With our boys spending a week at a summer day camp, my wife and I recently dove into a substantial (for us) home project – installing a new laminate wood floor in our kitchen. Like the true DIY go-getters we are, we did every bit ourselves. And, like the absent-minded handyman that I am, the project proceeded in fits and starts over the better part of four days as I measured, cut, laid the planks, re-measured, re-cut, tossed ill-fitting boards out, and rubbed my sore knees and my wife’s sore back, all in the hope of a fresh, clean kitchen for our family to enjoy.
It’s a task I’m not sure I envisioned eight years ago when we bought this house, our first as a married couple after several years of the renting life. When we moved in, we insisted to anyone who would listen that this house was a “starter home.” Though it was a perfectly lovely three-bedroom with good bones in a quiet village here in Western New York, positioned on a modest half-acre with a mature maple shading a bricked back patio, we felt the itch common to our generation, I’m told, to keep moving, stay for a few years, then move on out, onward and upward.
But something happened along the way, as the years went on and we moved further into the role of homeowners.
We got planted.
