We have been through new normal a couple of times in this family. The first new normal occurred after my husband crashed on his bicycle when we were dating. Fourteen broken bones and one ICU stay later, we had to figure out everything again from his recovery to our relationship to what his eventual new stasis would be. In one way, that was what made his first Ironman so sweet: it was the symbol of complete recovery. The next new normal came when a family member had not one but two bouts of cancer. New normal was adjusting to the threat that it could always come back.
In each of those cases, new normal was shocking and challenging, to say the least. However, there were intense moments of clarity that shone through in those moments and lessons were truly learned. I realized I loved my husband on that drive up to the hospital; I realized that I needed to slow down (again) each time I heard the “CA” word.
Since this past weekend, we have had another new normal. In many ways, it is so less significant than the normals we experienced before. It was also a very positive new normal. And finally, in the day-to-day, it feels so much more tangible. So, what was this new normal? A largely completed house.
Up until we finished re-installing Darryl’s office shelves upstairs and the downstairs reassembly of our dining room, we were still in what I like to call “heavy reno stage”. On Sunday, the downstairs went back together with everything cleaned, dusted and reclaiming its permanent home. On Monday, Darryl finished installing the last edges of flooring in his office and re-installed his closet shelves while I mowed the grass. Later, we sat at the kitchen island after a very late dinner, Darryl with a Glen Cairn glass of bourbon and me with a glass of red wine, and quietly celebrated. It was instantly tangible that we had turned that proverbial corner.
Since then, we’ve talked a lot about how as we keep up the process of finishing the very ends of the flooring, we can begin to filter out tools we don’t need and get them back into the basement or get rid of them altogether. How as we put things into their forever home, we can take our time and get rid of what we don’t need, properly store what we want to keep and eliminate any ongoing noise at home. We talked about never needing to disrupt the downstairs living spaces again and how there are only small, 1-2 day projects left. And we very quietly celebrated. It wasn’t much – a glass of wine and a small measure of bourbon – but it signaled new normal.
Exactly 108 days ago we disassembled the dining room, propping up and laying the dining room table on its side in our fireplace room and storing the two leaves under the buffet. Dining chairs got scattered all over the house (including the basement), and at its peak, there were two sets of sawhorses and 20 stacks of boards – on, below, and around the sawhorses – dominating the dining room. In front of the buffet, four boxes of smaller boards standing vertically blocked access to the buffet. Very carefully 800 of that 1,000 square feet of flooring got installed. At first, it felt like the project was more than we could handle. It took days to tie in the first board to the stair nosing and then to lay the first few rows of boards, making sure the original line was as straight and plumb as we could make it in an imperfect house. After a couple of weekends, only the hallway was done and I was beginning to despair that we would ever finish it. But then the main bedroom flew by in a weekend and the project seemed doable again. My office was another weekend and then this last weekend was the biggest push of them all – our main closet and Darryl’s office.
Now, it just feels good. It’s currently 6:46 a.m. and while my day is just starting, life feels caught up for the first time since we began renovations. More importantly, it feels like we got our lives back. With our weekends restored, it feels like we can now get on to our best life.
Literally, it has been years to get to last night’s moment of quiet conversation and a drink. We talked about that last night. We have done so much to this house, both inside and outside. It’s hard to remember where we even started but it included installing geothermal and solar, re-siding and roofing the house, landscaping the front yard, re-installing gardens, tearing down and reconstructing the woodshed outside, literally moving boulders around the yard and reassembling the compost bins while making it look like a stacked rock foundation. We rebuilt decks, added a tractor shed, took care of downed trees and filled in the tractor-swallowing ditches out front. Inside, it was literally a whole-house renovation, sans the main bathroom. And when I say “whole house”, I mean “gut job”. We have literally removed the drywall in several rooms to improve the insulation, rewired numerous areas, moved doors and walls, added forced air heat upstairs, removed walls, completely remodeled our kitchen and guest bath, installed new ceilings, new doors and new trim and, of course, the hardwood floors. It has been exhausting and I don’t believe I will ever do anything like that again.
Now, we reclaim our lives.
One of the things I’ve looked forward to the most in my early retirement was the ability to make time for us as a couple on the weekends. We had that while we were dating but as we joke now, we once promised ourselves that “life would slow down after the wedding.” A decade later, I am determined to make our lives slow down. In this particular case, my sister is my role model. She proceeded me in retirement by five years and she made a point of generally taking care of everything at home so that on the weekends, she and her husband can go do fun and healthy things. Since they have their own plane, they often fly to Lake Placid or DC for the weekend or go to the local trails around us to hike or bike. They live on Chautauqua Lake so in summer the weekends are always busy with lake-oriented events. But the point is: even though he also has a busy, full-time job, there is time for them as a couple and him as a human. And it’s because she creates it.
That’s what I want to do now. I’ve waited so long to get here and I just want to revel in what this feels like. This weekend, we have a wine tour and tasting on Saturday, which we are both really looking forward to. In the meantime, there are little things I want to do between here and there which means when we leave Saturday morning, we can fully enjoy without a home ownership care in the world. The house will be clean and the yard, if necessary, will be re-mowed. More importantly, I can get these things done without the “crazy cleaning momma” routine that the cats are used to experiencing. Instead, it will just happen. It will happen on the same week that I have exceeded my weekly target by 20% (which is frankly not that hard to do) and I’ll also have time to make good meals AND read a book.
Honestly, this is so much of what I’ve dreamed about and it harkens back to the simple peace I’ve wanted since that yoga nidra class eight years ago. Life can now move forward at pace and that pace can be a much slower one. The craziness, finally, is over. Done. D-U-L-N, done, as my dad would have said. We did it. We powered through when we were exhausted, stressed, demotivated and becoming disinterested. We did it while declining opportunities for happy moments, knowing that this responsibility had to come first. Now, there is so much of life left for us to experience. And in the end, I often feared that I would resent our home when we finally finished because of how much we sacrificed for it. But I don’t. I just love it. (I would never do it again, but I love it.)
A glass of wine and a measure of bourbon. It was a somewhat unremarkable way to mark such a milestone of the completion of years’ worth of renos. Yet, the lowkey celebration was terribly fitting for the moment. All of the renovations were just to get us to this place: a calm, comfortable, safe and soft place that felt like us and functioned well for us and our furry family. Queue on the good times. We will raise a glass!
The Yuppie Homesteader 