Saving the Earth, and Myself, One Piece of Junk at a Time

Don’t throw that out!

5/29/2019

The White Side tables with Wood Tops

House remodels are dirty, hard, fun, exciting, scary, and rewarding. I am a visionary. I can see how I want a room to look before I even tear the wall down. It is a gift and a curse all in one. Have you known what you want, but don’t know how to get it? Have you been imagining your house, relationship, yourself, or your life a certain way, but are so frustrated that you fall short every day? I have been there and I have felt that.
           Remodeling a house has shown many of my talents and many of my flaws. I love creating, painting, and detailing my way through each room. I love mixing colors and textures and old with the new. I love it so much that I am slightly obsessed about house remodels. But remodeling my house has also shown me how impatient I am, how stubborn I can be, and how much self-doubt is in my head.
           The house remodel started big. We ripped off drywall, tore out the old plumbing and removed the strange closet in the hallwaybetween the bathroom and master bedroom. I am a salvager at heart. My sister and I grew up on our family tree farm learning that you use everything you can, even if it is not for the same purpose. It is why we both love repurposing and refurbishing old junk! Well when we tore out that closet in my house, I wanted to save every last piece of old wood from the shelving that we could. My fiancé Tyler thought I was nuts! “Why do you want to keep old crappy wood?” I didn’t have a purpose for it right then but I knew it would find a new home one day.
           Impatience is something I deal with every day. Which is quite humorous by God. Before I realized how much patience I would need as an adult, I got a tattoo on my back with the bible verse, “Love is Patient, Love is Kind”. A lot of people like 1 Corinthians 13 for weddings or anniversaries, but I found a deeper connection to these words. My reverend growing up gave a sermon that talked about these words. Instead of using all these adjectives to describe love, she asked us to replace it with God. “God is patient, God is kind and he will teach you how to be too”. Such a powerful thought.
           As I grew more and more impatient with myself each day by going to work and coming home with no energy to keep working on or enjoy working on my house, I turned to painting furniture. Painting is my therapy. As I paint with each stroke, the worries and harsh thoughts about myself get swept away. I found these old side tables at a thrift store down the road from my house and had planned to use them in the guest room we were painting. I knew I wanted to paint them white,but wanted to add some personality to them. I looked around for stuff in my garage and saw the pile of wood from the closet I kept. “Yes”, I thought, “that wood would make a great top for those side tables”.

The side tables had a weird fake leather top on them that I didn’t know what to do with and this wood covered it up perfectly. I sanded the boards, cut them to fit, and nailed them onto the freshly painted tables. I spray painted the hardware black and was amazed at how good they looked. I was obsessed with them. My fiancé gave me his cute little “WOW”, too. Those tables gave me the inspiration I needed to keep working through the struggles of the remodel.
Now that most of our house is done, I am so thankful for the fun and frustration from doing the work. Sometimes our minds can get the best of us and make us think we can’t do something,but most of the time it is a lie. Most of the time it is your mind trying to protect you from failure, but failure is necessary in this life. Otherwise, we would never grow and learn and be happy. I truly mean that! If someone is perfect all the time, that means they are either hiding something or are never trying new things. What is life without getting your hands dirty and living through new experiences? Being patient with ourselves is one of the hardest things we have to learn. But when we wrestle with it and work on it, we can create some beautiful things in our lives.

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