My younger sister was the one who liked to play house. She spent hours inside the playhouse our dad built for us, decorating and redecorating and having tea parties with her dolls.
I preferred reading, drawing, painting, and bike riding.
That doesn’t mean I’ve never been interested in playing house, especially when it’s for real. I grew up in a series of new houses built by Dad and decorated by my artistic mother. It’s hard for me not to expect a degree of perfection in my living space.
When I moved into my current house thirteen years ago, my attitude was: Yeah. Good enough. I’ll just cleaned it up and move in. I really didn’t intend to do a big remodel.
Little by little, though, I saw things that needed to be changed or improved. A new washer and dryer. Then it was a new furnace. The walls needed repainting. One year it was a new roof. Another year it was a deck. Then two bathrooms. Finally two years ago I had the kitchen remodeled. That was a big job!
This year I had the carpet replaced with hardwood floors. A smaller job. And yet …
Everything had to be packed away before they could even start. (I spent about a month on that.) The real work began on March 24th and was finished on April 9th. Not bad, especially considering they found a problem under the floor. (See “What Was Hiding under My Carpet.“)
Now I’m unpacking and trying to remember where to put everything.
If you feel like you’re in a rut, you could always remodel.
This remodel of mine went smoothly, thanks to my wonderful contractor and hard-working, skillful installer. But there’s no getting around it, every remodel turns your life upside down for a while.
My garage became a storage space, making it necessary to park down the street under a tree that was shedding pollen and little sticky things.
My driveway became the perfect place to cut and finish the baseboard and base shoe.
The bedroom, dining room, and living room were made off limits to me, so I slept in the guest room downstairs.
Theoretically, I was able to eat and work in the kitchen. But most days the sawing and pounding drove me away.
One day I had breakfast at Chanterelle’s (stir fried veggies and two thick slices of bacon). Another day I had lunch at El Puerto (sopa de albondigas).
Baicha Tea Room sells over 100 varieties of tea
I did my reading and writing at the Baicha Tea Room and Cafe Louvre.
Now the work is finished (except for the unpacking). And the new floors look great! In fact, I’m already beginning to forget how my house looked with wall-to-wall carpeting.
By the way, my dad who built lots of houses, preferred not to do remodels. When you’re working on an old house, too much can go wrong, and … homeowners can be hard to satisfy.
Do you have some good (or bad) remodeling stories? Did you like to play house when you were a kid?
The floors look great! I’m glad, for your sake, it’s done, too. Whew. No more vaccuming, whoohooo!
I have a neat new dustmop. So light-weight in comparison to a vacuum cleaner.
I was going to recommend the Swifer. Hahahahha.
During the remodeling everything is in disarray, much like our lives during some transitions. But we come to the end of the season, and things make sense. The floor looks great. I’ve always been partial to wooden floors. All the best with settling in!
I played house… didn’t everyone? 🙂
I agree. Every time we make a change or improvement, the status quo is thrown into disarray. It happens when we move or change jobs or get married. Even trying to improve our lives with a new diet or exercise program or use of our time requires us to disrupt old habits. Once the change is made, the goal achieved, we can relax and enjoy the situation … until circumstances change or we decide to throw our life into disarray once again. That’s life!
Well said!
Beautiful floors!
Loved playing house when I was small. However, my cousin and I built a lean-to in the woods and made our own shelves, chairs, beds, etc…and brought cast offs from the house…don’t think I’d be fond of a remodel like that these days, but we sure had a blast back then.
Building something yourself is always the most fun.
It looks like the contractors and builders did a great job with the floorboards. They look really good, and I hope they feel great on the feet too 🙂 I’ve never done remodeling apart from the time when the tiles in my rented apartment popped up. I’ve always liked the walls in my place white, and luckily each place I’ve lived in had white walls, never wallpaper or any other colour. Happy packing, and hopefully you find a space for everything once again 🙂
For twenty years while living abroad, we stayed in rented houses or apartments, and the walls were always white. A white wall is so much better than a wall painted or papered in a color your don’t like. Now I’m enjoying color on my walls. It is hard to choose, though, and end up with something you’ll continue to like.
The floors look lovely, Nicki!
I think anything that has to do with buying or remodeling or renovating a house can be stressful. When my husband and I started looking at houses seven years ago, my husband loved the first house we looked at and insisted we buy it. It was being built at the time and nearing completion. I wasn’t so sure. We ended up looking at many more houses, but kept coming back to the first one. To this day, my husband still brags about that fact that he knew it was the perfect house for us right from the get-go and insisted that we buy it.
That’s amazing! Like you, I would have wanted to look at other houses before making a decision. You have to see the options first, then, when you make a choice, you can be sure you made a good one. I do the same thing when I’m shopping for clothes. Congrats to your husband for his confidence and his good eye.
Your house looks wonderful with the new flooring. I prefer hard floor to carpet myself. Lovely work. To answer your questions:
I LOVED to play house when I was a kid. In fact I built houses either outside using bushes for shelter where I brought my dolls or from carboard boxes that I glued to each other to make rooms. I made furniture out of different material. I even made tile out of cardboard that I painted, cut in squares that I glued against the sides of the carboard boxes. I used fabric to cover mini sofas and make curtains. You get the picture.
My husband and I have hired people to remodel part of one of the homes we lived in for a while. But later on we decided to do most of the doable things on our own. My husband is very handy and loves carpentry work. He has done all the flooring in our current home and the painting. And we always do the gardening, including landscaping, on our own.
Now that you mention it, I also remember making furniture for our small dollhouse. I think I spent more time sewing clothes for the dolls, though.
When we were overseas, foreigners like us weren’t able to buy a house, so we rented. At one point, we finally bought a house in the US, lived in it for a while and then rented it out and went back overseas. When we returned, the house was in a shambles. We checked into a motel for a month and got to work on the remodeling. My expertise was painting, sanding, and varnishing. My husband dared to try almost anything. Then for another month or two, we slept in sleeping bags in the basement and carried on with the remodeling. That was my biggest do-it-yourself remodeling job. I’ve mostly hired work done since them.
So glad you enjoy the floors. They look great!
I had a small playhouse when I lived in Bremerton. Only 2 people could fit inside. It had side windows and the door was a series of small panes so the neighborhood boys could torment us. They’d try to lock us in or get inside and keep us out.
Eventually the playhouse decayed since it was hastily built on the base of a playpen, but the memories linger.
Paddy, you have such clear, detailed memories of childhood. I read gift.
The boys must have liked you. Isn’t that why they tormented you?
Your floors are gorgeous, Nicki. I was hoping you’d like them. When I was a kid my dad built a playhouse for us out of leftover materials from a garage he built. I wasn’t the tea-party-and-dolls type but we all had lots of fun times in our private little getaway.
The urge to build a nest is pretty universal, I think. Some neighbors and I made a clubhouse out of an abandoned outhouse we found in the middle of a field. (The hole must have been somewhere else.) Another time we made a camp in the woods, cutting brush and nailing magazine pictures to Douglas firs.
I’m glad the hole was elsewhere, Nicki!
Me too.
The floors look fabulous, Nicki! It’s such a relief when everything is back in order. We we’re forced to do some remodeling a few years ago when a pipe burst.
No, I didn’t like to play house either. I enjoyed being outside running, skating or biking. The winter months, I preferred to read and work puzzles.
Your burst pipe is a reminder that not all remodeling is just for fun and a change. Ugh!
I did roller skate, but I was never very good at it. I have fond memories of jump rope, hopscotch, and outdoor hide-and-seek. Even though I had lots of fun playing outside with the neighbors, I also remember being scolded for reading when I should go out and play.
Gorgeous floors! Yay! My favorite part of moving/ remodeling is the finishing touch — making rooms and gardens look pretty. The packing, unpacking, sledgehammering and mess? Ugh. Merely to be endured until the prettifying era returns.
So far I’ve put the dining room and living room back together. I’m enjoying how clean, neat, and pretty everything looks. I still have to work on the bedroom.
Gorgeous floors, Nicki. Hope that helps you to breathe easy!
I’m more like you than your sister ~ reading, writing, drawing, arts & crafts, and outdoor activities appealed more than playing house. My sister and I did have a doll house my grandfather built that we enjoyed on occasion.
BTW: I just finished reading two books that might interest you:
* When The Emperor Was Divine, Julie Otsuka
* The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter & Sweet, Jamie Ford
Both deal with the Japanese Internment during WWII. The first from the perspective of a Japanese family. The second from the perspective of a young Chinese/American boy in love with a Japanese/American girl.
I was probably too old by the time my dad built that playhouse. A few years earlier, he built a smaller one that my sister and I played with indoors.
Thank you for the recommendations. I have read and enjoyed The Hotel of the Corner of Bitter & Sweet. I’ll put the other one on my wish list. Jamie Ford’s book was especially fun because much of the action took place in Seattle’s Chinatown, a location I know well.
I added an addition as big as the original house once. I spent the summer at the beach (or I would be completely crazy). Did anything go wrong? Lots. First they found a termite infestation. Yikes. Then there were carpenter ants. As soon as they took part of the roof off to connect the addition it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The finished product was gorgeous. I lived there for 3 years before there was a required work move. I still dream about that house. It was my favorite.
Your poor carpenters! Forty days of rain with no roof! But then, I guess carpenters have to work no matter what the weather is. My dad never complained about the weather. Of course, as I said above, he didn’t do remodels.
My favorite house was one we rented in Vanuatu. Wrap-around terraces, a view of two lagoons, papaya trees and banana plants in the yard. That we only lived there for two years is hard for me to believe since I remember it so well.
It sounds wonderful!
It was.
The floor looks wonderful, Nicki! So glad that ordeal is over for you!
I had a dollhouse when I was a kid. But instead of playing with it, I made my own out of paper. I made furniture to stand up on the floors. Had hours of fun doing it.
Not surprised that you started doing crafts at an early age, Linda.
Even though I didn’t play in that playhouse much, I did play with paper dolls a lot, even made my own. A neighbor and I spent many hours playing catalog paper dolls–the dolls who can have everything.