Happy Anniversary to Our House!

Jane Kemp
Jul 31, 2016
2 min read

About eight years ago, I bought my first home, a 1936 ranch-ish house. This house was way out of my budget, but thanks to the market dropping, a highly motivated seller, and my fabulous real estate agents, the stars alligned, my offer was accepted, and we were able to move in!

I had great cosmetic plans for this house, but I became cautious as the real estate market fell. I did, however work on the lower level of my home, which has two small, oddly shaped bedrooms and a bath, converted from the original basement. Out went the shag carpet, in came bamboo flooring, and down went the weird built in shelves that made the rooms feel even smaller.

My bedroom is an L shaped room that had a small beam running across ceiling. Originally I was going to have the beam go up into the ceiling to make the room feel larger. But as these things go, when my contractor opened everything up, it was discovered that the support beam that holds up the living room and dining room floor, right above where I sleep, had been cut. Additionally, nothing was bolted to the foundation. Not good when you live near a fault line!

So, now my tiny, oddly shaped bedroom has a HUGE post and beam running through it. Oh well. That's life in the Bay Area. On the plus side, my bedroom has one brick wall, and looks out onto my garden.

There's really not much space down here for a lot of furniture, so I decided to surround the bed with my colection of flower painting. What the heck. Here's how it looked when I originally put them up. Not perfect to say the least! But it stayed like this for several years.

Today, in a burst of energy, and because I love moving things around, I decided to rehang and reconfigure the paintings.

Here's how it looks now. I like it better. And in full disclosure, there are at least three nail holes behind each painting because that's how I roll when it comes to hanging art!