A Facelift

A little over 3 years ago, we moved into our house. 

My mother-in-law told us that when she saw the house for the first time, she wanted to cry.  And not for happiness.  She couldn’t believe her son would bring his wife to live in this place!

Jeff has spent the last 3 years working vigorously to turn this house into my dream home.  He has done everything himself, from adding on a dining room to raising the kitchen ceiling to building a fort in the back yard.

And slowly but surely, this house has become just perfect for me!

The most recent project was the outside facelift.

Well, back up for a bit… we have needed a new roof ever since we moved in.  Every time we had a big rain, we would need buckets to catch the drips, and Jeff would be up there patching, trying to hold off until we had the money to redo the whole thing.

A couple of months ago, Jonah and Simon came running out of their room in their pajamas, super excited to tell me something.

“Mom! It’s raining!”

“Yes, I know!  It’s raining hard out there, isn’t it?”

“NO!  It’s raining IN OUR ROOM!”

Sure enough… the water was dripping steadily into their room.  I poked at the ceiling where it was wet, and the drywall came crumbling down, along with a puddle of water.

It was time.  We decided to just bite the bullet and pay somebody to do the whole roof for us.  And while we were at it, we would pay somebody to do the outside trim work and paint the whole thing!

The whole transformation took only a few days!  Jeff couldn’t wipe the smile off his face every time he would come home from work and see all the things that had happened while he was gone.  All that work would have taken him months!

I LOVE the way it turned out!   The good thing about starting out with such an awful “before” is that the “after” looks amazing!

My kids laugh at how often I say “What a cute house!” when I drive into the driveway.  And I have spent hours sitting on my porch swing enjoying the lovely spring weather.