Category Archives: Home Restoration

White Spaces

25 Tuesday Jan 2011

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Writing

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Painting a room is much like writing my everyday life on this sliver of white space; I’m finished only when I’m willing to walk away from it.

Usually it’s because I’m satisfied with the result.  But when not, I’ve learned to leave well enough alone — that is, until I know how to improve upon it.

Downstairs in my living room, I lived with a smudged and streaked ceiling for three years.  After three failed attempts at getting it right, I realized I didn’t possess the skills to make it better.   So I lived with it, looking up at it ever so often, as if wishing upon a star.

A few weeks ago I knew it was time to try again.  I had just finished the dining room and had spent the last seven months painting for others.  So, with my husband’s help, I emptied the room of all its furnishings and spread drops cloths all over the floor.  And painting quickly, with a very wet roller cover, I covered the ceiling with paint and smoothed out the lines, trying not to look back on what I had just finished.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s painting or writing — it’s hard to move forward without a backwards glance, and not get caught up in fine-tuning what’s not ready for finishing touches.  As it dries, a freshly painted ceiling will appear streaky when it’s not; and when I give in to temptation to roll-over those phantom streaks, I end up making streaks where there were none.

When I write, if I don’t continue to dash forward on my thoughts —  instead editing away on what’s all ready there —  I not only get derailed but often eliminate what ultimately could be an important thread.  But it’s hard, so very hard to keep moving across this digital page, to see where my thoughts will take me, to encounter emptiness and white space.

I don’t have white spaces in my house.   Unless one counts woodwork.  Bathroom tile.  And crisply painted white ceilings.

The Easy and Hard Side of Amazing

12 Friday Nov 2010

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home

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October 2010

Sometimes I wonder if Sis and I would have taken on her home renovation had we known what we were getting into.

March 2010

Looking back, it was good not to know — ’cause once Sis made up her mind, we never looked back.  And now — long after the construction dust has settled and a week after the final coat of soft white exterior paint has begun to cure —  I shake my head in wonder at what two determined sisters with a dream can do.

Of course, the best part of our adventure is that we didn’t go it alone.  We had family — lots and lots of family — some sharing skills we didn’t possess, while others met everyday needs so that Sis and I could concentrate on the house.  Then we had a handful of great contractors — some who came when they said they would and others who just proved themselves a handful, by almost never showing up when they said they would.

Then there was that one comical contractor that fell somewhere in-between — a wood floor refinishing crew who arrived on schedule — and after driving over sixty miles to get there, took one look at the floors and tried to quit on the spot.  Thank God their boss responded to their groans by giving them a “can-do” pep talk  that I quickly followed with a dose of motherly encouragement.  And while they unloaded their sanding equipment, I shored up support by getting Sis on the phone during her busiest day of the week — so they could hear firsthand how happy she would be with WHATEVER improvement they could make.

I think it was this attitude along with Sis’s easy going nature — and perhaps her childlike faith in the goodness of others — that allowed her renovation to come together so beautifully.  She was married to so very little; her “gotta-haves” so very few.  In Sis’s mind, if something needed to change, then something needed to change.  What good was it to belabor the point?  And if we blew the budget bank in one area, she’d make withdrawals in another.

It was after the wood floor contractors were finished that I first heard my sister speak the word she has used SO many times since to describe her new home:  AMAZING.  I wish photos did it justice.  But we and others who love my sister know what she began with and what she now has:  a long list of new this and that, from her amazing new roof to amazing energy-efficient windows and doors to those amazing newly refinished wood floors.

And now, in spite of the joy I had working alongside my sister, it feels mighty good to be standing on this side of our six-month labor of love.  Yet as I ponder this point, I can’t say for sure whether I’m standing on the easy or hard side of amazing.  Because I’ve always found it easier to begin a project and harder to finish — the three small inside tasks blocking me from the finish line don’t lie.  And as I sleep easier these days, I still find it hard to believe that we (and our supporting cast) actually pulled this off.

My sister’s chorus of AMAZING proves my Lenten anthem right:  It is no better to be safe than sorry. For when we  forget  to play it safe and blindly rush into a maze of grace, we learn there is no room in the inn for Sorry.   There ‘s only room for love.  And with love being just another name for grace, surely it’s no coincidence that Amazing happens to be Grace’s first name.

Here I Am

29 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by in Home Restoration, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors, Writing

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How is it that none of the month’s joys or sorrow have anchored the days?

So much has happened.  Engagement announcements, baby showers, my 55th birthday and last week’s unexpected short getaway to San Antonio.  And then there have been all the many mini-dramas and comedies which fill everyday life.  And though I touch upon it all in my off-line journal, it’s only here that I really work to get underneath the surface events — to explore and name my deepest feelings of the moment.

So its unfortunate (for me) that I have not written here this month.  Mostly, I have been uninspired to write here.  In part, the thought of trying to write beautiful sentences has exhausted me.  And if I’m being honest, maybe I just wanted to have a good pout — what my younger sister likes to call, the Pappas Pout —  where one goes off to sulk alone in a bedroom, after slamming a few doors to ensure everyone and the neighbors too, know that you’re mad and sad.

But today, as I sat in my favorite living room chair after writing three morning pages, I began to think that maybe I should just sit down and write a few lines of everyday sentences in my blog  — and not worry over making them their Sunday Best.

So.  Here I am.  And just writing these three little words — here I am — reminds me that the prophet Isaiah also spoke these words to God before God set his charred lips loose to say a few words on His behalf.

So what is it that causes me to sulk rather than write?  I can only point to my Aunt Jo’s death.  It doesn’t help to tell myself that she’s in a better place.  And all of this is mixed up with my own mortality, of course, as that older generation ahead of me falls one by one, like a row of dominoes, each one falling closer and closer to me.

But yesterday, I realized that this particular vintage of my favorite month is almost used up.  And on the most important level — the one which has me taking notice of glimpses of Reality —  the month has unfolded its goodness and truth and beauty without my notice.

I am sorry to have missed out on the the miracle of cool crisp nights and lovely fall foliage and the particular way the autumn sun causes my living room to glow and shimmer for a few minutes each October day.

This weekend, I will be in the cool sunshine days dipping a paintbrush into a bucket of paint at my sister’s house.  The plan is to finish what she and I began last April —  the restoration of her homestead inheritance.  And knowing myself as I do, knowing that I grieve best with a paintbrush in my hand, my plan is to finish with this grieving of Aunt Jo’s death.  Because I don’t wish to miss out on the deepest and best part of everyday life.

October, here I am.