My husband and I had been renting a nice little townhouse since we got married. We recently found out that the area in which we lived has been rezoned and will be turned into industrial office space. We decided that this was the time to look into buying a house, though it made me sad to leave the first home we had together.

We found a house fairly quickly. It was a bit of a fixer-upper, but my husband and I have always been up to a good challenge.

We started with the flooring, removing all of the carpet and laying down hardwoods throughout the house. We had all of the old windows replaced with sash windows and then we gave everything a fresh coat of paint.

It came together very nicely and we are looking forward to making new memories in our new home. We still miss the old one, but this is where our future is at.

After my husband retired from the Army, he had difficulty finding work at a salary that wasn’t entry level. But we still had to eat, and our bank had this silly policy about wanting a mortgage payment from us every month.

A friend of ours was opening a door and window company that catered to contractors. He was sitting in his office wondering where he was going to find someone to handle the warehouse when the phone rang. My husband had gotten up the courage to ask if all the jobs had been filled. The rest is history.

In one week my husband was “fluent” in vinyl windows, atrium doors, sliding doors, you name it. As soon as we could afford it, we planned to replace our own windows. By the time that happened, however, my husband had another job and the company was sold. Still, he became the “go-to” person in our neighborhood on the subject of replacement windows. Knowledge is knowledge.

Crunch! Thunk! Splat! Choom!

Ouch!

Ching! Thonk! Ping! Whack!

No, this isn’t an excerpt from a vintage comic book. It’s the sounds, traveling in time, from the year I demolished a brick stoop. Six months pregnant.

It’s amazing the satisfaction you get from tearing something down on purpose. I took out a lot of frustration on chipping away at the old brick and mortar.

Of course that summer was less about demolishing than about building - not to mention growing a baby. And build we did, one of those two-level wood decks that look so great in the plan books. At least that was the goal, but expectations exceeded my husband’s capabilities. But even if the final design wasn’t what we’d originally hoped for, it was still one of the nicest decks in the neighborhood.

The decking expanse wasn’t nearly as large I wanted, but it turned out to there was plenty of room for barbecuing and the baby’s playpen. What more could I ask?

We have decided that it is time to do some home remodeling.  Our home looks like it came out of the 80s complete with the bad linoleum and ugly carpets.  Even the cupboards scream of a time long past and it is time for a facelift.

We did a search online for “Home Remodeling, Tampa” to see if we could find a company that could help us out with the renovations.  We found a few companies that looked promising and made some phone calls.

Yes we used the “old fashioned” phone.

After talking to a number of the companies, we found one that we were interested in doing business with.  They will be stopping by early next week to go over our plans, and then they will get the work underway.

It will be nice to see the completed work, though I know that we are a few weeks off from that.  Still, we are taking steps in the right direction.

I hate to admit it, but I have a large selection of dress shoes.  Sure, it might be a little weird for a guy to have a lot of shoes, but I have always loved to have a large selection of shoes to be at my disposal.

To ensure that my shoes would stay in good shape, I made sure to purchase a large number of shoe storage units to protect them while they were in storage.  Well, when I talk about the shoe storage that I have, it is an organized system in my basement - nothing too fancy.

But, by putting a pair of shoes in a shoe storage unit, it protects them from getting dusty as well as from water damage should I ever have a flood (I hope that never happens).  But, I don’t mind spending money to ensure that my shoes that I adore are protected when I am not wearing them - it is worth every penny.

Between my youngest child who was born six weeks ago and my other two children, I am kept pretty busy.  It amazes me how much laundry accumulates over a single day and it amazes me how much clothes my kids actually have.

Just the other day, I was going through the linen closet and I realized that I had more baby bedding than I would ever need.  I do not know how I managed to accumulate thirty crib sheets, but that is exactly what I had stashed in my closet.  I had six different sets of bumper pads, when all you really need is one.

The funny thing is, that I have used the exact same bedding set for all three of my children.  Most of the baby bedding that I found in the closet has never been opened for never being used by me.  I put most of it in a box for our annual garage sale, so that someone else can give us money and take our bedding home to be stashed in their own closet where they also won’t use it.

I wanted to impress my wife with the first home that we would live in together.  When I was out looking at houses, I tried to find a house with everything that she ever wanted.  Now, that is sure not an easy task, but I thought I would try to make the woman that I love happy.

She had some requirements for what type of house we should live in and what the bathroom suites should look like.  She didn’t want to make a bad impression each time that someone stepped into her bathroom - so I had to make sure to pick out one that was perfect.

Most of the houses I looked at had ugly bathrooms - you know the type that would get a husband in trouble.  I was just about to give up, when I looked at a home that had whirlpool baths instead of shower baths. 

I knew that a house like that with nice, deep and comfortable bathtubs would be perfect for her - in fact, she may think that she was living in heaven.  In the end, we bought the house and she loved the bathtubs.  Who knew it would be so easy to please my wife?

In my interior design class, we have been learning about different kinds of decorating situations around the world. I have found the class to be very interesting, as I have always been fascinated with architecture and furniture. I am a big fan of contemporary furniture and decided that I would like to write a paper on where and when this originated.

I absolutely love contemporary bedroom furniture and I own a few pieces myself, so I am rather curious to learn about different era patterns of furniture and how long we can expect this contemporary furniture era to last. The Victorian era was over hundreds of years ago, and yet some people still love the style of that era.

Modern furniture is a relatively new fashion. Hence the name, modern. But, I expect it will be around for a long time. There are many people who do not care for this style of decorating, but there are others that absolutely love it.

I had the most wonderful opportunity to host a couple from Spain in my home for two weeks. They run a small holiday rentals business in Spain and were coming here, both for business and also to get a much needed break after the busy tourist season. I did not know this couple, but we had mutual friends, who, for health reasons, were not able to open up their home and asked me if I could.

I did not hesitate and am so glad that they came. I learned so much about their culture and their business. I even got to brush up on my Spanish and, after two weeks, it is not half bad. As part of their business involves motorhome rentals, they were interested in looking at some of the new models we had available over here. I was happy to help out in any way possible and took them to quite a few different dealerships.

Their trip came to an end all too soon. They have become very dear friends to me and I am going to miss them so much. Maybe not for too long, though, as they have told me that during the slow time, when their villa rentals are not all booked, they would love to host me in their country.

I decided today that it was time to get rid of my old office furniture.  Even though it has served me well over the past few years, most of my furniture was given to me as "hand me downs" and it shows.  I am doing a lot more consulting in my home, and I figured that what I have right now doesn’t give out the right image for my business - something newer would change that.

In some respects, shopping for home office furniture is not easy at all - the selection is too big.  I also wanted to stay within a budget that I created when I left my home - and blowing that budget could be catastrophic.  With a spending target in mind, I proceeded to look around.

My first stop was looking at the desks.  Now, ever since I was a little boy, I have always loved big desks - don’t ask me why.  I did find one that I fell in love with instantly, but the catch was that the price of the desk would mean that I would have little money left to buy a chair.  After thinking about it for about thirty seconds, the desk was my first purchase.

All I had left to do (because I spent almost all the money) was to buy a chair.  Out of all the chairs that would fit in my budget, it was the mesh office chairs that were the best buy in terms of comfort and price.  I bought a red one, and paid for that too.

The furniture is being delivered in a couple of days, so I have that time to setup my new office.  I can’t wait to see my clients faces when they see the new look - I can hear the compliments already.