A Different Kind of Reconnection

A Different Kind of Old Friend


Last week I got to visit a different kind of old friend: the house that I lived in from 1989 to 1999.

Hi House!

Those pines are gone. 

The shutters are now maroon. 

Three children were born while I lived in that house.

Four cats died there.

It was the first house I lived in that had my name on the mortgage.  I loved the floor plan and loved the house but when that third kid came along, Yikes! It got very small.

I still play Bunko in that neighborhood with the same basic group of women that have been playing together for almost 25 years.  One of my former neighbors is friends with the new(ish) owners and they kindly suggested to her that if I wanted to see the house, I was welcome to stop by.
And my answer?
I'm in.

So before Bunko (where I was a big winner for a big change!) Lucy, Diane and I stopped by.

Diane and Lucy: 

Sisters, Bunko Babes, Partners in Crime for the Night

It's not often that you get to go back and see a house that you once owned after selling it.

The house seemed smaller but o! I still love the floor plan.

We had added a screened in porch on the back which was always my favorite spot. The new owners had updated it with fancier tile and better screens, but otherwise it was the same.  Even their porch furniture was almost identical to ours.
It made my heart happy to hear the owners say it was also their favorite part of the house.

Look at that little chunk.

Screened in patio in progress.

We started with a low brick wall....

A built in TV cabinet had been replaced with a more custom piece of furniture. While our piece did the job, it was not well designed so I wasn't sorry to see it gone.The secret compartment in the cabinet is gone too, though. I wonder if they even knew about it?

Excuse the boring pic.

We were quite proud of this when we had it made it but 

the design...well, not so great. 

The kitchen had been updated, also. We had navy blue tile in the kitchen which the realtors all gasped at... "it will never sell!" ...but these people said they loved it. They changed the counters and backsplash and refaced the cabinets but the tile was still there. You just never know!

Darling little urchins on the shiny navy blue tile.

Very pretty, impossible to keep clean. 

Fresh paint, different furniture but inside the house was pretty much the same.

There had been another owner in between us for a few years and apparently they had ignored the backyard. Vines had smothered two trees and two others had rotted. Some large pines had been removed because their dogs kept bringing pine needles in. So, sadly,  the backyard had been redesigned. Some changes I liked. Others I wondered about.

Gone were the gorgeous azaleas under the towering pines. The giant gardenias outside the backdoor were also gone. When those babies were in bloom, you could get drunk on the scent.

Gardenias, gardenias, gardenias. 

Our pear trees had been cut down.   An odd stand of sago palms had been installed. (I was horrified the owners thought I had put those sagos in. No! I would never do a straight row of palms, much less TWO straight rows. It looked like a palm nursery.) But a nice stone patio had been added which I'm sure worked better for them. I just think that these owners would have really appreciated the yard as we had left it, not as they got it.

There were always flowers out in the yard. 

Pre-dogs.  

I can't grow much in the way of flowers now. 

Carlos has a tendency to trample them.

O well.
As they say "not my circus, not my monkeys".
But it was my house.