J. ANNE

The boys are excited to move. Their only condition for a new house was stairs. They want stairs. We live in a one-story right now, and that just isn’t cutting it for playground bragging rights, I guess. And I get it. I wanted stairs so badly growing up too. Having stairs as a child is right up there with having the tallest dad. It gives you street cred.

Growing up, we lived in a farm house that, from the street, looked like it should have been at least 2 stories. But it wasn’t. It was a big house, but only one story with both an unfinished attic and basement. I begged and pleaded for my parents to let me move my bedroom into the basement. They refused. This basement was not a standard concrete-floor-with-some-uninsulated-walls… it was a straight dungeon. The walls and floor were old old old concrete that felt like it could crumble at any moment. The walls felt more like packed dirt than any form of solid mass, and it was freeeeezing cold.

Finally, my parents agreed to allow us to open up the basement and remodel it into more living space. So when they got home that evening from work I had already taken it upon myself to sledge hammer the shit out of the stairs leading to the basement in order to install a new… easier to traverse… set of stairs. How did I know they weren’t ready to start demo?

The bottom half of those stairs remained missing for at least a year. I never got my basement bedroom. But they did move the laundry room to the basement, probably five years later. And the walls remain crumbling piles of dirt to this day.

But… the lesson to this story is that I am really really really impatient. And I like to demo shit.

So, it’s only natural that before we even close escrow on a new house I’m announcing to my corner of friends on the internet that I’m going to let you ride along with me during the process of almost gutting the interior and starting from scratch.

Follow along on Instagram by following my business page @j_annephotography… and then I’ll be hashtagging both #fromthewindowstothewalls and #loveonlarkspur!! I’ll also be posting before and after photos here on the blog.

Here are some initial inspiration photos to get you ready for what’s to come!