, it slipped out of his little hands and spilled all over my carpeted kitchen floor. Yes, salsa on my carpeted kitchen floor. (Everything about that sentence is cringe worthy.) It was a terrible mess and that particular day, I couldn’t handle it. The thought of trying to clean up all that salsa from the carpet was just too much. I called my husband and asked him where the utility knife was. In my defense, HE TOLD ME.
I went to the garage and found it. I came back in, moved the refrigerator and cut the salsa spill out of the carpet. Yes, you read that right. I cut a 3 foot square out of the center of my carpet. Somehow that seemed like a better solution to me at the time. Remember, my husband told me where to find the utility knife. So we lived with the hole in the carpet for almost 5 months before anything more happened.
Then there was the second surprise to which my husband came home. I had surgery in July that year and spent a couple of weeks recovering, thus spent a decent amount of time on the couch in the living room. As I laid there staring at the paneled walls, I was about to go crazy with it. One day, I called my dad and asked him to come over and take all the paneling off my living room walls. So he came over with his tools and off it came. I was happier staring at the glue and nail marks everywhere than that fake wood. So when my husband came home, it was too late and we lived with crazy looking torn up walls for 3 months.
(I wish I had more pictures but there were very few saved from the fire.)
Let me rave more about how amazing my husband is! He rolls along with all the crazy to the very best that a calm reserved person can. He’s a gift and I am so thankful that God put our lives together.
So in October, the big job actually started. The first Saturday of October our township has what we affectionately have deemed dumpster day. So the Thursday and Friday before we did our demo. This saved a ton on disposal fees. (I love the community we live in for so many reasons!)
If you have little boys, DEMO day is the BEST! Hand them some tools and let them go live their dreams. Everything you tell them not to do every other day. My dad gave my oldest a pry bar that was almost as big as him. He was in his glory!
And once everything was destroyed and disposed of, we got to go about the fun of decision making and beautification.
I loved our end results and I learned so much. As terrible as it was to watch it all burn, I am still thankful for the experience of making those decisions and learning about the process. It helped prepare me for the quick decisions that needed to be made when it was time to build our new home.
