i do not wish to return to Kansas

 Looking at the pictures from the last time my childhood home sold are really trippy. My room looks so much bigger than I remember. And someone finally got around to properly finishing the basement; the arguments that arose from just putting up drywall down there pretty much nixed that project the whole time we lived there.

The fireplace really does not look right without a humongous painting on it - it's a stark column jutting out with a cathedral ceiling, main feature of the whole damn house. The painting we had up was an abstract that was probably taller than I am and started lower downthan that the shelf-thing they put in. And the two resulting big niches had on one side Mom's baby grand piano, and on the other a suuuper tall bookcase (I remember getting books from the top shelves by standing on the staircase landing and reaching over) and a good reading chair.  If you've got that height, you gotta use it, you know? Though I am assuming that is mostly staging furniture and not actual people live there furniture.

The kitchen looks worse than it did in the 70s. It looks like it got done in that HGTV show where neighbors would redo rooms in each others houses. If you are going to put in a crazy tile wall treatment and new countertop, why would you leave the old cabinets as is? Possibly they are stained them a bit darker, but ... I think that might even be the same hardware. Replacing the harvest gold appliances was a good call, though.

We had the most epic gaudy nightclub metallic wall paper on the stairs that led down to the basement. It was fabulous, and completely out of place.