Of Visionaries and Other Things Like Construction

It's hard to believe that we bought The Pokeaway five years ago. .  I no longer turn the corner to our street and feel like a visitor.  Every once in awhile, I think of where we were five years ago, and marvel at the journey.  Last week, I put these flowers out along with my sign.  Some friends who came to visit said it looked like a Pinterest cover. And even though the kitchen is not complete, I agreed.  When I think back...I envision all it has taken to get to this stage, and I know there are many more stages yet to come.....  (If you were to pull back from the frame you would see that although we now sport cupboards in the kitchen, I have a psuedo-counter and still use a black bucket for my "kitchen sink".)

A long-time friend of mine gave me this sign as a house warming gift when they came to look at The Pokeaway shortly after we began this adventure.  I have kept it front and center through each of the stages of our re-build.  It has been a symbol to me of making this house into a home.

 The first picture I took of it, may look like there is a curtain there, but it is actually the plastic cover that went on to the outside of the house before the siding. There is no drywall in this picture.  There are no window frames.  Even the landscape has changed.  Although we still have the willow tree, we have different fencing and several gardens where there is green space in this picture.

I took this one a few years later.  It was before there was cupboards and window framing, although you can see the wood is under the sign, ready to go!

It definitely has been an eventful five years.  I still find it amusing to look back and remember what The Pokeaway was and what it is becoming.  For instance, the front door was on the side of the house.

.

 My visionary husband decided it was in the wrong place.  So everything got ripped out.  One day I came to the house and found this view:

It was my lowest point.  I thought "I didn't think it could get any worse.  But I think I was wrong".  It was at this stage, that the sheep made themselves at home.  Sheep poop in my house did not impress me much.

Fast forward to this year...  I am enjoying side garden, where the front door used to be.  The daisies are in bloom.  The roses are growing.  The trellises are in place - although I'm not having much luck getting any plants to climb up the wrought iron.  No Matter.  I enjoy the view every day.

Before we took possession of The Pokeaway, the living room looked like this.  It smelled like stale smoke.  The carpet was worn through in places.  The renters left the lamp (bless their little pointed heads) for us to enjoy throw away along with the five bins of other garbage they left behind.

Soon, the living room was transformed to this:

We carted away so much drywall, insulation, wood, brick, etc. etc. etc.  I thought The Pokeaway would never finish giving up garbage.  




And then it became this:
I called it my see-through house.  I could look from the front door straight to the back door, except we had no back door or front door to open and close.

True confession:  I absolutely believed that I would be living in the see-through  house for a few years.  And then the miracle of the dry wall happened.  We found a way to swing it!  I literally held myself back from bursting into tears when I saw the drywaller spreading that beautiful mud all around and sanding it down to a smooth finish.  I briefly considered writing a country music song called
"DRY WALL MAKES ME WEEP".

And then we painted and the living room became  this:  

Hanging the pictures became a harbinger for making our little house feel like a home.  And how can I forget that fabulous flooring?  I didn't bother too much with vacuuming.  Or washing the floor.  NOTHing really helped it look any better.  At one point, we thought we might re-finish it.  In the end, we took it to my husband's office and I have to say, it looks super cool there.  

I LOVE my hardwood floor which we were able get installed just three years after we moved in.

I think I appreciate it that much more because we had to live with lousy flooring for quite a while.    Eventually, the lousy hardwood  morphed into straight ship lap.  That was fun.
|
 We got many visitors up through the slats in the floor. I was forever chanting my husband's name  as in:  "HONEYYYYYYY"...."THERE's a SLUG" /"There's a Huge BUG" / "There's a massive SPIDER".../COME and get it!!!!!

Oh and see the heater?  We had also had no heating system for a long time.
We used the oil heaters (thus making the Utilities Company C.E.O. VERYYYY RICH) and shivered our way through a number of extremely cold days.

It's because my visionary husband wanted to be true to the age of the original house and get these:

We found them on Ebay and it took the excavator and four grown men to get them into the house because they were so heavy.
I have to say they were worth the trouble though.  Having hot-water heat is so lovely.  Warm.  Cozy and quiet.  And not so much dust!

And when we got flooring, the living room suddenly became a cozy little hideaway.

 This was the original kitchen.  I thought I could make it work, when we talked about it at first.  But then my visionary husband decided it all had to go. So everything was ripped out and thrown away.  Good thing too because the mice had eaten through the cord of the fridge and it didn't work.  And the cupboards had quite a few sketchy areas as well.

Once I had a space to work, I tried a few different things to keep myself organized.  It was about this time I realized that I had to stop saying "I'll be so happy when...." because I could be waiting for a while for "WHEN", and that would be a terrible waste of time.  I determined to be happy NOW.  It was a hard lesson, but I believe I have become a better person for it.  I am much more apt to enjoy the moment than to wish for a different day "WHEN"......

We got new appliances eventually too.  I love them.  Every time I press "Chicken Nuggets" setting, or get ice from the fridge, or use my warming drawer, I say a little "Thank you".  I feel completely spoiled.

Last year, we found cupboards.  My visionary husband thought, from the picture I showed him that we could use them and reconfigure them into something workable .  So we spent the summer getting that done.  I can't even begin to express how wonderful it is to have drawers and cupboards to put my things into.  The best part was getting out all the bins from storage and finding the treasures that had been left there until we had a place to put them.

You will notice the sign is still there.  

Of all the rooms we re-did, I think the dining room is my favourite.  If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the dining room is the soul.  Celebrations, and commiserations all take place there. Pancake breakfasts are made that much sweeter by having a dining room in which to share the time with family and friends.  

No matter what stage the dining room was at, I tried to make it inviting. Sometimes, it just required keeping your eyes at a certain level (as in - "Look at this lovely table set for company and away from the flooring and frameless windows!")

Oh, and this was a fun stage - the crawl space had to be jack-hammered out and so we lost all access to the dining room. It required a complicated system of hopping across the slats trying to avoid certain death, while gathering the place settings.  Come to think of it,  as far as eating was concerned, this stage required a lot of take-out.

And then one day,  it was all done, and I got to 'stage' the dining room.  I posted that I was "In Love".  And I was.  I love sitting in the dining room.  It's open, cheery, and inviting.  All at once and in no particular order!

Even the outside has morphed into something that is very manageable.  There were many stages.  There was this:  

And This:

into this:

 and then this year, I realized it looked like this:

and this:

And this:

The back yard has moved from this view:

to this one:  (and I still have the van - it reached 383 289 km this week)

I know that there will be many more changes that will happen as time goes on. 

One of the most recent additions has been changing out my door pulls on the kitchen cupboards.  I am so pleased with the little extra bling it lends.

What a difference between the two types of pulls!

 I can honestly say, that buying and moving to The Pokeaway is one of the hardest things I have ever done. And there are days when I still feel discouraged with the progress that I wish was happening and it isn't.  But at the same time, it only takes a 'look back' exercise like this to remind myself of how far we have come.  As my #2 son says - "The best thing about doing a renovation a little bit at a time, is that you REALLY appreciate each and every step."  And I do.