The Simple Joy of A Freshly Painted House

Sometimes the most mundane things can seem like a breakthrough

Photo by Ronald Cuyan on Unsplash

Last week, we had our home painted, during which, I spent a significant amount of time apologizing to the painters.

We’ve lived in our new home for three years and we’re finally settled in. It has really needed paint since we first bought the place, but circumstances conspired to make that difficult. And there were more important things that needed to be done.

We had to unexpectedly replace the furnace in our unit (we bought a three-flat building), right before the start of a Chicago winter.

We had to unexpectedly replace a few broken windows. (Long story)

There was the roof leak.

And our basement is unheated, though when we bought, there was a tired old furnace. It was so decrepit that when I’d first seen it, I couldn’t decide whether it would kill us by starting an electrical fire, by blowing up, or by carbon monoxide poisoning.

We’d made its removal a condition of the purchase agreement.

Then, in February of that first year, we had a week or so of freezing weather so cold that that the news referred to it as a “Polar Vortex” and I became convinced it would lead to one of the horrors of my…