One last goodbye

This week we said a final goodbye to a piece of our heart in Massachusetts. We closed on our house. We bought the 90+ year old 3-bed colonial 11 months into married life. It needed a lot of work and took a lot of my husband's attention over the five years we lived there.

I blogged and Instagrammed some of the renovations we made over the years we lived there, but I wanted to share the final pictures here now that it has been sold as a final tribute.

We called it home for five whole years. That is a long time by our standards. Having both been quite transient in the years before we were married, it was the address that we both lived at for the longest period of time in our adult lives.

I loved the kitchen. It was by far the most lived-in part of the house. It was the first part of the house we changed. I remember washing dishes in the bathroom sink while we gutted it and using a headlamp to cook dinner on the gas stove because the electricity was off for something else my husband was doing in the house. My most vivid memory was when we replaced its windows hoping my husband really knew what he was doing while I stared at the gaping hole where windows should go.

The upstairs bathroom was the first project that we finished and brought joy to my life. The changes from a weekend of painting and installing a new sink, were so drastic I claimed the paint color, warm caramel, changed my life. I may have been a bit dramatic, but it was such an improvement from the lavender walls and ugly pedestal sink that used to live there.

We also made some major improvements in the layout of one half of the house. The master bedroom and living room were both fairly awkward because each space was so long and narrow.

On the main floor, Brandon built a wall to divide it, which made the living area more live-able. He also re-painted and re-tiled the mantle, making it a beautiful focal point of the room. Finally, he added doors to the space, making the room feel cozy when we used the fireplace. I will really miss that fire place next winter.

In the master bedroom, it was the closet that needed the most work. When we bought the house, the closet was along the back wall, covering a full-size window. It was quite awkward (and a little weird) to have a window IN the closet. Brandon dismantled the closet and then installed his and hers closets from Ikea (we were spoiled to live just 20 minutes from Ikea). He also built a window seat between the closets adding to the cozy feel. 

I remember when he painted the walls grey. It was less than two months before Maggie was born, and I almost immediately felt it made the space more calm. It was a vast improvement over the army green that had previously been on the walls.

The dining room didn't see any drastic changes, but we did live without a finished ceiling for a number of months due to water damage from the upstairs bath tub. I remember the night a group of men from our church came to put up the new ceiling. I was so grateful to finally have that space finished and then we used oops paint (found on a must sell rack at Home Depot). I don't think I would have thought of painting the walls mustard, but we loved how it turned out.

It was a good house. There were times I thought we were in over our heads and times it was a haven, especially during the hard New England winters. We saw record snow outside its windows in 2015. 

It was the home where we brought our babies home from the hospital. 

Goodbye, red house. We affectionately refer to it as "the red house" when talking to our two year old daughter who remembers it. Brandon painted the exterior red last fall and it's the way I want to remember it. 

Our red house, the sweet little piece of MA we had our names on it for five years. So long, old friend. Thanks for the memories.