I know it sounds ridiculous, but one of my dreams is really coming true...right before my eyes lately. Ever since we moved into this house, and actually in the previous two houses we lived in in Arizona, I've wanted my own desk area. I call it "my headquarters" and "mom's central command." You mamas out there know...somewhere to keep the bills, the calendar, the files of important papers like birth certificates and insurance policies, the school supplies, etc.
We had bought a small litte fixer upper when we lived in Alabama the year before we moved out here. It was a little three bedroom, two bath. It was built in the 60's, I believe, and it had never been updated. We bought it from a friend who had been renting it out for a few years. The price was right, one of my best friends lived down the street, and the location was EXCELLENT, so I had pretty much decided we would buy it before I ever even went in and looked. [I was working on a Master's in Education at the time and we had bought a lot in a really nice neighborhood, like a neighborhood with a 3,000 square foot minimum house requirement. So we figured we could live in the smaller house until I was done with school and then build our dream house on the lot and keep the smaller house as a rental. Boy, did our plans change!]
I knew the tenants were getting evicted for not paying rent and I knew it would be bad, but I didn't know how bad. When we finally did get in to see it, it was DISGUSTING beyond description. It stank to high heaven. Every square inch of the 20 year old carpet was stained. It didn't help that the walls were dark paneling, the floor plan had a small, dark living room in the front of the house and a separate kitchen with hardly any cabinet space and no dishwasher, the carpets were brown, and the windows were covered with nasty, dirty, old curtains.
But the worst part, by far, was the roaches. OH, THE ROACHES! I can't even aptly describle the roach problem in this house. It was the worst roach infestation I have ever seen, on tv or in person. Some of the closets, like the kitchen pantry, literally had constant streams of roaches crawling out from behind the door...so bad that I didn't even open the door, because I didn't want to see. I was very worried that the infestation was so severe that the roaches would never go away.
[When my friends and family came in and looked at that house, they told me I was crazy and that I would never be able to make that house look good. But Bryant had faith in me and he said he would help me do it, and we saw it as a good investment, so we did it. And to this day I consider it one of the crowning achievements of my life. And to this day my family and friends tell me they are still amazed at the transformation they saw.]
Actually, the thing that worried me about the house the most was that the tenants had children. And the children were sick with Ashthma and other issues, and when I saw the state of the house they were living in, I knew exactly why. I'm sure those children ate roaches, drank roaches, and probably inhaled roach parts all the time, not to mention the other filth and vile to which they were constantly being exposed. I hated their parents for putting them through that. I never did see them, and that was a very good thing, because I would have lit in to them. I seriously considered calling the state and reporting them. I still grapple sometimes over whether or not I made the right decision by not calling. I know they were poor, but you can be poor and clean. There's no excuse.
Anyway, I called an exterminator over and asked him whether or not he thought he could get rid of the roaches. He said the situation was bad, but that he thought he could do it. So I gave him a try, even though I knew it was a near impossible feat. I was completely astonished when a couple of weeks later, the bugs were gone. Of course, we still had to clean up all the ten million dead roaches and the roach poop all over the walls, and that was QUITE a job in itself.
Whoa. I didn't mean for this to be such a long post. So, to sum things up, we ripped out the carpet, knocked down the wall from the living room to the kitchen, painted every wall in the house (including priming and painting the paneling), painted the ceilings, put in all new toilets, all new floors and all new doors, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now. I actually think that remodeling an old house is harder than building a new one because you don't just start from scratch. You have to deal with getting rid of all the old nasty stuff and you have to work around what's already there and then you get to "start from scratch," so to speak. It ended up being my favorite house we ever owned, even thought it was the smallest, just because I loved the decor and I loved the layout. This one has replaced it as my favorite house now though, especially since we've done the last few projects.
Note: When I say "I" did things, that means I thought of them and either paid or forced other people to do them. Of course, I mostly forced Bryant.
But my favorite part of remodeling the house was that I got to design my own kitchen. I put in new light fixtures, a dishwasher and a big island with lots of storage on one side and a bar on the other, complete with a pot rack hanging overhead and beadboard paneling underneath the bar. And the cabinets were white and the countertops were black, which turned out fabulous. And I put in a desk...not just any desk, but a perfect computer desk, complete with shelves above and cabinets to the side and that was definitely my favorite thing about that house.
And I've dreamed of designing and having another desk area ever since. And I've been planning one for the three years since we moved in to this house, but we just haven't had the money to do it. Bryant works so hard, but my disease is so expensive. When we did our taxes this year, we calculated how much money we have to spend on my medical expenses. We spend over 40% of our income on my medical expenses, and the crazy thing is that we have great insurance with SRP. I don't even want to think about what the situation would be if we had crappy insurance, or - even worse - no insurance at all.
Anyway, back to my headquarters - this was going to be the year that we were going to do it! We were going to get our tax returns and put in my central command! But once we figured out how much we were getting back and how much we needed to save to go to Harry Potter World and Alabama, there just wasn't enough left over. I was sad, but it was more important to me that we keep our promise to the kids that we'd take them to Harry Potter World and that we go to the Enslen Family Reunion.
Note: The cabinet doors aren't dry yet, so they haven't been hung.
I told Mama about it, and as usual, Dianne Enslen was not about to give up. She decided we were going to find a way to build me a desk no matter what. (This is the woman who memorized the ENTIRE "Raven" poem by Edgar Allen Poe. Yes, the ENTIRE poem. She's the hardest worker I know and she never says no to a challenge.) I have to say that at first I doubted her, especially after I called around and got estimates. But she came out here and we went over ideas and we went to Home Depot to see what all we could do ourselves (or really what we could make Bryant do), and we decided we could do it! (I'll show a picture of what my original plan was.) So I gave up some counter space, but I added some cabinet space and Bryant's been working his butt off to have the cabinets ready by today because the guy is coming over today to measure for the counter! And I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!
