Blast from the Past

So remember last week or so when I was talking about our old house?  Well, yesterday I drove by it on my way to daycare to see how the big tree in the yard fared after the 70+ mile per hour winds we had the other day, and much to my surprise, there was a "For Sale" sign out front!  I've actually been waiting for that to happen, to some degree, since I saw three kids in the yard a couple times.  How they fit that many kids in the house sort of boggled my mind since the living room and storage were full enough with one!  Of course, I was eager to get home and check out the listing, but I was pretty surprised by what I saw.

As I mentioned in my other post, I saw the old countertop outside the house recently, so I knew they had replaced that.  It appears it is granite.  They took out the ugly brown sink and put in stainless steel, and they did a nice glass tile backsplash.  The problem is that the cabinets were still the same ugly awfulness, so those three touches still didn't do much for the house.  I suppose someone could come in and realize all they have to do is paint the cabinets to have a nice kitchen, but still, it's odd.  The living room looks the same--still the red accent wall and goldenrod walls.  They had a ton less furniture in there, though--just a couch, chair, coffee table, and small TV stand for a good-sized TV.  I was happy to see that my beloved shelves were still there, though they were bare--which after looking through the photos a bunch of times, I decided must be because they're already in the process of packing.  There's still full furniture--though sparse--but there are only a few things anywhere on the walls or in the way of knickknacks.  Maybe that's how they roll, or maybe that's what their realtor recommended, but it barely looks lived in.

They replaced the teal green carpeting in the dining room with gray and added a small flat screen in there.  The bedrooms look the same, too, aside from a strip of border and some wall decals.  The bathroom is the same, too, with the light fixture we installed and the border I replaced.  Still very purple.

The basement appears to be where the kids' stuff got relegated, as it all lines a couple walls.  The plush carpeting is still there, and the bar looks good--and very full of liquor!  Oddly, they put a hole in the drop ceiling to hang some sort of suspended seat.  The basement bathroom looks pretty much the same, although I do think they replaced the icky shag carpeting in there with some tile.

The yard has a pop-up pool in it, and the shed is gone...though the door is still leaning up against the fence.  The patio looks like it's been taken over by something covered in mesh.  Maybe growing raspberries or something on trellises?  They seem to have added a few small trees closer to the house, but for the most part it's still the same blah yard.

I guess I was just surprised by how little they've done in eight years.  The old owners of our house would probably say the same thing about us, although coming in, this house probably had far less that imminently needed to be done.  I figured anyone who would buy that house would probably come in ready to spruce things up.  I was surprised they didn't paint the cabinets or any of the walls, add a dishwasher, do the roof, or really modernize much of anything aside from parts of the kitchen.  The things they did seem relatively minor, at least compared to the windows, garage and front doors, and central air that we did.  I am guessing the next person that comes in there may be the type that wants to really make it their own, and in many ways, I hope they do.  It could use it!

It was weird seeing other people's stuff in the space we lived in for almost five years, particularly since so much of it looked the same.  Some of the original curtains that we left behind are still in use, in fact!  With the shell almost identical, just seeing different furniture was odd.  It was almost like being inside the house again for the first time in eight years.  Much like when we left, I flashed back to moments there--middle-of-the-night baby moments with Jacob, the pregnancy test in the bathroom, hours spent cooking dinner in the kitchen, quiet weekends home alone, the little projects we were proud of.  It brought a lot of memories back to see it again as things come full circle eight years later.

Last night as I was puttering around the house, I had a couple moments remembering how excited we were to move in here, what a relief it was to move into a bigger, brighter house; to be away from the many projects we wanted to do; to have a dishwasher and pretty cabinets and a gorgeous, huge living room.  Even the office, which we barely use now, was a symbol of why this house meant so much to us.

The bad news is that once it sells, I probably won't see it again for years to come, and by then, who knows what it will look like!  We'll be that much farther removed from our time there, but we'll always have the memories.