Week One: Establishing a Home

Week one was by far the hardest. Leaving my school, my kids, my home for the last 20 years, and coming back to Wisconsin. It was hard to get my footing emotionally, so I put my full focus on getting some semblance of a house in order. Everything was still in boxes, all over the 8000 square foot school. It was overwhelming. How did we have all of this stuff in our 2000 square foot house?

My main goal was to create bedrooms for each of us. We did not move the kids into their forever rooms right away because we plan on working on them soon, so they are in our room for now.

“Our room” is the front classroom on the east side of the building. Currently it is one large room, with a small internal room that was previously used as a dark room.

So Juniper got the former dark room as her girl cave. It fits her teen angst attitude well. The carpet is gross, it has paneling and drop ceilings, as does the whole school, and no windows or real ventilation.

So not a great start. When we moved everything in, we put all the clothes in that room, so it was piled high with bags and boxes. So my first step was finding a place for all of the clothes. So many clothes! This is the life of a Midwesterner. Plus, I really like clothes. I buy the vast majority at goodwill, so I see it as doing something good for the earth. Anyway, we needed dressers. We only had one. We had recently installed closet organizers in our rooms at our old house, so we had sold or donated all of our old dressers. To the Restore we went.

I love the Restore. It is my happy place. I love all of the potential. The potential to find a treasure, or the potential you see to transform a piece or use it in a new way. And there are so many Restores in the Milwaukee area. I have been to them all by now, but the Franklin one is closest to my house and I have had really good luck there. So we got a dresser there with the intention of painting it. I have never chalk painted a dresser and then waxed it, so that’s what we decided for this ugly duckling.

So we chalk painted it green, which was not as easy as it sounds. I ended up not liking the initial color, and recoloring it with acrylic paint. Which meant I had to find the paint. It was a whole thing. I was discovering how much walking around you do when trying to find something in an 8000 square foot school. Don’t get me started on losing your phone, or your glasses. It’s my exercise routine.

We scored an antique mirror from the Restore, and installed it on the painted dresser. I think it turned out pretty cute.

Now that I had a dresser for Juniper’s clothes, I moved on to Nick and myself. I scoured the internet for vintage furniture finds. Like many, I have transitioned to Facebook marketplace from Craigslist, it has better stuff. I decided to look for furniture sets, as they were ususally cheaper and I need multiple dressers and a new headboard for Juniper or the airbnb. So I found this beautiful set on Facebook and drove all the way to Illinois to pick it up. The bedroom set was way more beautiful in person, but not as beautiful as our interaction with the seller. Rosanne is now my new Facebook friend. The set had been in her family for 75 years and her late husband had done an amazing job restoring it. I can’t believe it was painted at one time. We had quite a time trying to fit it into our minivan, but with Rosanne’s help we were able to tetris everything in. It barely fit. But so worth it. I am in love with the mirrors.

I knew we also needed hanging storage for our clothes, so decided to use the closet in the other room. The room we are occupying, hadn’t been touched or used in years. The former owner had his bedroom in what we will be turning into our living room/dining room. There is a huge closet in that room with a big hanging rod and lots of hooks (my favorite). It is not convenient, but I needed to get the clothes out of Juniper’s room, so it will have to do. While i was walking back and forth putting clothes away I noticed that the built in bookcase for that room was not actually built in. So I decided to move it. Because the whole place is carpeted (gross) it is easy to just push furniture around. Which is handy because this bookcase was heavy. I finagled it into Sully’s part of the room, and then scored some bins from good will. Now I had storage for Sullivan’s clothes too.

After finding the bookcase in my own house, schoolhouse, I decided to see if there was anything else in the building I could reuse. I found an old closet that was formally built in, but just like the bookcase, wasn’t. And again, was able to push it along the carpet into our room. For this one, I needed Nick’s help, as it was giant and very heavy. It was perfect. It could house our clothes, while also serving as a divider for Sully’s room. It is also a great place to showcase my globe collection. I even managed to score one more for $5 at a recent flea market.

So then we set up our beds, which included a trip to IKEA to get replacement parts for Sully’s bed, which was mostly successful. He is under strict orders not to jump though, there may be a few missing screws.

After that I shopped around our stuff finding tables and hampers and lamps desks and and and. Its a lot of walking. Did I mention that yet?

Then we needed to try and open the windows that were painted shut, and find shades and screens to fit them. Sully’s room was the most important, as he gets the most sun and it gets really hot. For screens, I was able to use some roll down maps that my coworkers found in one of the closets at our old school. They were the best parting gift. I have plans to finish all of the windows, so stay tuned for that.

While I was working on the bedrooms, Nick with some help from family, set up the kitchen, makeshift dining room and tv room. They are not pretty to look at, but they do the job.

We ended the week celebrating my birthday. We got bloodies and burgers at Soblemans, went on a riverboat cruise down the Milwaukee River and then spent the night at one of my favorite places, Ootsburg. It was a great end to a crazy first week in my new life at the schoolhouse.