Renovating old homes is not about making them look new; it is about making new unnecessary – Ty McBride

What with the rains, the extreme cold, some frustrating missteps and then the winter storms, it has been hard for us to catch a break when it comes to seeing the Saint Patrick Street house move from mostly done to almost done to one day (we hope) actually done.

Of course, as a period home it offers challenges in terms of its lack of right-angles, rooms that slope down an inch or two, walls that don’t believe in quite reasonable ideas like perpendicular, and – of course – mishits and errors and the consequent need for more careful do-overs.

It all makes me grateful for people who know what they are doing and for Aaron’s commitment to doing things right and making us happy (this is why we are the buyers, not the builders). We are also grateful that our landlord here at the St. James Street house is willing for us to extend month-to-month so that we can wait until we are completely satisfied before signing off on moving in around the corner.

So Rebekah and I are doing our very best to hang in there, because the bottom line is not so much for it to be done tomorrow as for it to be done right… and for the finishes to look – well – like they justify the hard work of the crew and the cost!

In the meanwhile, Rebekah and I walk around adding questions and details to our growing punch list, and also measuring everything from windows to walls to mantles to closets to the interior dimensions of kitchen drawers!

Here’s my analogy on this. One day Rebekah and I were driving to Jacksonville Florida on I-95. Estimated time of arrival, the GPS said, 6:00. Then there was an accident in South Carolina – eta now 6:30; then it started to rain – eta 7:00; congestion – eta 7:45; roadwork – eta 8:00; detour – eta 8:30… The longer we drove, the farther from our destination we seemed to be.

Our new Tarboro home may well be in Florida, somewhere at the other end of I-95…

It’s all good – or we hope so, we will get there, we will (eventually) be pleased with how it comes together, and we will move in. And we are blessed in ways that most people can only dream about – regardless of where we happen to be living.

Stay tuned for the next update. Peace and more peace – DEREK