making room

When I first started the renovation, I was focused on the parlor floor. It made sense. That’s where life happens in public. The kitchen where friends gather around the island long after dinner is over. The dining room where conversations stretch into the evening. The living room where guests settle in with a glass of wine. Those rooms were about creating a home I could live in and share.

In the past few months, the renovation has moved upstairs and into the more intimate spaces in my home. There’s drilling, plastering, millwork like before but this time, it feels different.

Half of the upstairs floor is complete already: the guest room, the library and my office. Each of those spaces reflects a life I already know. The books I’ve read and come back to. The work I do, my writing, my creative life. The friends and family who will come to stay for a while or longer.

This next phase of work includes the interior spaces I chose to take on last: my bedroom suite and a future kid’s bedroom and bathroom. There’s a dual quality in it all: designing a space for the woman I am now and preparing to invite motherhood in. Between sketching room layouts and sitting on cardboard boxes with my contractor, I’ve found myself thinking about what it means to design a room for the person you are becoming and a life and little that aren’t quite here yet.

There’s something surprisingly vulnerable about it all. It’s caught me somewhat off guard in what felt like a practical endeavor at first. This realization that mundane decisions on wood stain, hardware finishes and recess lights are choices about the shape of a life. The dimmer knobs you’d turn off while saying goodnight. The tub you’d submerge in after a too long day.

We often talk about faith as belief, but maybe faith is also action. Small ones that compound into the parts of life we’ve only imagined so far.

Faith can be a lot of things. Maybe it’s also making room.

More soon,

L