Stripping!

Over at my house, we're stripping. That's right, once again, we're turning up the heat (gun) and taking it (paint) off. It's an amazingly transformation. We live in this great Arts and Crafts style bungalow. You see, there was nothing in Seattle before, say 1870, except for wild salmon, minus the chemicals, and happy omega-fat loving Indians. Those early days of Seattle are marked by tons of ye old prospector types, brothels-a-plenty, and the original "skid row." So, normal people didn't start coming here to live until round about 1920, which means you can't spit without it landing on a cute little brick cottage or a bungalow like ours.

Some are crack dens, well not really, but you know the house. Maybe Boo Radley lives there. Others, like the house next door have been renovated back to their full glory. This is what we are attempting.

We live in Dr. Vic's Grandma's house. When she died, Dr. Vic's parents decided we could move in until he got a job and moved (perhaps to Alaska, but that is another story). Grandma painted over all of the hard wood - a dull white - and covered the floors with either linoleum (even the bedroom) or shag. It was the 70's, she could hardly be blamed. Everything probably looked awfully old fashioned and in need of some crisping up. Now, retro is in, and here we are in big masks, stripping and sanding and staining to try to restore the old house to its proper place in architectural coziness.

It's funny, I often feel the yen for a kind of beginning of the new year fresh start. A desire to paint over everything that has happened and start anew. I often will begin to jot down to-do lists even, and rip them up and start fresh if I've made a mistake or don't like the way the handwriting looks. But this house is so much more beautiful with all of that stripped away. You see the little knicks and bobbles more. The place in the wall where the panelling is caved in and patched with a cork from a wine bottle - but it's so much more lovely and itself with its woody natural splendor on show. Here's to stripping off all of our unnecessary layers and for god sake any figurative shag carpet in our lives.