Renovating Life

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It’s begun!  At 8 yesterday morning the crew arrived to start our much needed home renovations.  Bill and I spent the weekend, scurrying around getting the last of the kitchen items packed up and asking ourselves, “What the hell have we done? Couldn’t we have gotten along just fine with the way things were?”

The answer to the first question is that we’re trying to be practical and do some self-care by making our home more comfortable and safe for us to live in.  The answer to the second question is “yes” and “no.”  Sure we could have let it be and not go through having our house torn up.  As a kid I constantly lived in a construction zone, as my father was an architect and a home builder.  For me the sound of saws and hammers trigger old grumpiness and the victimhood I’ve worked on so hard to eliminate from my life.  Who would want to revisit that?

But on the other hand to do nothing about the hard stone floor in the kitchen would make my back problems worse than they currently are. It’s an uneven surface and both of us have tripped numerous times almost landing on our heads.  We’re having it torn out and are putting in a hardwood floor which will brighten things up and make going barefoot much more comfortable.

In our quest to simplify our lives and get organized we’re also adding built-ins to what we call the sunroom.  On this house built in 1935, it was at one time an outdoor patio just off the kitchen. It was closed in by a former owner. It’s been our mud room, a place to hang coats, and I’ve had odd pieces of furniture in there to house my collection of cookbooks and excess kitchen gadgetry.  But when we’re done it will all be one piece with everything hidden behind cabinet doors with a place for everything … and everything in its place.

We’re also moving the laundry room upstairs from the basement. It will be located in what is currently a small powder room and hallway, just outside of our first-floor bedroom.  I won’t have to lug baskets of laundry up and down stairs any more, which again increases the risk of falling. The stairs are steep and dark.

If it sounds like we’re a bit paranoid about falling, well, we are. Though we’re both in pretty good shape, we’re aging and more aware than ever that a fall could set us back in how we spend the rest of our lives. It was all brought home to us a week ago today when Bill fell in a bathtub/shower in the hotel we were staying in, while visiting Colonial Williamsburg. He got up early, wanting to be ready to hit the road and get back home.  I was just waking up. I heard the crash and found him on his back in the tub. He’d slipped on the sudsy floor.  He hit the faucet and it came off the wall.  He had scrapes and bruises but seemed fine as he got up.  It wasn’t until a few minutes later that pain began developing in his chest and we realized he had bruised or broken ribs.

Off to the emergency room we went for X-rays and meds for the growing pain. Fortunately nothing was broken … only some bad bruising. We both realized he could have been hurt more seriously or could have died.  So yes, we must do this renovation in order to take care of ourselves now. And it isn’t just us aging folks who fall. Since Bill’s unhappy event last week we’ve met other, much younger people who’ve fallen in bathtubs and showers …  dangerous places when you have soap in your eyes.

The midget tub.

The final change will be adding a soaking tub to our master bathroom, which actually is leaving me trembling a bit.  We’ll need to use caution getting in and out. The tub we now have is an adorable claw foot tub built for a midget.  I love a good hot soak on very cold days and the midget tub is too small for me.  The floor in our new tub has a non-skid surface and we’ll have sturdy hand bars on the wall to hang onto as we get up and out of the bath.

I don’t quite understand why most of us are so averse to change. It is the only certain thing in life. For me the new technologies of the day are wondrous yet a pain in the backside to learn. But the seasons change, time marches on, and one day we find ourselves somewhere we never expected to be. We’re always searching for the place where the grass is greenest, where we are happiest, and life is easy.  Sometimes we get it. Sometimes we don’t.

Living a life is very much like renovating a house. In order to get what we want and need, we must take action, risk being wrong, and live uncomfortably while things are being rearranged. I find renovating a home much easier than renovating my mind. In the long run, however, they are both necessary and very much worth the struggle.