March 25, 2011

well hello stranger



I feel like I've seen a banister, just like this, in just this spot before.

Oh right. That's why it looks so familiar.
That's what you looked like before we did this.

Sometimes our renovations don't have a fixed endpoint. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, it allows us the flexibility of change as we find we need it. Like when we were putting in the kitchen cabinets and the wobblyness of the old floors meant that the far end cabinet was a good inch lower than the rest. Instead of having to rip out the cabinets and the floor and do who knows what to make it right, we adjusted- a thicker piece of concrete for that section of countertop. Now it looks like a cool detail. And then there is the whole reason for the butcherblock section which, well, thank goodness we made that mistake, beacasue that section is where I do most of my cooking. I love it.

When we pulled the banister off of the stairs we knew that at some point we'd have to put something back in. For safety. But what? Well, we weren't sure. It opened up the room to have nothing there and it's the first thing that you see when you open the door, so it would have been a nice place to make a statement. But after a year and a half of trying to decide what should go there, and with that, how the bookshelf should finish off, we are running low on time, and so we built a new banister that looks very much like the old one, except painted this time, which I like much better. So yeah, we could have just saved ourselves a lot of time by leaving it, but again, I think that's ok. Sometimes renovations don't go as planned and you just go back to the origional. It's fate, I guess, the will of the DIY gods. And now that it's back, I'll admit, I really like the sweet simplicity of it.

Plus, one more thing checked off the list.

Have you had a renovation or project end up like that? Back where you started?