Day #9: Refinishing What's Been Uncovered
Last Wednesday, my sweet Cody Bell and I closed on a little duplex in Montgomery.
It’s a simple little place, one side for us, another side for a renter.
We spotted it one day while we were visiting friends, so of course we peeked inside.
We saw a fixer.
A place with good bones, but need for quite a few cosmetic repairs.
Nothing the Bell’s can’t handle.
It’s an old place.
Built in 1946.
Purchased in 1955 by a sweet little family… and we are the second buyers since 1955.
Behind the house is a shed where we have found dozens of newspapers from WW II and others dating back all the way to 1917.
We purchased the house from two cousins who inherited this estate from their grandparents.
They are older, I assume their early 70s and full of stories behind this little gem.
In fact, one of them got a little teary eyed in the closing because of all the memories she had with her family in this place.
It gave us such a sense of honor being entrusted with someone’s family home.
I won’t lie, when we walked back in their after the closing, and the smell of moth balls engulfed my nose from the carpet that had remained one decade too many, I wondered how in the world this place was ever beautiful after being tainted by “modern trends” that flooded through the 60s,70s,80s, and 90s.
But just when I thought we were going to have a whole lot more work to do, we peeled back those carpets to begin.
That nasty, rotted, smelly, carpet.
And there, laying below all that terrible, smelly, carpet was hard wood floors.
Original hardwoods.
1946.
Perfect, just needed a little refinishing.
They had been covered and hidden away for all these years.
All it took was two crazy 20-something-year-olds to take a chance and peel back the layer of filth to find the treasure underneath.
I think remodeling does something to you.
Mentally and Physically.
Physical exhaustion from doing the work and cranking it all out knowing the faster you get it done the faster you get to enjoy it.
Mental exhaustion for the feeling of no release from always having to schedule your life around “construction.”
But I love what this work does for my heart.
Showing me every single time that there is always something beautiful to be found when we take the time to uncover the mess and get to the bottom of it all.
It even teaches me a little more about my own heart, where it has covered up beautiful things with lies and mess and all it needs is some fresh perspective to awaken it back to life.
In 30 days of wishful doing we are remodeling ANOTHER house, and refinishing what’s been covered all these years.
Stay tuned for more pictures and updates of what we do the place along the way!
