Today I finished up the last little chores at my old house, gathered up all our spare keys, and took home all the towels and fancy soaps and the candy jar from my home that I’m selling, due to close a bit later this week.
That’s a good house, and it was a little sad today, taking my last stuff out. I remember when we first bought it, all the terrible orange sponge painted walls, the pink vertical blinds, the nasty carpet, the lawsuit-waiting-to-happen stairway and deck on top of the roof. The scary dark kitchen.
I remember digging out the clay sewer line to replace it, being hip deep in my front yard with my hat and a variety of shovels.
I remember taking a sledge to the kitchen, learning to make eggs and toast on the barbeque, and discovering it was when the mini-fridge coils touched the gas line, the house power shorted out.
My father taught me how to use a table saw when we built new kitchen cabinets on the back porch. I remember renting a concrete mixer, hauling 20 bags of quick-crete into the yard, mixing it all up, building forms for concrete countertops on top of those newly built cabinets. Most of all, I remember my husband wheeling the first load of concrete into the kitchen - my father and I both stuck our shovels in, stopped, and he looked up at me and said, “Are we really going to do this?”
Yup Pop, we are, and we did. And they turned out beautifully.
I remember painting a random series of horizontal stripes of varying colors and width in the hall bathroom. Not my finest idea.
That’s the house where I learned to change a light fixture, to install blinds, to install doors, to paint and stain and finish, to build with wood, to lay flooring and baseboards. To pick paint colors and lay gravel. To dig long, deep trenches. To snake a drain. To troubleshoot a swamp cooler. To destroy a kitchen and tear down walls. To tape and texture drywall. To hang a microhood and install a dishwasher.
It’s where I learned not all walls are square, not all floors are level, and that there are solutions to both.
Bye-bye, home. I’m going to miss you.








June 23rd, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Great stuff, Kelley. Almost made me feel guilty — almost, but not quite. I’m still a dyed in the wool ‘Call the guy’ guy.
June 24th, 2008 at 8:04 am
Goodbye little house!
June 24th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I check your blogs every morning and this was one of the best so far. Great writing and meaningful for me since I went through many of the same things on a repo I purchased.
Sincerely,
Pete Metzger
Columbus, OH for now – hope to become a resident of Tucson in the future.
June 24th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I agree with Pete, this is one of your finest posts- and that’s saying something!
Teri L
Dayton, OH for now- who also agrees w/ Pete here: hope to become a resident of Tucson in the future.
June 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
They call it sweat equity, but it really turned into something more special. Sweet!
June 24th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Thanks guys. It was a good house, and I hope the new owner loves it as much as we did.
July 4th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Moving’s always such a bittersweet experience. Having Dad around seems to make it all seem so much easier though. I can say that from personal experience — I’ve paid for my dad to fly across the country a couple times to help me move!
Good luck with the new house.