More Before and After Pix

Before:

Alright, as promised, here are some before and after shots of the house exterior. Don’t all start clapping at once—we haven’t done a ton yet, but we have made a few improvements. First off, we finally finished the railing on the deck, so now you can lean on it without risking a spontaneous trust fall into the yard. We also said goodbye to the unfortunate cinnamon-pinkish color (which looked like sunburned bologna) and painted it a respectable dark brown. And we’ve started enclosing the farmer’s porch to turn it into a 3-season porch—though I don’t have updated pictures of that part yet. I’ll share those in the spring, when the porch stops being a wind tunnel of doom.

Now, the second picture still shows a lot of work that needs doing. Yes, it’s a mess. No, I don’t want to talk about it. Just squint and pretend it looks finished.

Also, please don’t let the photos fool you—the house looks massive in pictures, but it’s only 24' x 32'. Yep. We downsized on purpose. I know. Gone is the concept of walk-in closets and homes that require golf carts to get from the kitchen to the bathroom.

Downsizing has been… an adventure. I spent the first half of my life collecting stuff—antiques, furniture, decorative roosters, whatever caught my fancy. And now I’m spending the second half trying to offload it all without causing panic in my family thinking I'm giving away all my stuff because I might be dying (which I have no plans to do in the foreseeable future). One day, during a particularly aggressive decluttering spree, my oldest daughter actually looked at me like I’d just updated my will and asked, “Mom… are you dying?” Apparently, in her mind, giving away your stuff is the universal sign of impending doom.

I reassured her that I was fine—fit as a fiddle, mean as a snake, and nowhere near ready to kick the bucket. I’m just tired of dusting things I don’t even like anymore. Turns out, you can’t take it with you, and even if you could, who wants to spend the afterlife tangled in extension cords and music boxes that have lost their rewind spring long ago?

Anyway—enjoy the pictures, pretend we’re further along than we are, and feel free to ooh and ahh out loud. It makes me feel productive.