J'Espere

    Becoming a parent has meant having to accept certain "situations". Like, one glass of wine with dinner instead of a margarita (apparently babies frown upon hard liquor, or maybe adults do). And when a friend asks you to a movie, you can only imagine a panicked babysitter texting you in the middle of Ryan Gosling removing clothing (don't judge- you know you watch too) to call you home. So you end up staying home a lot more. BUT, and there is a BUT, you become much more in tune with your home. You start really thinking about what it means to be in a home. Equaling a breakthrough.     When I was younger (Oh. My. God. this makes me so sad) my "home" was essentially a crash pad. Trust me, I added things to make it more "homey"- like my fish tank in Greensboro, or posters in Raleigh, or the Carolina gnome that has been mysteriously missing for the last few years. But overall it never really mattered what was happening there because there was so much els...

The above photos are the befores. It was right after we bought the house, before demo began and when we believed this project was not only completely doable but totally going to be worth it. On my optimistic mornings I still believe that but currently I question the rationale, especially as the baby kicks me. I believe her athletic future is great. Anyway, back to the photos. What you have is the way the kitchen looked when we purchased. It's not the original kitchen- it was most likely redone in the 80s when some things were replaced in other parts of the house and then never touched again. But the concept fascinates me. Hopefully you can see that even the ceiling is wallpapered in blue gingham. The second photo is of the sunroom directly off the kitchen and dining room. Why, yes m'am, those ARE real Confederate bonds that are the backs of the shelves! Matt and I would be rolling in cash had the "Great Conflict" come to a different end. Of course if it had I h...

We were in the house, admiring the sheetrocking and the framing of walls to come. I was comfortably in a camping chair in the living room while Matt wandered around, testing things, looking at things, trying to figure out how we were ever going to get ourselves to a point where we move in to this beast. “The water’s back on!” came an excited shout from the upstairs bath along with the sound of running water. “Yay!” I responded, studying paint colors (who knew there could possibly be so many shades of white?) “That’s so exciting!” “What the….?” Was the next statement to come from upstairs, followed by things that I’m not posting on the internet. “What’s going on?” I called. “They didn’t reattach the drain under here!” So all the water was just going into the vanity. This after we were just discussing ways to salvage the upstairs vanity and make it at least sort of decent while waiting for our lotto money to come in. One step forward…how many steps back? When pulling down ...

When Matt and I got married, I just moved into the house he had purchased a couple of years before we even started dating and we went to work on it. The house was really nice; it just needed some serious updating, and for the first year of our marriage we painted and rearranged things and it was great. When we decided we were ready to move we did a lot more, then placed the house on the market and sold it. I think that the pride we took in fixing up our first home together and then selling it took over a bit, and we started looking for something different. I am always on the lookout for “something different”. It’s probably genetic, but I tend to look at old houses and imagine what they could be if someone were willing to throw, oh, I don’t know, half a million dollars towards it. I grew up in a restored home and know how much fun it is (even amongst the work) to live in something that has a story. Don’t think for a second we picked up a Preservation NC house (but if you’...