Therefore, I'm inside today doing something other than running. And with strong willpower, I'm holding back resentment, because I've had incredible runs at this temperature under similar sunshine. Instead I'm jumping into projects. Number one: I'm painting something that really could be put off for a day or two, or even a month.
Upside down like a little fish floating in a bowl is my latest furniture find. I bought a used sofa table from a lady advertising on KSL.com. When I picked it up she said, "I thought about painting it, but the oak grain is too pretty and I don't have time. I'll just go to Four Chairs and buy a new one instead."
Being nice I didn't say, "It's not oak, the table is pine, and I'm going to paint it. It will be incredible when I finish and it won't cost me $600.00." I handed over cash and loaded up my new little adoptee. I brought it home and placed it on the back porch. After a major storm calmed down I plugged in my hubby's "Cadillac" of a sander and went to town, roughing up the finish, while trying to prevent hypothermia. It was the first test of the newly fixed outlet, so ultra exciting! Seeing the power of power in motion almost made me cry. Yesterday I put my jacket and gloves back on and returned to the fresh air freezer for the final hand sanding. Amazingly I finished without frostbite. My son kindly hefted it inside last night where it sat thawing out upside down in its new home.
The first strokes of paint are always the hardest and funnest.
The next are like watching something being born or created or transformed--magical and invigorating!
A close up shows that no matter what a paint brand claims, there is NEVER just one coat coverage. I expect the legs to take 2 to 3 coats. After the legs and sides look perfect I'll turn it upright and paint the top.
Last night I dragged my hubby and our 3-year old grandson out into the cold to hunt down drawer pulls (and get out of the house so I didn't go crazy). Hobby Lobby had exactly what I wanted at 50% off, so I danced a little victory dance. The chunky sofa table that was quickly slipping out of date will look fantastic and refreshed when I'm finished with it.
Did I need a new sofa table? No! But here's the situation: I've barely traveled in time past one of the most horrible seasons of my life to date. I put my house on the market and not had it sell, while hoping to buy one home after another, and watching each of them sell like dominoes falling one at a time before I could purchase them. Translated, that equals a lot of broken dreams. Add in a broken neck (that means pain following neurosurgery and experiencing many unknown limitations I'd never imagined before), and my husband having one knee totally replaced and the other scoped, the past 6 months have been extremely difficult.
Yes, I'm smiling in this July photo, but how do you tell your husband, children and grandchildren that they will be okay if YOU don't smile. The only reassurance I could give them was a smile. The only assurance that I'd survive was to give myself a smile. Many times I sat outside that summer and smiled in order to prevent tears from rolling down my cheeks behind dark shades.
My husband and I had been planning and preparing for a future time when hardships, changes and challenges like this might face us, say, in a decade or two, but never dreamed they'd hit us both in less than three months. Everything we'd felt we SHOULD do to prepare for our aging and retirement we were doing, but the nightmare we hoped we'd never face hit long before we were ready.
I don't relish the idea of putting my house on the market again. I'm afraid of it--as if it might be like opening a very frightening book that I want kept closed forever. Every once in a while I'm tempted to lock myself in the bathroom and cry until I shrivel up and turn into dust from dehydration and blow away, just so I can escape it. I want to run away, as in run, run, run and never stop running. But I can no longer run. I want to hunker down in the basement and pretend I'm not home and no one can find me and I never have to post "For Sale" in my front yard or pack any boxes. I want every good memory made here to be repeated and every bad memory (trying to sell my home during that time period) to evaporate. I don't want even a hint of the disaster and pain and sadness and trials we experienced to resurface.
You see, if my house had sold before my neck broke I would have already packed and moved and unpacked boxes. I never would have ever had to clean this home for a showing with a broken neck while being unable to lift or move anything heavier than a gallon of milk--which by the way, felt very heavy back then. I did everything, EVERYTHING, in pain from the moment I got out of bed in the morning until I fell asleep and was totally unconscious at night. And still, to this day, I do everything in a degree (thankfully lesser now) of pain. As you can guess, I can't even begin to paint a picture of that situation and time that would do it justice--or even hint of how terrible and hard it was. It still brings tears to my eyes and I have to stop thinking about it to halt a flood of sadness and unshed tears.
If the house had sold we never again would have shoveled and plowed after a winter storm, or hauled a trailer loaded with yard clippings from our ten-thousand shrubs as we prepared for winter. We'd never have to mow and trim and fertilize the lawn again and would have sold the 4-wheelers (one has a snowplow attachment). We would have sold or given away all the other miscellaneous yard care stuff filling our garage, and never looked back.
But here we are with trying to sell our home on our minds again. Just to be clear: I insisted the house be taken off the market the day my hubby came home from surgery following his knee replacement. He thought it would be a "walk in the park" to sell the house during his recuperation, and couldn't figure out why I thought it would be difficult. After all, hadn't I done it with grace and ease? Oh, did he ever learn something--and quickly!
With Christmas boxed away now my eyes are inspecting every inch of our living space. My mind is churning out ways to transform every nook into a selling feature. I've read every blog on staging a home and trained myself to notice the places that need help. Oh, please, may they work, and work fast this time!
Enter a sofa table I don't need. (I'll add a finished photo of it when it's finished.) But as I painted I did envision it as a cute little table for my granddaughter to do homework at, or later sit at to apply makeup, so I might not sell it when the house sells. Wish me luck as I venture back into the world of staging and selling my house. I hope I survive the ordeal better this time.
Last year I staged the master bathroom with refreshing towels. I loved this vignette so much that I didn't remove it when the house went off the market. I loved living in the beautiful environment. My day-to-day hand towel looks tired and limp as it hangs from a drawer pull. I'll be glad to stash it away for showings!
Laying in bed for so long kept my (drugged) eyes in one room until I was ready to scream and redo it. Again, I took my sweet hubby shopping (it was the other way around, really) and I bought fabric for curtains. I sewed them despite not having feeling in my right thumb and finger or being able to look down. I fell in love with the finished product. My bedroom is ready for showing again--once I kick the new sofa table out!
I never dreamed that I'd refinish my wood floors, especially only 4 months after breaking my neck. It was HARD work, and well worth it. The task helped strengthen atrophied muscles and put me on the road to recovery and restored confidence. Last week I tidied up the shelves and the pantry is good to go again!
Below is a quick before shot of the great room floor leading into the kitchen.
My sweet hubby is seen hobbling in the background as he oversees my son removing the distinctive arches in the great room that I hated before we bought the house nearly 12 years ago. It was a happy day for me when they came down, and a vital step to take before I tackled this section of floor.
The new sofa table with be to the left and behind my son when it's finished. In a minute I'll run upstairs to take the "ugly" before photo!
Good news: Yesterday my son found a lost hard drive that he thinks contains all my old files. Yes! I shall not have to hunt my manuscripts down in the garage attic! Now, how to convince him to search the hard drive for me...
Stay tuned for reveals, updates and that promised novel shoved into the open spaces when I'm not staging, cleaning, packing, editing, house hunting, talking with my loan officer or rushing around to prepare my home for showing. Scheduled date to put my home on the market? Umm... 4 - 8 weeks. Exciting, scary, hopeful, and many other things....
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