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While I’ve spent my free time knitting like a madwoman, James has spent his time tackling projects around the house. We finally have all of our interior walls the grey color we’ve desired since we moved in (nearly 2 years ago). We’ve installed a safe and proper stair gate (we had something previously that was clearly not meant for the top of the stairs). We’ve put down FLOR carpeting in our upstairs hallway (so excited about this. I’ve been dreaming about replicating this look ever since we used FLOR in our upstairs bathroom).

And while all this has been happening, we’ve been having work done (by professionals) on the exterior of our home. We have a new retaining wall made of repurposed rail ties. We have renovated our front porch so that we have wider, safer stairs, railings, new flooring, and lots of new outdoor lighting. After my mom’s emergency this summer, we knew that we needed to do some serious work to make access to our home, no matter the time of day or time of year, safer. I’m feeling really excited and energized by all these changes.

Oh, but the list never ends. We’ve got bedrooms to paint, a downstairs bathroom to renovate, a wood stove to install (we had plans to do that last year but wound up having to fix the foundation of the house first. Which we did do, but talk about the least aesthetically exciting project, ever. James would argue that a sound foundation is probably the most important thing we could do for our home, but whatevs, I’m still yearning for that wood stove!), kitchen cabinets to build, two sides of our house still left to paint the new color… and so on… and so forth… forever. Ah, but man who finish house, die. Or so the saying goes.

One of the many things that I love about James as a father is the way he involves our children in his projects. He’s teaching them self-sufficiency and empowering them to DIY from a young age. As someone who still doesn’t know how to change her own damn tire, I am grateful that I’ll have daughters who are way more capable than I when it comes to home and automobile maintenance.

Just look at Courtland’s joy in helping install the stair gate!