The House

Sunday, June 1, 2008

It has been a long time but it seems like there is a lot going on.

First and foremost, the wedding. Everything seems to flow from that. I am getting more and more excited as the time gets nearer and nearer. Two more weeks and it will be a done deal. I am equally excited that so many people from my family are coming for it. It is going to be fun.

Uncle Nick is leaving on Wednesday (this Wednesday) and taking a week to get here with a few stops along the way. Mary and Dave and John and Dianne are leaving next Thursday as are Karen and Charlie. People are flying, driving. It is all going to be fun and some will be around for a few days, a week, anything in between.

I don't remember being this excited about my own wedding although I probably was. I actually hardly remember anything about my own wedding. Most of the scenes that come to mind are from pictures in the wedding album. That was 40 years ago. A whole different life.

The house. After about seven years, all of the major updates, cleaning up, etc. are done except for the basement and that won't be for a couple of years. I looked up the papers the other day and the lot itself is drawn out and measured on a survey in 1902. Reville St. was known as Queen's Place then but the lot was defined. There is a certificate of occupancy for John and Katherine Loughman issued in 1930. They built the house and that is whom we bought it from in 1977. We moved in in 1978, 30 years ago, also a whole different life.

Because we had no money in 1977, after we had stolen, begged and borrowed to get the $49,000 mortgage, we did almost no work in updating it except we did have the electrician come in and completely rewire it before we even moved in. Every single room in the house had one electrical outlet and one ceiling light. That was it. Even the kitchen.

The walls were covered with the original wallpaper with no sizing. In 1983 Al's mother passed away and there was some money available to us then so we had all of the walls torn down everywhere in the house, insulation installed (there was none except for a few newspapers!) and the news walls were painted an offwhite to go with the offwhite carpet that we laid throughout the entire house except for the kids' rooms where we had color.

In 1985 we redid the kitchen and added a front porch but that was it for a long time.

In 1998 Al withdrew pension and as our divorce decree said that I would get half of it and he realized he would not be able to spend what he did have, he started giving that money to me and I used it to redo the house. New roof, windows, concerete, paint outside were all done before Al passed away and I was happy that he could see what was being done and appreciate it.

Eventually I had every room inside repainted, new curtains, carpet, going from off white in every room to robin's egg blue, lavender, sunshine, lemon, grass, avocado, adobe, etc.

It is amazing to look at all that has been done and realize to do this right, it won't be many years before the rooms should be repainted again. What?

So the house is ready. I guess it is ready for the wedding as well as the rest of my life.