And by that title I mean the inside of my house.

My house is a two-story Farmhouse/Cape Cod mash-up in the Lake Highlands area of Dallas about a half-mile from where I grew up. It was built in 1962 for a family of eight kids and it showed every bit of its age when we bought it in 1991.

It’s the only house Scott and I ever lived in and, over the years, we had done a lot of work inside and out.

In 2006, we completely gutted and rebuilt the main bedroom, exercising eminent domain to take Molly’s old bedroom and use it to enlarge the bath and create an enormous closet.

In 2018, we completely gutted the rest of the downstairs, knocking down walls and appropriating a portion of the garage to create the daddy of all open concept kitchen/living room/dining rooms.

The goal was to create a big enough space to accommodate our kids and their kids at family gatherings. Mission accomplished. Sadly, Scott only enjoyed our wonderful new space a few times before he died. But I am grateful that we did it because I think that project would be too daunting for me now.

HOWEVER, last year I embarked on the next phase of creating my forever home. The upstairs.

It had become a sort of no-man’s (or woman’s) land, housing an uncomfortable guest room, a barely functional bath, and a huge former dormitory that held my unused desk and a lot of odds and ends from my parents’ home, and Scott’s parents’ home and business records and old photographs, and well, you get it.

So since I was retiring and would be welcoming hordes of visitors and dignitaries (or at least my Oregon kids) I wanted to create a warm, comfortable guestroom and bath and a functional office area where I could start writing again.

Enter son-in-law Beau, who became my contractor and design consultant.

So over the next few weeks I will take you on our journey to renovate, renew and revitalize my upstairs rooms. As your Senior Influencer, it’s my duty to do so.

The alternative is for me to show you what I am cooking. No one wants to see that.

I’ll start you out with the BEFORE photos. Brace yourself.

So what you’re seeing is the bath in southwest hues of taupe and sage with gold fixtures (what was I thinking?) The next is the dormitory office in the throws of it’s life as the attic annex, and the last three are the guestroom cum resting place for a lot of old furniture and my mom’s odd collection of scary primitive children’s paintings.

Let me know if you want one.