Home, somewhere comfortable and familiar.  A place to relax, where the worries of the world and others are unable to touch you.  Where your heart is.

I often find myself wanting to return, or happy in the knowledge that home will always be there.  To me home is a source of comfort.  Being a little highly strung I need to have my fortress of sorts.  A place where I can sit and have things be silent, or loud.  Have things be the way I want them to be.

The past year and a half has seen me renovating the house I bought in 2007.  My first house.  It’s a very old house and was in a horrible state when I bought it.  Unlivable, I thought.  Put it this way, I didn’t even use the office till one and a half years after I bought the house.  I refused to go in there.  The old lino was peeling and cracked.  Dust, dirt, and other miscellaneous debris infested the cracks.  The kitchen was worse, dark wood, unsealed cabinets that had large gaps, through which you could see outside.  Nice, if you want to allow whatever insect or creature to crawl through and devour or defecate all over your food and plates.

The lounge room and entrance were covered in carpet from the 70′s.  Carpet that had probably absorbed more than it’s fair share of human bodily fluids, scents, and other disgusting things.

The whole house smelt of old man, and was dark and uninviting.

But I saw it for what I could turn it into.  If I didn’t know how, I would learn how.  I looked beyond the surface and could see a strong foundation.  I devised a plan.

My parents, my girlfriend, and I started things off with the removal of the carpet.  To my surprise the floorboards were already polished.  Win number one.  Next was the removal and washing of all the curtains, these will eventually be replaced by blinds (I hate curtains).

Over the next many months came the painting.  My father and girlfriend helped me with this for a stage, but afterwards I was alone.  I kept working through though.  Knowing the end goal, and seeing it in my head kept me going strong.

The kitchen was to be removed and replaced.  But several dodgey kitchen people, and too much wasted time shopping saw me drive to Bunning’s, buy an electric sander, No-More-Gaps sealant, and several cans of primer and paint.  I attacked the current kitchen, removing all cabinet doors and sanding every bit of dark wood.

New modern handles were ordered from ebay too.

Within a few months the kitchen went from dark to bright, unclean to clean.

The rest of the renovations followed in the same vane.  Removal of the old lino flooring in the kitchen-to-home-office took the longest.  Several weeks of work at work, come home, eat, go to my house, work on removing the floor.  Steam and a paint scraper were my friends.

The lounge/fire place area…that was a light bulb moment.  Extend the old shelves, drill holes down the back to run cables, paint a dark colour.  Turned out perfect.

I’m still renovating, and there are plenty of things I’d like to change.  It’s just right now, with the way things are, I like being home.

If the foundation’s good, you can always turn the surface into something beautiful and desirable.