The Story of a Cottage - Kitchen Redemption

We had decided to swing by just to look. I hadn’t really made a connection, from the photo in the add, it just wasn’t my favorite. He was anxious to get us into a real home in our new city though, and this looked like a good option so we thought we’d swing by. When we arrived, it was empty, (later we learned it had been for about 5 years according to the neighbors), and we walked around back. We tried the door, and with a little wiggle, it opened! We stepped trepid inside.

The instant I walked in, I fell in love with the place. I felt like it was already ours. When I walked through the place I just imagined what it could be. I didn’t even see the crumbling mess as it was, I saw it as the bright beautiful home I could make it. As if I was walking through the home as it was in the future, not in the present. The light poured in through the windows. That was my favorite part - the windows were old, wooden gridded panes, and lots of them. There was old floral wallpaper peeling off the walls, three different colors of yellow just in the kitchen, and cheap lace curtains over the windows. There was a sooty but beautiful hearth in the living room. The walls were cobwebbed and cracking but made with lath and plaster. Everything was sturdy, although in a major state of decay. There was a hole in the floor of the kitchen where there was a leak and rot. The kitchen was far from being usable - electrical and plumbing were needed, everything was needed actually. I didn’t think much about that though because already my mind was reeling with what a charming place it could become.

At the time, we were living in Charlottesville and Chafin was commuting to Richmond for his new job. We’d just gotten married and come back from our honeymoon a few short months before. We really needed a place to live in Richmond because driving an hour each way was a long day for my love. A big project wasn’t really what we had in mind, but I was attached to the place. My parents pointed out what a huge undertaking it would be. There were a lot of problems with the house. Besides that, there were some hitches with actually buying it. It wasn’t legally livable which affects how the loan is sorted out. After talking about it, just actually moving in seems like an insurmountable task that might even be impossible. On the other hand, we felt it would be better paying towards our own home rather than paying rent each month. We were attracted to the idea of creating a comfortable home of our own. Besides, I really liked the place, a lot. In my heart, it was already our cottage.

Looking back, we really had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t know much about houses, or about buying them, or about fixing them, or about the market, or about the area, or about what we wanted out of life. It seems we just fumbled forward happily!

When we made the decision to go for it, it was already under contract. It’s all a long story but in short, in some strange fate, the contract fell through! We moved quickly. In a whirl, it was all planned, and the house was ours. Apparently, there was quite the line of people looking to get into it besides us so we were tremendously lucky. It must have been an act of God. Some of them stopped by later, each telling us their own designs they had in mind for the place, thinking their plan was best. It made us even more glad we were the ones who got it!

It was a strange season of life. We seemed to be in three places but truly home in none. We were hardly at our Charlottesville apartment anymore, we slept over at my parents who lived half an hour away from the new place, and spent every free waking moment trying to get the house in a condition to live. Looking back, Chafin says he feels like it was power from God, the way he was working seemed truly superhuman.

Soon we were sleeping on an air mattress in the middle of the mess. We slept in the middle of sawdust and tools. We had a fridge and a microwave and lived off of trader joe’s green chili tamales from the frozen section. I also remember one morning having black coffee and an egg McMuffin’s at McDonald’s together with a bunch of old men before making a home depot run. The first thing we bought for the kitchen was the cheapest coffee pot target had to offer, very early one morning because when we woke up we needed coffee. I made coffee from the bathroom sink at least once a day. We were motivated because the only way we could get away from the 24-7 mess of it was to finish what we started.

Looking back, it’s all a blur. I’ll never forget when the bathroom was finished. It was the first room to be totally done. It was so fresh and clean and beautiful. Sometimes I would go there just to feel sane for a few minutes, sitting on the floor, an oasis from the mess and chaos outside.

I’ve wanted to share our journey of before and after for a long time, and now I am really doing it. I want to share it all, and bits of the story along the way. It’s a great feeling, seeing how far we’ve come. It’s good to look back at what the place was like before because it’s hard to remember now. It’s very satisfying for us, we never get tired of looking at the old photos. We really did a lot!

Wow…it’s so crazy for me to see how this looked before! There are a few from when we first bought the house and then a few of the process.We re used the old wood cabinets because they were a nice quality but I’ve always wanted white cabinets. People warned me they’d get dirty fast but I’ve found just quickly wiping them down when I wipe the counters if I notice anything does the trick. The bottom photo is a kitchen we lived with for quite awhile - with no countertops :P. The photo with people is my dad and brother planning the wood flooring together. It was so nice to have the help from my family, it made all the difference! We did a whole lot to changed things but one of the big things was opening up the door between the kitchen and the living room to being big, airy, and open and making if feel more like a connected house - you can’t see that in the photo but you can feel it. Another thing I’ve wanted since I used to draw house plans as a teenager and even a young girl was shelves in the kitchen.

Believe it or not I am actually a person who actually really values practicality and convenience as much as I believe in honoring beauty. My practice is that almost everything beautiful should have a practical purpose and everything practical should be beautiful. I think beautiful things are meant to be enjoyed on a daily basis, not sitting in a cabinet collecting dust. These shelves allow the practical things in my life make our home more beautiful. I can’t think of a thing on the shelves I don’t regularly enjoy using - even the plants give me clean oxygen to breath!

Almost everything with the exception of maybe 3 items had a life before it lived on this shelf in this happy kitchen. I’ve collected it all over time and it’s a constantly evolving collection. Each piece has a memory from when I found it. Some of the pottery is inscribed with a stranger’s initials - they made it lovingly with their own two hands and now they are some where else in this world or out of it. It’s kind of special and strange to think this odd collection of things has found a home here - I wonder what stories they’d tell each other if they could talk.

I’m very grateful for a beautiful space to prepare the nourishment for our bodies daily. It’s nice to be surrounded by all this loveliness which we brought into being with our own two hands. I think nutrition and mindfully eating is an incredibly important part of living well and being in a beautiful space when I’m putting it all together brings me a lot of joy. It was worth all the long hours and frustrating mistakes it took to create this kitchen. Actually, I think loving this place to life is what makes it so special and beautiful to me.