The last few weeks at home have been chaotic.
We discovered a hole in a sewer pipe, and the only way to repair it was by demolishing a bathroom and replacing the sewer lines beneath it. We have been dealing with contractors, buying materials, living with only one bathroom for four people (thank goodness Joseph isn’t potty trained yet), and we even had to move out of the house for a week while the water was shut off.
Like I said, chaotic.
What made it harder was that my grandparents had added that bathroom onto the house and decorated it the way they wanted. I never imagined that one day I would have to tear out something they had built.
Most people probably don’t get sentimental while picking out tile and flooring for a bathroom renovation, but I wasn’t just replacing a bathroom. I was investing in a space that my children may someday inherit.
My grandparents bought our house in the 1960s.
My mom, aunt, and uncle were raised there. My grandmother took care of the house while my grandfather was away on deployment. My uncle built the shed in the backyard, the bookcase in my office, and the cabinets above the washer and dryer.
Years later, I grew up there too.
The house was less than two miles from my parents’ home, so I would ride my bike over and have coffee at the dining room table with my grandparents. My friends and I would stop there after trick-or-treating for pizza, chili, and time with the neighbors. We had Easter egg hunts in the yard and Christmas mornings in the living room.
When I was sick, my mom would drop me off there before going to work, and I would crawl into the bed in the guest room, a room we simply called the Blue Room.
Then, about ten years ago, my grandparents passed away within a couple of weeks of each other.
Not long after, my mom approached me and asked if Jillian and I would be interested in buying the house.
I had always hoped to raise a family in the same neighborhood where I grew up, but I never imagined that would happen in my grandparents’ house.
Jillian and I moved in a few months before we got married, and two years later we purchased the house from my parents.
Since then, we have made plenty of changes.
We landscaped the backyard. We replaced the roof and added solar panels. We have replaced most of the appliances. Jillian even operated a childcare center out of the converted garage until last August.
Over time, we made the house our own.
Now Brooks’s bedroom is what used to be the Blue Room.
Joseph’s bedroom was once my grandfather’s office.
And my boys are growing up in the same house where so many of my own childhood memories were made.
They are creating memories of their own now, just as I did years ago.
The bathroom we demolished isn’t as tragic as it might sound.
It’s just a bathroom.
Just another change we are making as we continue shaping the house into our own home.
Because in the end, it really is just a house.
It’s walls and floors and plumbing and paint.
The structure itself isn’t what matters.
What matters is what the structure holds within.
The stories.
The memories.
The people who once lived there.
The people who live there now.
And maybe, someday, the people who will live there after us.
So while the plumbing, tile work, and flooring might look like nothing more than a bathroom renovation, to me it’s something more.
It’s a chance to remember the past while adding a new chapter to a story that began long before I ever stepped foot inside that house.
And it’s an opportunity to create a place where memories will continue to be made long after I’m gone.
The Young Napoleon Project 