The Lights Are On. But the Guests Have Yet to Arrive. Sheltering in (Our Brand New) Place. Week 15

Sheltering in (Our Brand New) Place. June 22, 2020. Week 15

I’d like to invite you one more time into our brand new place. Indulge me. Please. Come on in and take a look. Because, sad to say, I fear that you folks, my readers, are the only company we’ll be having in our new living rooms for months to come.

I’d planned a big open house for as soon as the work was done. Show the place off.

We’d invite invite family and friends. We’d invite the neighbors who’d put up with trucks and noise and porta-potties for seven-plus months.

We’d crack out the leftover wedding champagne. We’d put some beer on ice out on our sweet new deck. We’d go big — hire a caterer. Celebrate.

And after that, in the months that followed, we’d have modest gatherings and little dinner parties. The kids would fly in from afar and sit around an 8 1/2-foot table in the new dining room.

Jon and I would be living in a brand new place that’s spiffed up and presentable at last, after years and years of putting up with that worn-out look that houses acquire when babies arrive and burp all over the place, then grow into frisky kids who push ride toys across the hardwood floor, and then, without warning, become long-legged teenagers who can’t find a place to put their feet, so they make do with the coffee table, and then after that disappear into the world and leave their exhausted elders with a house looking like it’s past its sell-by date.

So, beautiful as our new space is, it’s a little sad. It’s a place designed with guests in mind, guests who won’t be arriving any time soon.

But you’re here! And hopefully you enjoy getting an inside look at a new reno as much as I do.

The big, splashy elements are terrific. (See them at “Hey, HGTV Fans. Take a Look at Our Remodel.”) One of the benefits — which I hadn’t anticipated — of

removing the wall between the kitchen and the dining and living rooms is that we now have a large, L-shaped open space with light entering from three different directions. The light shifts and shines into the space from different angles throughout the day as the sun moves around the house. It’s magical.

And the can lights! There are 38 of them lighting up every corner of the new rooms and hallway, giving off so much light that we actually expect to be able to read in our living room from now on. They’ll also shed some nice soft light on the pictures we hang on the walls.

Those are the big things. But our brand new place has many details that are also pretty cool. Check out the photos.

More adventures in remodeling at “Our Remodel Has Kept Us Company — I’ll Miss the Carpenters, Electricians and Pile Drivers.”  More about living in a pandemic at “At 78, I Have a Lot of Living to Do. Do the Deciders Care?”