Follow THE YELLOW BRICK HOUSE

My Big Red Brick House

One of the newest, biggest, and most difficult hurdle in my 54th (I know it's technically the 55th year of my life, but I  will be experiencing the age of 54 all of 2012) year of my life is the yellow brick house.  We sold our beautiful 3500 sq. ft. home in September 2011 and moved into a 1700 sq. ft. home in November 2011.  Mr. B. decided it was time to downsize.  Hence, The Yellow Brick House, which is actually 1795 sq. feet-not that 95 extra really helps.  Not much at all.  You see my big red house as I affectionately called it, had a huge finished basement with extra closets.  I had 3 spare bedrooms - all with extra closet space. I had big hallway closets, I had a large laundry room, I had two, count that as 2 big walk-in master bedroom closets.  My master bath was so big you could have had a tennis match in it.  I had a 3 car garage plus a huge walk-in attic above the garage all for extra storage.  This wasn't for extra storage, but just to make it sound even better and make me feel even worse, there was also a huge in-ground salt water pool. 

My past saltwater in-ground swimming pool.

 This yellow brick house has 3 tiny bedrooms with tiny, tiny closets.  My clothes alone will not fit in my bedroom closet but now Mr. B. and I have to share.  Clothes and shoes are so crammed in there that I have warned everyone that if there is an event I need to go to they better give me at least 4 hours notice.  I need to dig, pull apart, and search with flashlights for that certain sweater.  I do not have a master bath, instead in the yellow brick house, I have a narrow hallway bathroom.  It is so narrow that every time I turn around too fast I bang into the walls.  I have bruises all over my arms and  my elbows especially seem to keep hitting the walls in there.  I have a one car garage, my husband insists it's a two car but I can tell you from experience that with one small car inside there is not enough room for the garbage cans-which ended up outside.  My exercise equipment which had it's own room at the red brick house is now piled up one on top of the other in the garage.  Totally unusable. 
My kitchen is nonexistent here.  There is no kitchen--we are working on that issue now.  New cabinets arriving hopefully in one week.  I do not have a laundry room, that is nonexistent as well and will remain that way indefinitely.  The previous owners used the washer and dryer  in the kitchen.  That should have been a sign right then.  For the time being, we are washing our clothes in the washer in the non kitchen and hanging our wet laundry everywhere in the house.  I have to be sure it's not a drywall or knockdown walls day when I hang the laundry.  There's a fine white dust hanging around everywhere in the yellow brick home.  

 Someday all the renovations will be finished, someday soon I hope.  My backyard is big, but my doggies ended up with a smaller yard.  We moved in November, it was a balmy 30 degrees F. here in the Midwest and we had to put up chicken wire for a quickie fence solution.  Problem is my puppy dogs are all getting fat from not having enough room or yard to run in, even the house makes for a shorter distance for them to go from the living room couch to the bed.  I think they're depressed.  They are not getting enough steps in on a daily basis.  We are all getting fat living in this small house.  We all need to put our pedometers on.   We all miss the red brick house, that is everyone except Mr. B.  He doesn't say much but I have to wonder with all these repairs, make that daily repairs he has to do.  The hot water tap in the bathtub shower won't shut off today.  I never considered myself to be a materialistic person, but I do now.  I love my red brick house.  I miss it.

The Yellow Brick House