Makers

I am currently watching a documentary called Makers, (it's great! watch it!) about women who have shaped women's rights in our country. So interesting. What it immediately brings to mind is the current "debate" over women calling themselves feminists, or not. Or if staying at home with kids is feminist or not. And what I am struck by is how silly that dialogue is. First of all, feminism, from what I gather, is about having agency to live your own life, make your own choices, and be your own person. Yes, I am a feminist! Related to that, being self-determined and free has nothing to do with what particular choices you make, but who gets to make them. Yes, there are traditional gender roles to be considered, or thwarted, or renegotiated, but it's neither here nor there for me in terms of the essential fact that I am a human being and I am in charge of my own life. I say that makes me a feminist. We all need to stop worrying about whether that sounds good or bad or old-fashioned or militant or like we have hairy armpits, and just focus on living our lives as well and fully as we can and let others do the same.

The House: Before and After

So, as I promised you all maybe three hundred years ago or so, I want to share some before and after pictures (as well as some mid-renovation pictures) of the work we've done on our house. Enjoy!

Living Room: note the salmon color. Also: the room is about 11 feet wide. The first picture was in the listing, and it looks like you can go ballroom dancing in there. Not the case: that's why we took out the cute little fireplace.

Here's a little detail shot of the living room. Yes, it's very yellow in there. But it's a cooler gold tone than it looks here.

Dining Room: we took out the arch mainly because the arch was not really well-crafted and we wanted to open the space up a bit. We plan to put in some wood molding and possibly also wooden shelves (along these lines). Note the children's furniture in the dining room.  :-)

Kitchen: this is where most of the time and energy went...

This before picture doesn't have a window in the corner with the fridge because the window was in the then-pantry.

The second picture below is right after the contractors tore out the pantry wall. You can see where it was, as well as where the kitchen cabinets on the other side of the wall were. It made the kitchen really small, and because of the location of the hallway, you couldn't put any cabinets on the west wall (where you see a table in the before shots.)

I'm really proud of how much we were able to do ourselves, and how things have turned out. We are so happy to finally be able to just enjoy our home. There's still a list a mile long of course, but we're not living out of boxes or cooking on plywood countertops. Win!