home

so my home is the house i grew up in. i've lived there for almost 30 years (save the few years when i went to university and lived in different dorms or apartments and even then i still had a lot of stuff at the house), but my parents moved out and let me rent it. me and my furry roommates. eventually i want to buy this house that is somewhere in the vicinity of 150 to 200 years old.

i love this house. it's a 2 story cape with an "L" on the back. it does need a lot of tlc but it's home. the archways and many windows, the scary stone and dirt basement, the equally creepy tiny attic with it's threat of spiders and wasps, the creaks and moans of the floors and stairs, they are all so familiar, they lull me to sleep at night (well, not thoughts of the cellar or the attic and the bugs). the floors (which are covered in carpet downstairs) are maple, the upstairs - pumpkin pine, all need to be sanded and refinished. the place needs insulation in many walls and under the downstairs floor, the wallpaper needs stripping, the whole place should be rewired. the whole backroom and garage need to be insulated and sheet rocked. lot of work, i know, but i still love it!

i started on the kitchen, but need to finish painting the lower cabinets, put down the flooring and nail the base boards back in. then it's done. the downstairs hallway is something that called to me, so i've started painting it. it's green, like grass, with odd striations from the way i painted it and i've been wondering if i really like it. i made curtains for the stained glass window and door, they're very kitschey, flowery and donna dewberry-ish, normally not my motif, but they really seem to work in that area. we'll see.

my parents are still moving their stuff out of the house and into their house on damariscotta lake. mum just cleaned out her closet and soon their bed at my house will go, opening up their room for me to rip out plaster walls, re-sheetrock, paint and put down carpet (love the hardwood floors but they are so cold that carpet is needed in that house). then that will become my room. my room right now is the old master bedroom at the front of the house. my parents put a wall in the center of the room to create 2 bedrooms for my sister and myself (we shared a room until i was almost 3 - she was 11). i took the wall down and opened the master bedroom back up, but i want a craft room/office - a place where the sewing machine and the ironing board can stay up all the time, where i have wall space to put the quilt wall, where i can just roll across the floor in my chair to my desk to print out a design for a quilt or doll or whatever. i have the space for this! i have a 3 bedroom house all to myself, no husband, no boyfriend, no children, no human roommates, just me, the cat and the dog. but some of this space is still cluttered with my parents stuff. they downsized to a 2 bedroom ranch with not enough space for all of their stuff, which means it remains in my house until they can decide what to throw or keep.

i'm a patient person (sometimes) and i love this house, so i can wait for the parentals to get rid of their stuff and let me do my thing to that house to really make it mine!