Chapter 2 Coming Home

Serenity flipped on the light switch in the mud room and a single bulb light fixture flickered on. She was excited to re-tour the house for the first time as the owner.

Cinnamon ran in the door behind her and started checking out the new surroundings. Serenity shouted out the door to Kristoff, "Are you coming?" and then started following the pitter patter of dog feet across the hardwood floors further in the house. She thought to herself, 'I'm sure if any critters have gotten in here, Cinnamon will find them before I do.' As she walked through each room she flipped on lights. Kitchen, formal dining room, large living room. Just as she reached the main level master bedroom, Kristoff caught up with her.

"Is this the bedroom we're going to take for now?" he asked.

"I think this will be the best place for us until we get the rest of the main level renovated. Then we can move upstairs to one of those bedrooms until we get this bedroom cleaned out and remodeled. I would think that we will use this as our permanent bedroom when it's finished. And we can do the renovations upstairs after we have made the permanent move, since we don't actually need to use that space."

As Serenity finished explaining her ideas, she flipped on the light switch in the master bedroom. Nothing. She groaned, "Light bulb must be bad."

Kristoff sighed. "I guess I better go out to the truck and figure out where I packed bulbs at while I unload what we will need for sleeping." Kristoff was always overprepared for everything and, of course, had thought to pack extra bulbs with his work lights, just in case.

Serenity followed him back outside to start unpacking what they would need for the night. She piled the air mattress, pump to inflate it, blankets, pillows and all of their clothing into the living room until Kristoff found the extra bulbs. Kristoff had started unloading all of the work supplies and tools into the mud room as he searched. Once he finally found his bulbs, he used his flashlight to navigate the dark bedroom and screwed the new bulb into the ancient fixture.

Once the light popped on, Kristoff called for Serenity to come into the master bedroom.

With awe showing in her eyes, Serenity slowly took in the master bedroom. She had forgotten how amazing the original trim work and wood floors had been in this room when she had seen it when touring the home the first time. It was obvious that the previous owners had also removed some old belongings and cleaned up some since the house had sold. Serenity marveled at the size of the bedroom and attached walk in closet. She opened up the attached bathroom door and realized that the previous owners had also left behind the antique claw foot tub that they had originally stated they would be taking. The master bedroom was exceptionally large for a 1900's farmhouse and the private attached bathroom had been added only about 10 years before. Serenity giggled as she thought of the work she had planned to do in this room. She intended to leave all of the original woodwork and fixtures and give it some lighter, brighter colors. She had always preferred for her bedroom to have lighter, calming colors and to be a clean, organized area where one would feel relaxed when unwinding at the end of a long day.

Kristoff began talking about all of the things he could do with the space in the master bedroom. Shelving and dressers and...

Serenity rolled her eyes and immediately blurted out, "Not in my bedroom."

That quick, the mood in the room shifted. Kristoff had always been one to save everything. He even had a trailer for extra storage parked on his friend's property. His spare bedroom was filled wall to wall with shelves organized with tools, paints, cleaners, supplies for his hobbies and anything else that he felt was worth keeping. Serenity had grown up in a home with a mother that was an 'almost hoarder', as she called it. She had always kept her home neat and orderly and would regularly purged items that were no longer needed or rarely used. Although they didn't live together, they spent enough time together to know that each had to precariously balance their material item habits so as not to push the other over the edge.

As quickly as the words rolled off Serenity's tongue, she realized what she had said and quickly followed with, "How about we head upstairs really quick to look over those rooms and then we can come back down to find something to eat really quick before we set up our sleeping quarters and we try to get some rest?" Serenity was well aware of her struggle to think before she blurted and was also well aware of how quickly Kristoff could get irritated and defensive. She didn't want to start the first night of their first weekend in the new house at odds with each other.

Kristoff mumbled, "Fine," and followed Serenity up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs was a huge landing that reminded Serenity of her grandmother's old house before he grandmother had died and it had been sold. And just like her grandmother's house, there were 3 doors leading off of the open area into bedrooms. The landing itself had the original hardwood floors and was large enough to use as a sitting area. Serenity smiled as she remembered the feeling of her grandmother's house and hoped to be able to recreate the atmosphere in this house soon.

Kristoff grabbed the door handle of the first room and struggled to get it to open. He grumbled to himself about how he would have to fix every single 'old' thing in this house. Finally the latch popped free and they went in to the room to investigate. Serenity remembered that this was the smallest bedroom in the house and would likely be a good room to use as storage, since they had no need for 4 bedrooms. Kristoff finally heard something that made him happy and a crooked smile appeared on his face as he started thinking off all the things he could do with this room. As he stood there day-dreaming, Serenity had already walked off towards the second room.

As Serenity turned on the light and walked around, she fondly remembered her plans that she had originally wanted for this room. It would house a large bed so that it could be used as a spare bedroom for when they received guests, like one of her children or his brother and sister-in-law. In addition, since the room was good sized, she would use one wall as a sewing area. Not that she did a lot of sewing, but on occasion she would repair clothing or sew up some new pillows. Kristoff also owned a few antique machines that he liked to use on occasion and she figured that two machines, one modern and one of the antiques, would make good utilization of the space as well as make the place feel homey when they had visitors.

Serenity left her primary guest room as Kristoff caught up with her after his day-dreaming. She opened the door and flipped the light switch.

"Wow! This room is huge!" Kristoff remarked as he peered into the room. "They left a bunch of junk in here," he remarked as he noticed a stack of old furniture piled into one corner of the room.

Serenity's eyes sparkled as she looked at the antique furniture. Just then Kristoff said, "I'll have to start carrying this stuff out and burning it on the weekends while we're here so that once we get to renovating up here, we won't have to worry about it."

"No!" Serenity shrieked. She stared at Kristoff. "We are not burning this beautiful antique furniture," she said.

Kristoff looked at her and immediately replied, "Why would we keep this old junk? It's probably tore up and broken and I'll just have to fix it. You know that I don't like to do carpentry work and this is just adding more to my list! It needs to go!"

Serenity started to boil inside. She was irritated with Kristoff approaching everything as if it was going to be his way and as if he was the only one that was going to be working on the house. This was her first house and she had put all of her hard work and effort into saving to finally get the opportunity to buy a house she could be proud to call her own. And here was Mr. Not So Handy Inside the Home thinking he was going to be making all the choices. Since it was their first weekend they were going to be spending in the house and they were going to have to deal with many weekends like this after, Serenity decided to try to calm the impending storm.

"We'll talk about it more when we get things going," she said and walked out the door. As she walked across the landing back to the stairs, she said over her shoulder, "Let's get downstairs and find something to eat so we can go to bed. I'm getting hungry and tired."