If These Walls Could Talk

We took possession of our very own home today. After weeks of haggling, stress over closing escow, some hives and tears..we signed the paperwork yesterday and it recorded today. Boy do we have a lot of work to do in the next couple weeks! We bought a house with a lot of great potential. In the next couple weeks we will reconfigure half the walls, redo all the electrical, repipe, replace all the windows, install central heat and airconditioning, remodel at least one bathroom, refinish floors and paint. We are hoping our budget supports remodeling the kitchen as well. Apparently, the kitchen is modular. It had a false ceiling and removable counters and cabinets.

Within an hour of getting the keys, we had a pizza picnic ina the living room. I opened a good bottle of wine, and Fillip and his dad began opening walls. Because they are mostly false walls, they came down quite easily. The house was full of great bangs, rumblings, piles of debris and a cloud of dust, but actually looked much better. We could see from one room to another and start to see our vision coming true. We were pretty surprised and very amused to find messages carved into the walls. The middle of the house felt like no man's land- too narrow to be a room, but wide to be a hallway. The hanging chandlier reminded me of a 19th century saloon. Well, someone else saw it differently and we found "Welcome to Hal's Galley" carved into the header beam along with other things I couldn't make out. Given the dark wood paneling, I can imagine sitting in there, rocking back and forth and hearing those old walls creak. I bet those walls have got some great stories.