“What were we thinking?”

When I think back to when we became the proud new owners of our house 27-years ago, I often wonder that.  I know other people wondered it then.  Some expected we’d eventually regret it.  (A few didn’t hesitate to tell us that.) Looking back, I can’t blame them.  They knew we hadn’t a clue about what we had just taken on.    

At 24 and 22-years-young, we hadn’t lived enough Real Life to have a clue about much of anything yet. 

That feels like a different lifetime ago.

Back then we admired and looked up to several couples who, in stark contrast to us, seemed so “established.”  Looking back now, I realize that’s how we set so many of our ideals and standards at that time: “If only we could be like them… If only we could have a home like their homes…”

But the chance to begin our Real Life together made us genuinely happy to have any home to call “ours.” Today, as much as I’ve lived and seen, I honestly believe we had the best kind of beginning. One where happiness certainly didn’t depend on material things.  We undoubtedly admired nice things, and we aspired to work and have them “someday” - but we sure have them yet!    

Gratitude for the life we finally got to start, combined with youthful optimism, allowed us to see potential in things.  That carried us a long way.  Even when, truthfully, some of those things probably had way less real-world potential than we thought we saw.   

In short, I guess that explains exactly how we got involved with this old house to begin with.

We did always admire and appreciate old houses that possessed what we called “character.”  According to our definition, a house with “character” would have been built with great original quality, then cared for over the years so that preservation happened all along the way. 

Our house had… exactly… none of that. 

Instead, we faced a hodge-podge of some possibly decent-quality original things, combined with what looked like… whatever worked… for a rotating door of inhabitants over the next several decades.     

In addition to that kind of rich history, our home’s background also includes as many – if not more – years as a rental property.  Tearing into the place when we took it over told a story:  One of decades’ worth of different lifestyles, tastes, and needs.  Instead of a story told in words, though, this one unraveled via the medium of layer after layer of paneling, wallpaper, and paint.  Functional (but destructive) nails, screws, and other makeshift hardware.  Countless obvious quick fixes.    

We somehow saw potential in this place, but once we decided it didn’t have what we considered real “character,” we switched to a different plan:  We’d remodel to make everything look brand new, using the homes of all those established people we admired as our ideal examples. 

Spoiler alert: Trying to turn anything into something it just is …not?  That never works. 

An evening about a month before our wedding stands out in my mind.  We had designated a kitchen and a bathroom, neither of which technically existed, as our two obviously mandatory projects to make the place “livable.”  (It needed plenty more work, but nothing else quite as essential to civilized survival.) That night, we’d planned to demolish the existing walls in the future kitchen.  One thing led to another.  For reasons I still don’t understand, it evidently seemed like a good idea to just keep going and knock out EVERY wall downstairs. 

Every.  Single.  Wall. 

So, that’s exactly what we did.

Just like that, we caused our young, poor selves to go from needing a kitchen and a bathroom (in a month!) directly to facing the rebuilding of an entire house from the inside out.  Not to make it pretty.  To have interior walls. 

Did I mention that we got married in December?  In Pennsylvania?  The first gas bill to heat a house with no interior walls and no insulation (in December, in Pennsylvania) made that one night suddenly feel like a way worse idea than it had at the time…

Putting an entire house back together turned into quite a process.  A slow, expensive process.  Especially for young people just starting out. 

Having a house as our major focus felt exciting for a while.  That wore off significantly once we also started living Real Life:  Working jobs.  Paying bills.  Having and raising kids.    

Eventually, somewhere in the blur of life, I suppose we technically got it “finished.”  Enough. 

“Suddenly” (a mere quarter-century later), we found ourselves really looking at the things we’d done first in the process.  I don’t think we’ll ever forget how happy we once were to have them.  I truly hope we never do.  We’d certainly gotten used to looking at them.  But now, decades had passed!  The time had clearly come for change. 

We might not have done everything the smartest way all those years ago, but we really did learn some things in the process. 

For instance, old houses are rarely perfect and almost never simple.  Also:  No house is inexpensive. 

Most importantly - without even realizing it - we also learned what has made this house our home.  It has absolutely nothing to do with any remodeling choice we ever made, but everything to do with the Real Life we have lived here. 

I admire new houses.  Looking at them, part of me often wistfully thinks, “That would be so nice.”  Even still, though, I just can’t imagine living anywhere but here.  Our home. 

In many ways, we did the real work of growing up here.  We brought our babies home here.  We raised them here.  Not much to start with, and far from perfect now, whatever it is today – we have made it.  Together.

Something else also happened along the way:  Our idea of “character” and real beauty changed. 

27-years-ago, believing it meant either unblemished original or "perfect” 1990’s golden oak, we hadn’t even given the old, who-knows-what, well-worn stuff a chance.  We couldn’t have imagined that someday we’d look at the “perfect” of that time and consider it an outdated thing from the past.  Nor could we have understood what a metaphor for life that reality would represent.    

All these years of Real Life have taught us, in so many ways, that real character includes the blemishes, scars, and imperfections that come from the process of living it. 

This enlightened sense of what constitutes beauty led us to eventually begin looking around at our home and wonder: The things we considered unacceptable back then: Would we still feel that way about them today?     

Especially the original wood flooring...  

We did always love the idea of hardwood floors.  As one of our very first projects in this house, we jumped wholeheartedly into trying to restore ours.  We stripped multiple layers of chocolate brown paint; scraped; sanded.  I try not to think about what all we breathed in that process.  Even after all that work, though, we just couldn’t make them look perfect.  So, defaulting to our “make it look brand new instead” plan - we covered them with carpeting.  It held up and served us pretty well for over a quarter of a century. But I never really loved it.  Now, we kept wondering about the floors beneath.  Were they as bad as we think we remember?  Were they maybe even worse? 

Then came the day this past January when, as I took down the Christmas tree, I decided I knew only one way to find out.   

Looking at the beautiful tree all season – and the not-so-beautiful floor beneath it - had made an impression.  I took the tree down and found the room so empty.  Feeling the fresh motivation of a brand-new year and unable to think of any reason to spend another minute wondering what the floor we had covered up looked like, I grabbed a utility knife and a pry bar and hoped for the best!

I cut through carpeting and padding one small patch at a time, mindfully careful not to damage whatever lay beneath.  My hopes began to grow. 

It looked beautiful! 

We chose to cover this up. 

Why had we done that? 

As things in my life tend to do, it all snowballed from there.  One room turned into three.  Refinishing floors led to repainting walls and ceilings.  Replacing door and window trim.  Adding baseboard.  (Which, in most of this house, for all these years, we’d never had in the first place.)

The process afforded me with many weeks of really sore muscles - and hours with an orbital sander. That created a unique opportunity to spend time with only my thoughts.  It required focus.  One wrong move could have ruined everything.  And the noise!  I certainly couldn’t hear anything else.  Sure, I could have worn earbuds.  Listened to music, podcasts, or audiobooks. 

However, in this world of 24/7 access to noise that other people create (delightful as I often find it) I’ve realized that I enjoy making time to hear the sound of my own thoughts. Because I like them! 

So, that’s what I did:  Worked.  Thought.  And recognized some serious parallels.

My 27-years-more-mature brain could never justify the logic, but I do understand why we covered up these floors to begin with:  Basically, because of comparison.  With things that had nothing to do with the actual story of this house.  Something that would eventually become an important chapter in the story of us.

How many times, and in how many ways, have I done to myself the same thing I did to these old floors, and for basically the same reason? 

I know how God made me, and that the blend of everything that lies beneath the surface makes up the Real Me.  I’ve spent plenty of time striving to change or cover up some of those things, too.  I wonder now though:  Had I viewed them through a narrower lens; comparison blurred out; could I have embraced, valued, and even appreciated more of them all along? 

I won’t bother wishing I could go back and tell 27-years-younger-me how she’d feel about it all today.  (When it comes to the floors, that is.  The “me” who needed to hear it in all the other ways goes back much further than 27-years.) Even if I could, she probably wouldn’t believe me. 

She’d consider me, at 49, old.  Someone who just doesn’t get it. 

I admit she’d have a fair point with part of that: 49 isn’t exactly young…  But she’d have the other part all wrong.  Because now, for the first time ever in this life of mine, I know that I finally do get it. 

I get what matters and what doesn’t.  I can tell the difference between real beauty and superficiality – and I get why that discernment matters.  I understand the life-giving power of peace, simplicity, gratitude, and appreciation; and the futile, life-draining effects of striving.  I get how much freer I feel for having learned that difference. 

Doing so needed to take me decades, because all that has happened - all the Real Life I’ve lived in the process - makes the truth of it feel all the richer today.

Another truth?  Had I lived my entire grown-up life with these floors just as we’d found them 27-years ago, feeling the way I felt about them, considering them not good enough… Had I never even tried to change them?  I’d probably feel like I’d missed out on something.  I think, to this very day, I’d still wish to change them or cover them up.  Turn them into something I imagined as “better.” 

I have had the chance to try to change them, though, and so many things about myself, too.  Along the way, I’ve learned that there will always be something newer, shinier, or prettier… Always.  I’ve also learned that living life focused less on that, and more on appreciating and making the most of what I have opens my eyes to so much more unique beauty and significance in this world.

The story feels worth telling.  Maybe it can help someone else learn these things, too.  Maybe sooner than I did. I just feel grateful to have learned them now. 

…So much time and effort, trying to change what wasn’t “good enough.”  Covering it up.  Trying to make it something it wasn’t.  Knowing that it never really felt …right.    

How amazing that, to reveal so much more beauty than I once realized existed, I only had to pry off the layers that I had put on!  It’s been there all along.  Waiting until I grew ready to uncover and not only accept it, but to embrace and appreciate it:  Just as it is.

Just as it always has been.