Funny how you learn what things are important to you in a home over the years. Like that perfect sun-lit window over the kitchen sink that you can stare out at a green leafed, bird-filled tree while scrubbing a crusty casserole dish after dinner. Or, the bright and dewy morning sun streaming through your breakfast nook window lighting your morning newspaper.
It takes many years and some mistakes to come to realization that the light is missing inside your home set in a lovely tree filled lot.
You really like that two story clapboard with it’s wrap around porches holding comfy old wicker chairs, the perfect hideaway to sink into a novel after the kids have bathed and been tucked into their beds far away up the stairs. How you smile when you lay on your daughters bed and realize she has a birds-eye view of the comings and goings of your sociable neighborhood right from her own snugly nest.
You also recognize the importance of architectural choices. It had cost a bit more to raise the ceiling heights to ten or twelve feet, but when you entered the room for the first time you felt small in that ten by twelve bedroom. Or the placement of that oval window in the staircase landing that adds just enough light during the day to make the trip up the stairs to put away the laundry just a bit more enjoyable. You listen for the telltale creak in the hardwood floor as someone late in the night tip toes to their bedroom. And it had been wise to expand the laundry to make room for the second refrigerator or add on that covered slab to install a summer kitchen.
A house quickly becomes a home when a little more thought and planning goes into the process. Proof you have done it right comes when upon entering your house after seventeen years and you still say…”I love this old house.”
