But we weren't going anywhere. In fact what was happening was the latest step in making our house the home we want to live in for the rest of our lives.
The pick up truck in the yard belonged to my son, James. He was there to help my other son, Michael, move the things that were being stored in his old bedroom.
Getting those things out, emptying the room was the next step in the redecorating process that will turn it into Paula's office/ craft room. I may have mentioned this once or twice before but this conversion has been one of our "house goals" for a few years.
Arriving just after 10AM Michael spent a couple of hours sorting through the boxes and clothes what he was going to take and what he was going to leave to be taken to Goodwill.
It was kind of fun to see both of the guys discover and reminisce about some of the stuff they found in the boxes.
After the contents of the room was sorted and loaded on the pick up the boys were nice enough to stay and help take down the old curtains and blinds and take up the old carpet from the floor. It was no easy job and I appreciated the fact that they took the time to do it.
Paula was a little apprehensive about the condition of the hardwood floor underneath the carpet. It was already in the room when she moved in the house back in 1995. The same experience of taking up the carpet when redecorating the bedroom across the hall from this one a over 10 years ago, to be used as James bedroom, wasn't a pleasant one.
The foam padding had stuck to the floor and had to be scrapped by hand to get it off.
But it turned out this wasn't the case with Michael's room. Both the rug and the padding came up rather easily. When the carpet was pulled and my sons were finished the room it looked like this.
The best thing about having this room empty is how happy my wife is about it. She was smiling with excitement over it all day long.
I don't know how many years it's been since she's had a room that's all her own but she's really looking forward to having one very soon. (insert the song from "In my own little corner" from Rogers & Hammerstein's "Cinderella" here).
As an added bonus we got to spend some time with just our sons, something that we don't do very often any more. For the first 5 years of our marriage it was just the four of us living in our the house. Those days included our last major home improvement efforts to convert the living room into a place where we could enjoy watching movies together as a family. Saturday's moving project was kind of a throw back to the "old days" and was a lot of fun to revisit.
There is still some work to be done in the newly emptied room. These are the next things to be done. The patched hole in the wall needs to be finished and sanded. The dark green paint on the woodwork work needs to be stripped. The glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, put there by Michael, need to be removed. Then the room needs to be painted.
After several years of wanting it, having one of the rooms at the house finally empty is pretty cool. Knowing that my wife is well on her way to making the plans she has for the house completed makes me happy as well.
With as much as she's had to devote herself to her job this year, working to reach the goals of others; it's nice to be able to give her a feeling of accomplishment on her personal goals as well.
I guess that's just another way of stating one of the principals I like to abide by in my marriage. Happy Wife/Happy Life.
The end results might only be a space where your voice resounds off the walls but the love of my life is happy about the echoes of emptiness.
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