I’m in the middle of a bath and bedroom remodel. Patching drywall. Painting. Snatching out the sink and vanity top. Swapping out the ceiling fan. New light fixture. Ripping up the linoleum and going down with tile flooring. I’m even gonna replace the towel rack and the toilet paper holder.

It’s two bedrooms, actually. One bath shared by both rooms in a kind of suite arrangement. My girls grew up in these rooms. They weren’t born here, but they spent most of their growing up years within these walls.

When we built this house nearly 30 years ago, we were pretty much broke by the time we finished. We painted every room the same eggshell white. And I mean every room. Kitchen…eggshell white. Hallway…eggshell white. Bathrooms…eggshell white. Closets…eggshell white.

It was awful, but it was cheap. I didn’t have to think about color matches. Besides, we were all tired of working on the house and just wanted to move in.

It didn’t take long for us to get sick of the sterile shade of eggshell white. Every handprint and butt bump showed up on the wall. Being in our house was like living in a drab fog. No color. No life. No pizzazz.

So, I came up with what I thought would be a good plan. I was willing to let the kids chose their own colors for their bedrooms. I was such a good dad. I was also in for a shock.

The oldest chose something called Sunshine Yellow. I have no idea if that was the real name or not, but it was so yellow it made my eyes hurt. I had to use sunglasses to open the can.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked her.

“It’s perfect,” she said.

The youngest pleaded for purple. I’m not talking about some soft shade of lavender. Nothing like a beautiful violet. She picked out a purple that would have put Barney the Dinosaur to shame.

I don’t know how either one of them ever slept in those rooms.

Those colors have been long gone. In fact, those colors were changed about 30 minutes after they packed their bags and left the house to seek their own adventures in life.

One of the questions that comes up when the kids move away is what to do with the old bedrooms. Do you keep them? Do you repurpose them? Fill one up with exercise equipment that’s hardly ever used? Make one of them a craft room?

My old bedroom at the house where I grew up eventually became a storeroom after I moved out. I started out on one end of the house when I was little. There were two bedrooms on the far end, one for my sister and one for my grandmother. After my grandmother passed away, I got moved to her old room and my room became my mom’s sewing room. Then when I grew up and took the bedroom furniture with me, Mom and Dad used that room like a closet and filled it up with shelves.

Nothing is sacred.

These bedrooms I’m working on have been through their own phases of life. One has always been a bedroom. My father-in-law came to live with us for a short spell on two separate occasions. Both daughters came home for a while after college. My son has lived in one a couple of different times.

The other room became “my room” a number of years ago. I have some old barn relics in there on the wall from the farm where I grew up. I have my Boy Scout memorabilia in there. My Dad’s old gun rack is on the wall. His desk sits under it. My mom’s cedar chest is in there. Then there’s about 8 guitars and a piano hanging around.

Anyway, I finally decided that it’s time to fix things up a little bit. Nothing major. I’m not knocking out any walls. I’m not redesigning the space. Things just needed a lift. The bedrooms have been painted several times over the years. The carpet has been replaced. But the bathroom has remained the same since the day we moved into the house 27 years ago.

I was painting the inside of one of the closets today and thinking about all the life that has passed through these rooms. Giggling girls having sleep overs. Music playing by bands that I didn’t know. Posters stuck on these walls of teen idols I didn’t recognize. Glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. Handwritten notes on bedroom doors that said things like “Adults Keep Out”.

Now they are my rooms. I can do with them whatever I want. I don’t spend a lot of time back in this part of the house. But I’ve known for a long time that these rooms needed some TLC. They have needed a little attention because they’ve been neglected.

The best part of this project is that Marion is right in there beside me. She bought “us” a paint spray gun, which is way more fun than a roller. We painted the ceiling in one bedroom in about 10 minutes. She helped me pick out the wall colors. No yellows were allowed. When I mentioned that I wanted to tile the bathroom floor, you would have thought she just hit the lottery. That girl loves to do tile work.

When I think about it, in the last two and a half years since I met Marion, my whole life has been in the process of being remodeled. Living through death and grief tends to make a man neglect certain parts of his life. There are “rooms” he doesn’t use anymore. They sit empty. They collect dust. He doesn’t bother to update them because no one occupies that space anyway.

But little by little, and I know this sounds corny, she’s been painting the rooms of my heart. She always seems to know what needs fixing. She has an eye for what makes life look better. She has taken all the empty spaces and turned them into something that lives again.

I don’t know if we’ll ever share the same house fulltime. We’re both patiently waiting for some Guidance on how our life together will take shape in the future. Right now, we’re still back and forth a lot between her home and mine. But I wanted her to have a part in this work, this simple remodel, because I know that she sees the details that I don’t see.

If there is ever going to be an “our house”, I want her input in this small piece of my house.

The plan is to move all my stuff from the one room across to the other side of the house into my son’s old bedroom. That way these two bedrooms become the guest suite. A place where our children and grandchildren can come spend the night. Real beds instead of an air mattress on the floor. We’ll make it like we want it.

I like that.

Now that the closet is finished, it looks like it needs a second coat. I grab my brush.

Remodel work is never done.