This Old House

More plumbing issues for us-hooray! I won't go into the boring details, but suffice it to say that when you put a brand new water heater into an old house, you need to make sure that you also install a pressure reducer valve, which is what we will be doing tomorrow. Hopefully, this will cure the problem of the intermittenly wet laundry room floor we have been having.

We have found that old houses lack a lot of the things that new houses just come with automatically. Things like decent sized garages, kitchens you can breathe in, and closets big enough to actually put something in. Not to mention things like pressure reducer valves and upstairs laundry rooms. All those things that really make me want to move.

But old houses come with some cool things too. Like backyards bigger than a postage stamp. Built in shelves and real hardwood floors. Big grown-up shade trees and diverse neighborhoods. Bricks. And thick foundations and sturdy walls.

When and if we leave this house, there are some things I won't miss. I won't miss the garage door. I won't miss the old windows. And I won't miss my teeny tiny closet in my teeny tiny master bedroom. But I will miss my backyard. I will miss the oak tree we planted when Will was a year old, and he and the tree were the same size. I will miss the park in the back yard, the hardwood floors we refinished, my living room window and my ceiling fan. I will even miss having everybody crowded around the kitchen table in our too-small dining area. And I will miss our front porch.

So our new house, if we ever find it, has a lot to live up to. Old plumbing, drafty windows and all, we've had a good run in this old place.