Chapter Fourteen

“Hello there, lovelies,” said Miranda, greeting us as we came in.

“Hello there, Mama,” said Xander, giving her a kiss.

Eloim was on his hip and Miranda gave him a quick kiss that he mostly ignored, concentrating on the plushy he had in his hands.

“How are you?” he asked me, coming in for a kiss.

I gave her one, smiling. “Very, well, how about you?

“Wonderful,” she said. “Glad to finally meet you in the flesh.

“Ditto,” I agreed.

I shook hands with Regis and Xander gave me Eloim, so that he could help his father unload our luggage and take everything inside.

Miranda looked from Eloim to me, nodded then turned around and led us inside.

We all had dinner together. They were really nice people.

“You’ll have to get used to the rain, sweetie,” Miranda told me.

“Can’t be worse than the snow,” I told her, which made her smile.

“I guess you’ll handle things just fine.

I laughed at that.

The next day, we all went to have a look at the house.

“I know it doesn’t look like much now,” said Regis. “It can always be a little scary at first, but when things start to fall into place, you’ll see it’s not so bad, not bad at all.

I nodded and we drove up the bumpy, disused entryway, until the car peeked from the trees and we saw the house erected in front of us.

The exterior was mostly wood in a Queen Anne style. The foundation was exposed stones. The paint was peeled and there was ornamentation hanging in all the wrong directions, but I was able to visualise everything in place, with a proper coat of pain. The details were intricate and the Mansard roof had already been updated and modernised.

“It’s amazing,” I said.

That made Xander’s parents smile.

“A lot of people get scared by big projects like these, especially in this state,” said Regis.

“Oh, it was a lot worse than this when I bought it,” said Xander.

“Yeah,” I said. “But with plenty of elbow grease, this is going to be one hell of a castle.

Regis burst out laughing.

“I see you got yourself one though little lady,” he said to his son.

Xander smiled at me.

“I’m not afraid of work,” I told them.

“Good, because this is going to be a lot of it,” Regis told me.

“We’re still using contractors,” said Xander. “It’s not like we’re doing everything ourselves.

The inside was great. There was peeling paint everywhere, and there was dead leaves that had found their ways in somehow. Some rooms were full of cobwebs—especially those that had no work done in yet—but the dark wood flooring was in pretty good condition regardless. It needed some massive buffing job and varnishing, but I saw no rot. The paint was bad, but most of the walls looked relatively healthy too, so it was mostly aesthetic damages and nothing impossible to repair. Scrapping the old paint and redoing it would do the trick in most cases. Taking off some of the damaged wallpaper too. I’ve found rot on some of it, but it didn’t seem to extend to the wall underneath.

We found some water damage in the attic, as the roof had been leaking, but the contractors had stripped everything off and the wood below was still in relatively good condition. They had changed a few beams, and did similarly in the basement, but no part of the house was about to crumble down, and anything that could have posed a risk, had already been taking care of.

There were a few rooms with massive built-in, which was absolutely marvelous. I loved those.

The kitchen, on the other hand, was horrid, and in the basement, as staff used to cook hidden below. We knew we were stripping everything away anyways and were converting one of the rooms on the first floor as a kitchen instead. The electricity, and wiring was mostly done too, and all according to my plans. It was great, we would get a stylish, modern kitchen, but that would still fit with the style and aesthetic of the rest of the house.

I loved it.

I loved all of it.the haunted house look didn’t deter me one bit.

I felt like everyone but Eloim had been sort of holding their breath to see what my reaction would be. I mean, I had seen the house in pictures, but when you actually walk inside it, when you smell the mix of stale air and new materials, and tool usage, it can get pretty intimidating, but I’m able to see the potential below it all.

Every house can be staged bad or well, and decor can change the vibe of any place. But what is below, the foundation, the structure, this is the most important. Plus, I love old houses.

And my artistic mind loved looking at the derelict look of it, and I took actually plenty of pictures. When I was a teenager, I went in abandoned buildings and places with my friends to walk around and take pictures. I mean, I would not live in a place rotten to the core, but there is a sort of beauty in the left-overs of life and how nature slowly retake land and devours old building where we are not there anymore to care for them.

I guess it’s the cycle of all living things.

We explored further for a while and talked to the contractor, but so far, I wasn’t scared at all by the work.

The one thing that can be scary in renovating old houses is the budget. I’ve never heard of a project costing less than expected. It’s usually the other way around, and as I had no idea of our financial situation, I didn’t know what to expect.

When we got back at his parents house, in the evening, we sat in one of the drawing rooms—because yes, they have those, and more than one too—and I voice my concerns, so Xander who took his computer out and we spent a few hours going through everything.

I thought I was an organised person, until I saw his spreadsheets.

He is a spreadsheet king.

Everything was sorted out with precise numbers, plus percentages of possible inflation relative to the kinds of surprises that could occur on various sections of the project, but even after all that, I he added an additional percentage of the budget to any possible surprises or delays. Now, I’m not so sure we’ll bust our finances.

He also gave me the run down on what we could play with for the design, and then we segwayed into design ideas. I took my laptop and opened the plans I had made as of yet, and we made a few modifications to better fit the additional data we had gotten from the visit.

I heard of a lot of couples being tested by going through a construction or renovation project, but I hadn’t heard of many couples getting together through those types of projects.

So I thought, if we can get through this and make it, then, we’ll be able to get through anything together.

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