the girls’ room {ripping off the bandaid}
On June 30, 2009 I posted a tour of my coming daughter’s nursery. At that point I had been blogging for a little over a year. Her room was so much fun to create. I snapped a few pictures and wrote a blog post sharing the details in case anyone else wanted ideas. Pinterest had not been created yet and I didn’t think much about it when I published that tour.
Well, it ended up being picked up by several websites and was soon published in numerous magazines. So baffling to me at the time. It was the post that ended up bringing many followers to my random little blog here. I’m guessing quite a few of you reading this post might have originally found me from that post in 2009.
A lot of life happened in that little room. The pallet bed was replaced with a bunkbed when our oldest daughter became a big sister. The girls’ share a room (the boys’ share a room too). So many good memories…
I may teach photography, but you will NEVER hear me base value of a photo on the technical merits. Use your iPhone, use a point and shoot, use a fancy camera even if it is on Automatic and capture the normal everyday mundane stuff of your days. Looking back at photos of my girls in their room – bittersweet and beautiful.
I’m a ‘just rip the bandaid off’ kind of girl….which means when a change needs to happen, I just rip the bandaid off and move on.
I took a minute to reflect on the life lived in the girls’ room and then I took a sledge hammer to the wall. Rip that bandaid off. Good thing I have pictures.
We tore out the walls, the floor, and the ceiling is next. Part of adding on to the house includes a game room that will be basically be an extension of the girls’ room. I was the only one voting against the game room, but the guys and contractors tell me it makes more sense financially and construction wise in regards to the roofline to extend a portion of the second story. I think it is all a conspiracy against me and more room for me to keep clean. Either way – a game room is coming. The girls’ wall pictured (below left pic) will be torn down and extend out to a room over the kitchen.
When we tore out the floors, we found a prayer Chris wrote 9 years ago. It was written before either of our girls were born, before we would spend hours up all night for months trying to comfort a little one adopted out of trauma, before tears would fall from a little girl scared of storms after seeing a tornado, before all the giggles, snuggles, and dance parties. Before all the life that filled its walls. I don’t ever remember Chris writing it, but what a gift to find it now and reflect on all the ways his prayer was answered in this little room on the second floor.
I like change…and I like little surprises that pop up along the way. For those wondering, the girls will move into the existing master. A new master bedroom will be added downstairs (the addition includes a kitchen, master, game room and breezeway).
Next week we will lose the kitchen stove, dishwasher, and sink….for the next several months!! Good thing we lived in a tiny apartment in China without any of those things last summer! Things are getting interesting around here 😉
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