While Ted and I were clearing the walls, emptying the closets, and moving the furniture around for our interior update, we found a lot of things that we either (1) never use, or (2) are simply tired of after so many years. When you have to actively pick up and put so many things into boxes, it makes you pause to wonder, “Do we really need to keep this?” During our interior update process, we donated and trashed a lot of now-useless (to us) stuff, as well as some long-time treasures that have become less treasured. The useless junk was easy to pitch; some of the other things–especially if they had sentimental value of any kind or of any degree–required more decisive thinking to give or throw away.

We bought this hanging wall lamp with trading stamps from the grocery store. Does that give you a clue about its age? Let’s say mid- to late 70s. When this was my sewing room, the light hung over my sewing machine. It was wonderful because I could adjust the weight (the black thing at the bottom of the cord) to drop the lamp closer to my work. It worked just fine and provided additional light in the room, but now, it’s gone.

We bought a pair of these lamps in the mid-1970s and set them on our matching teak end tables. We sold the other lamp and the end tables at a garage sale many years ago, but kept this one just because we needed a lamp. Now, it’s gone.

I started playing clarinet in sixth grade and played first chair clarinet in my high school band. I wanted to play in the University marching band, but in the old days, they didn’t allow women to do that because the drills were “too strenuous” for women. (Back in those days, we had to wear skirts for dinner in the dorms too. 👎) I’ve probably played my clarinet six times since high school. Each time, my embouchure was so bad, it wasn’t fun, so my clarinet has been sitting on a closet shelf for over 50 years. Now, it’s gone!

Ted bought a full set of The Encyclopedia Britannica when he was in college. Before the internet and Google, we and the kids occasionally used it for reference. We asked the kids what they remember about the encyclopedias and they all said the same thing Ted and I said: the transparent layered pages that showed the human anatomy. The first page had an illustration of a naked human; then you could peel back a transparent page at a time to see the nerves, the veins, the muscles, and the internal organs. It was fascinating–kind of like dissecting a body without the gore. At this point, however, we can’t remember the last time we used an encyclopedia for anything except as a weight (those books are heavy!). Now, they’re gone!

I bought this HP LaserJet 2300 printer c. 2000 for the heavy-duty printing required to provide chapter-by-chapter, and revision-by-revision copies of my doctoral dissertation to my four dissertation committee members. It’s a trusty machine, and it prints at a good speed, but it takes so long to warm up that I just press the button on my color printer and finish my print job in less time than it takes to wait for the LaserJet. Now, it’s gone!

We bought this futon in the mid-1990s. We liked the fold-out “tables” on the arms. Unfortunately, the mattress has become quite solid over the years (dry-rotted foam?) and the futon itself was extremely heavy, not to mention that we don’t have any other light-colored wood in the house. We decided to buy a new futon with a more comfortable mattress for our guests. Now, it’s gone!

I bought this desk at R-way Furniture in Sheboygan, WI in the mid-1980s when Kari and I took a trip to visit my Mom and Dad. The desk cost $30 and came in a box, to be assembled at home (IKEA probably got that idea from R-way). The price was so reasonable that I bought two desks: one for the girls’ bedroom, and one for the boys’ bedroom to give the kids a place to do their homework. I don’t remember what we did with the second desk, but when I need to use my serger, I set it on this desk. The leg on the right is no longer stable, so the desk has to be lifted carefully to move it, and cannot be dragged on the floor. The strip of laminate along the right side of the desktop has also peeled off. It’s long past time for a new desk. Now, it’s gone!

I bought this used sewing machine and cabinet for $100 in 1966. It was four years old when I bought it, and I used it a lot. I made all of my own clothes; dress pants and sport coats for Ted; heavy and light jackets for winter and summer for all of us; doll clothes for the girls’ dolls; etc., etc. It’s a Singer Slant-o-Matic (“The best sewing machine ever invented” according to the instruction book) and I still had all the original accessories. In all the time I had this sewing machine (56 years now), it never needed a repair.

In 2016, I bought a new electronic sewing machine and had the cabinet re-fitted for the new machine. After using the new sewing machine several times, I went back to my Singer because I missed the slanted needle. That’s when I realized that, although I loved that old sewing machine, the electronic one is much nicer to use and I will never choose to work with the Singer again. Even knowing that, it took me more than six years to get over my sentimental feelings for the Singer. As Ted and I were emptying closets for the upcoming painting and carpeting, I knew it was time to part ways with the past. Now, it’s gone! (With a tiny teardrop or two and a tiny tug on my heartstrings. I’ll always miss the slanted needle.)

Ted and I bought this media center 20+ years ago for two reasons: (1) We liked the display space; and (2) it was large enough for a 50-inch TV (huge, at that time). When our interior designer suggested that a smaller media center would “open up” the family room, we agreed. and decided to replace this one. It was assembled in place, and it was so large and so heavy that it took four people to take it apart and move it out of the room. Thanks, Jeff and La. Now, it’s gone!

Sometimes, you just have to bite the bullet and get rid of the things that no longer give you joy–even if they did in the past. Now, they’re gone!–but not forgotten, and still good for stories and happy memories.

By July, Ted and I had all of our planned outdoor work contracted. It was time to get moving on the house interior update–things that can be done in bad weather. We kept putting this off mostly because neither of us is good at design or color selection. I mentioned this to Jeff and La and they suggested we do what they did: hire an interior designer. Good idea!

The interior designer (not decorator–there’s a difference) had some very good ideas, and she was honest and tactful enough to guide us without offending us when she pointed out problems and made suggestions. We had never even thought about some of her ideas, but we definitely wanted to include them in our update. What we appreciated most, however, were the dozen paint color samples she gave us. Ted and I hate picking out paint colors. More than once, we’ve painted, then re-painted, a room because the color we chose didn’t look as good as we’d imagined it would. Having to choose from only 12 of the 1,700 Sherwin-Williams interior paint colors (I checked) eliminated 99.3 percent of the possible color decisions just like that! (I did the math, too.)

Although the interior designer narrowed our paint color selections to a dozen light, neutral colors, Ted and I still had to choose which of those colors to use and in which rooms to use them. I’m sure there are people in the world who can make this kind of color decision in a snap, but Ted and I are not among them. I painted multiple color swatches in every room on multiple walls in each room to see how different lighting affected the colors. I labeled each swatch with a piece of blue masking tape so we could remember which color it was. It still wasn’t easy for us to choose our colors. Before the painters arrived, I peeled 117 pieces of blue masking tape off the walls. The photos below show how much lighter our newly painted walls will be. Best of all, even though it took 117 wall swatches, we like the paint colors we chose for every room–on the first try!

With the designer’s ideas in mind and the paint colors selected, we were ready to schedule contractors. On an August afternoon, I called an electrician, a painter, and the carpet company, one after another. Shockingly, all three were immediately available. We had walk-throughs and bids from all of them within three days of my call and the electrical team was scheduled to arrive six days after my call. It was time for Ted and me to get to work!

The three electricians needed three days to do their work for us. We moved things out of their way in the six rooms where they needed space for ladders and tools. They installed recessed halo lights in the master bedroom and bath, the kitchen, and the project room. They also installed a light wall of eyeball lights in the family room, and they wired a bar light over my sewing machine in the project room and two bed lamps in the master bedroom. In addition, they moved the ceiling fan from the family room (where we never used it) to the project room (where it always gets warm while I’m working in it) and–43+ years after we bought this house–centered the kitchen table light over the table.

We already had an 18-day cruise planned, starting three days after the electricians finished, so we scheduled the drywall repairman to arrive the day after we returned from the cruise.

The interior designer suggested that we remove the chair rail from the kitchen. We’re planning to replace the kitchen cabinets, so as long as I was removing the chair rail, I pulled off the backsplash above the kitchen countertops too. We might as well have all the drywall repaired and painted at the same time, right? With that mess and all the electrical cuts and holes, the drywall repairman had plenty to do. I think it took him six hours the first day to repair all the damage and to apply the first coat of mud. The following days were shorter–only mud, then sanding.

While Mark was repairing the drywall damage indoors, our exterior doors (ordered in April) were installed. The day after the door installations and the drywall work were finished, Jeff and La arrived for a visit and Kathy, Annette, and Kari’s family joined us for the weekend. The painters and carpet installers were scheduled to begin their work the following week, so as soon as the kids left, Ted and I started packing things up and moving furniture to clear work areas for the painters and the carpet installers.

The painter said he’d be happy to have the walls cleared and everything else in the center of the room, allowing sufficient access to paint the walls; the carpet installers needed the floors cleared; and Ted and I wanted to have the work done one room at a time so that we’d only have to move everything in and out once. To make all of us happy, Ted and I had to clear every wall, floor, and closet in every room on a rotating basis to keep ahead of the painters and the carpet installers. It was like moving, only worse–taking everything (shelves, clothing rods, drapery rods, electrical switch plates, etc.) out/off, packing everything up, and moving all of it out of the room before reversing the process and putting it all back into place. Emptying the closets was the worst. There is a finite number of pieces of furniture in a given room, but there is a seemingly infinite number of items in a single closet! Because our bedroom was also stripped bare, we moved into our basement “guest suite” for the duration of this process. (Now we know what it’s like for the kids when they visit and sleep down there–it’s pretty comfortable with lots of space and a full bathroom.)

I knew it would be a big job, so I started packing the books first. The five movable bookshelves in the library, plus a sixth one in the living room, needed to be emptied to move them for painting and carpeting. (Note: When Dylan was very young, he was impressed by all the books in a single room. He said the room looked like a library, and we’ve called it that ever since.) Thankfully, I only had to empty the bottom shelf of the built-in bookshelf in the library. I handled every book six times: shelf to floor to box to other room to library to floor to shelf again. Out of curiosity, I weighed one box of books: 50 lb. Multiply 50 lb. x 13 boxes in the library = 650 lb. x 6 moves = 3,900 lb. of books lifted. Nearly 2 tons! The several boxes of books from the sixth bookshelf put the weight total over 2 tons. During this process, I discarded/recycled 106 books that I knew I’d never read again, and Ted decided to get rid of his set of The Encyclopedia Britannica. Now we have more space on the bookshelves, so we can buy more books. 🙂

Ted and I, the painters, and the carpet installers worked well together in a kind of (strenuous, for us) choreographed dance. Before the workmen arrived, Ted and I emptied rooms and put everything into other rooms. Then the painters painted the empty rooms and moved on to an empty, uncarpeted space while the carpet installers worked in the still-empty, already-painted rooms. When the workmen left for the day, Ted and I refilled the newly painted and carpeted rooms, then moved things from unfinished rooms to the newly painted/carpeted rooms, until everything was painted and the carpeting was installed in the bedrooms, hallway, and stairway. The contractors worked from 7:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m., then Ted and I worked from 3:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. and on weekends.

The painters came with a crew of three: one to paint the ceilings, one to do the cutting in, and one to roll paint on the walls. They averaged a completion rate of two rooms/day. When the painting was finished and we were putting things back into place, we discovered two closets that had not been painted. I contacted the painter on Friday (when we were refilling the closets) and he came back on Monday to paint them.

The workmen always arrived on schedule and Ted and I did a good (dare I say “great”?) job of having all the rooms empty and ready for them so they could come in and get to work immediately. Several pieces of furniture, however, were beyond my ability (i.e., strength) to move. I helped Ted move the 12- and 18-inch bookshelves (about 200-250 lb., respectively) out of the library, but we asked Dean and Dylan to help Ted with the 24-inch bookshelves. We guess-timated their weight at about 300-350 lb. each. The 36-inch and the corner bookshelves felt like 350-400 lb. each, so we left them in the room. The headboard for our bed has four connected pieces and is very difficult to get around corners (it was assembled in place), so we left that as well. By this time, we were getting tired of lifting heavy furniture and said, “Let the carpet installers move that stuff.” Well, surprise! They didn’t want to move it either–they just worked around those pieces in the library and in the master bedroom.

We had the hardwood stairs carpeted in a cap-and-band style. The photo on the right (below) shows one of the custom carpet art pieces we ordered. The carpet art was installed in the family room, living room, dining room, and foyer five weeks after the “plain” carpeting was installed. Those guys were great! They finished the family room carpet first and installed it on Dec.1 so that we could put up the Christmas tree before our kids arrived for a birthday/Christmas visit. The other three pieces of carpet art were delivered and installed a week later–just five days before the kids’ visit.

After the painters and the (plain) carpet installers finished their work, Dean and Dylan came to help put the heavy pieces of furniture back into place and to install some of our new lights. Dylan is learning to be an electrician, so installing our wired bed lamps, the bar light over my sewing machine, and a new ceiling light in the laundry room gave him an opportunity to practice some electrical skills. We thanked the family workers with a pizza dinner and we had a good time together–as usual.

After our Thanksgiving visit with Kathy and Annette, Ted and I combined update work with Christmas preparations and finished everything at 5:10 p.m. on December 12–less than 24 hours before Thom’s family arrived for our family birthday/Christmas celebration. That evening, Ted and I spent time in the hot tub, enjoyed a fire in the fireplace, and watched a movie on Netflix. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from our shoulders, and it was an especially wonderful feeling because it wasn’t a break; it was finished!

We finally moved from talk to action, and we’re feeling good about that. We knew we’d be working hard on a tight schedule, but we didn’t think we’d be working that hard. We had contractors in the house for 30 days between August 29 and October 24, plus 2 days in December for the carpet art, but Ted and I started the preparations for the contractors on August 22 and didn’t finish putting everything back in place until December 12–92 working days after we first started this update (time out for the cruise, Jeff and La’s visit, and Thanksgiving with Kathy and Annette). Most of our work days were 8-10 hours; too many were 12-14 hours. It was brutal. I don’t remember ever being that tired in my entire life! By the time the contractors finished their work for us and moved on to their next jobs, I felt like I’d used every ounce of energy my body had to give. A side benefit was that Ted lost three pounds and I lost four from all the work we did. The day after the last contracted work was finished, we slept 11 hours and then I crashed again and took a 90-minute nap in the afternoon.

The new lighting is much brighter than what we had, and the new paint and carpets make everything look fresh. Now we can add the finishing touches at our own pace, one thing at a time. Would we do it this way again? Absolutely! Having all the electrical updates, the painting, and the carpeting completed in just over three months was great. Are we glad it’s finished? Even more absolutely!

For a number of years, Ted and I have talked about updating our house and yard. It’s been over 20 years since our last major update, and we’re getting tired of looking at the same old stuff–not to mention that it’s all aging. We decided that 2022 would be the year we’d actually make the update happen. As the song goes, it was time for a little less talk and a lot more action. We decided that, since it was spring, we’d start outdoors so those jobs could be done in nicer weather.

We began by shopping for exterior doors in April. Ours were installed in the mid-1990s and they showed all those years of weathering. We shopped and made our selections, then ordered doors on April 29. The doors arrived only (?) five months later, in time to be installed September 26-27. We planned to re-install our old screen/storm doors because they seemed fine and they fit the new doors. When we saw the new doors being installed, however, it was immediately obvious that the old storm doors would present a very bad look. Check the before (left) and after (right) photos below and you’ll see what I mean. We ordered new storm/screen doors and they were installed on November 29–six months to the day after we ordered the first doors. The pandemic really messed up the supply chains, didn’t it? Not to mention “the Great Retirement” and all the other people (like us) using their “we can’t go anywhere anyway” money to update their homes.

Next, we contacted a company to re-stain our pergola. We’ve stained it ourselves several times in the past and it’s not fun. Now we can afford to have someone else do that crummy (to us) job. We signed a contract for the work in April and, two months later, on June 15, a crew member spent two days pressure washing the pergola. Two more months later, on August 11, a crew of two men spent two more days staining the pergola. It took (again) only (?) four months from the time we signed the contract until the job was finished. The bad news: all summer we sat under the faded pergola. The good news: now it looks fresh instead of faded and we didn’t have to do the crummy (to us) job.

Our final outdoor project was landscaping. We’ve had some struggling bushes for several years. They don’t quite die, but they don’t look good. We decided to meet with a landscape designer to get some better suggestions for hardier plants. For five years, we’ve watched our red-leaved plum bushes struggle to screen our pool (left). The landscape designer suggested fuller, faster-growing viburnum bushes for that area (right).

We had three flowering bushes in front of the house for 13 years, and they started to fail as well. Last year, we pulled the worst-looking bush out; this year, the remaining two bushes looked so bad, we cut them off at the base (left). The landscape designer suggested three English laurel bushes for that location. The arborvitae tree at the left corner of the house doesn’t look bad from the front (left), but the entire back half was dead. That tree has now been replaced with a columnar Norway spruce, complemented by the three new English laurel bushes (right).

For about 35 years, we had a privet hedge for privacy in our back yard. We think it aged out, but whatever the reason, it reached a point where it wasn’t filling out any more and it looked like it was dying. We replaced the privet bushes with arborvitae trees and were pretty satisfied until the middle ones died for the third year in a row (left) and several others were beginning to die. The designer said that arborvitaes aren’t very hardy and that perhaps poor water drainage was contributing to a problem in the middle of the hedge. He suggested raising the bed of the hedge and replacing the arborvitaes with hardier boxwoods, so we did (right).

None of the new bushes/trees looks great yet–or even much different than their dying/dead predecessors. Why? Because we contracted with the nursery for the new plants in mid-July, and they didn’t have time to plant them until December 8-9–five months later. All of the new plants were put into the ground in their dormant state, and we’re looking forward to them greening up in a few months.

The talk is finished and the action has begun.