Saying Goodbye to an Old House

While I have no plans to leave my current house any time soon, we have been working behind-the-scenes to get my grandparent’s house ready to find its next family.  This weekend, we dropped off the keys and closed the door on this midcentury gem for our last time.

My grandparents moved in on my mom’s 14th birthday.  And like any home, it’s been a huge part of the family.  After nearly five decades, it’s time to say goodbye.

Folks may recall me writing about my kitchen renovation a while back (the actual work happening in 2018 and 2019), and how much their kitchen inspired my own.  So much about this house is seeped into my veins, and even many of my grandpa’s tools have helped us change our bungalow.

But there are always some cool surprises along the way: stories that resurface when looking through piles of pictures, newspaper clippings, and even funeral cards.  I’m looking forward to a new cold-weather project -though maybe next winter- digitizing my grandparents’ collection of recipes.

An even cooler image came through when we were looking through old slides: my grandpa’s parent’s bungalow (The one that was in the same teeny Iowa town as my living and dining room light fixtures, no confirmation yet that those came from their house. With many slides to go through… we’ll keep looking.) had the same white wainscoting that I added to our bungalow in the kitchen.

I’d never been to their semi-bungalow, but the memories from it are seemingly implanted in my DNA.  Tall painted wainscoting with a rail above the cabinets and a mid-rail partway down.  I’m not sure my reaction made much sense to my mom as she’s looking at images from her brother’s first birthday until I explained that it looked like a birthday in my own kitchen.

Their whole basement has been a huge influence on how we’ve arranged ours: the arrangement of bookshelves and displays across the basement -not to mention a second fireplace- definitely sprung to mind with every shift we’ve made creating our library.

The funny thing is that my grandpa and great-grandpa (my grandma’s dad) pierced the walls to bring the back bedroom/office (sound familiar?) into the rest of the room.  We did the exact same thing with rearranging the basement spaces.  And my mom just reminded me how much their pocket door captivated every child to walk into the house.

There are so many ways this house is baked into the core of me: from its excellent sledding hill, to the epic hide-and-seek games.  It’s where I first wanted to play guitar while sitting with my uncle, and where building, fixing, and tinkering was a way of life any time I wanted my grandpa to show me just about anything.  Conversations, card games, and drinks went long into the night, and the little-office-that-could became home to Nickelodeon’s Stick Stickley every Thanksgiving.

So, cheers to one of my favorite houses; our steady family home.  And cheers to the new family that will grace your halls and the kids that will inevitably drop toys down the laundry chute.  Goodbye, and good luck.