The Remodel

Take today for instance. It's raining a little, but otherwise blanketed with grayness and light. I love rainy days, never get tired of them and their little drops falling into the pool and making puddle circles. I like, no love, to walk in the rain even with a fierce wind. Today there is a pair of doves hanging around under the eaves, and I recognize the female as our little baby from last year, she looks familiar around the eyes. No, I really mean it! All grown up and trying to find a nest for herself and she's thinking about the old homestead...awww.

There's a whole lot of nothing on the horizon for work. Again. The back bedroom closet is cleared out and nearly everything is sorted, boxed and ready for reassignment. A few items have already made it to the storage locker. Laundry's done. Vacuuming and dusting, too. It was bound to happen, I suppose, the moment when there's nothing standing in the way of cleaning the garage.

Our garage is the What If part of the house. On a distant wall is a really cool dart board with chalk scoreboard that's never used on account of having to climb over old chairs and camping gear to retrieve the darts. What if it were accessible and handy for the guys to play a nice game of darts? There's already a ceiling fan and small refrigerator for brewskies in the summer.

There are some ancient and faded but really cool posters from the 60s. The shelves and floor are packed and stuffed and piled high with inherhited things for past and future yard sales from the office, Mom's house and mine, the shed, his memorabilia and the neverending Christmas stuff. And that will have to go somewhere, to volunteer donations or parted out to the family. Cabinets are full of canned goods, kitchen appliances and sodas and paint supplies and tools obscure what I think might be an expansive workbench.

It's a big chore from the doorway. But then that darned What If kicks in and forces me down the tracks of wondering what it would look like to be neat and orderly and the extra stuff gone. I'll bet that workbench is just begging us to spend our evenings horsing around with little projects. And it would be fun to see it become a gathering spot for more than just clean clothes dripping from hangers near the washer. Wow, 250 more square feet of added living space without spending a dime. Now that's my kind of remodel.