When mom and dad bought their 1970s home in the late 1990s, they had a lot on their to-do list. This had been a smoker's home, and because none of us were smokers, the first order of business was to get rid of the curtains, Kilz the walls, and repaint to try and get rid of the smell.
They also wanted to cover the dark wood paneling in the living room and hallway as well as the dining room wallpaper so as to brighten up the house and make it more our own.
New appliances were put in - the whole works: fridge, microwave, stove, dishwasher, washer, and dryer. The kitchen countertops were also replaced, and the cabinets were freshly painted to give everything a crisper look.
As I've mentioned before, my dad, though he couldn't stand painting, was actually very good at it. The dining room walls, where there was the most wallpaper, were methodically painted over to the extent that if you didn't know there had been wallpaper there, you'd never know, some 30 years after he'd painted in that spot, that there had ever been wallpaper there.
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Another thing on the to-do list was to get rid of a wall air conditioning unit the previous owners had put in, which was installed in the dining room right next to a window. It had its own little space high on the wall, but it wasn't being used anymore.
In the three decades we've had this home, what was done in the spot where the window AC unit was previously housed is one of my favorite things they did to the house. My dad and a very talented jack-of-all-trades friend of his turned it into a very basic picture window. I don't know the exact dimensions of it, but they used the existing footprint, maybe 14"x24", and put a piece of plexiglass in it, and then they framed it out.
This is what it looks like:
One of my favorite parts of our home - a picture window my dad put in some 30 years ago. 💙 pic.twitter.com/4fjOCwSLm4
— Sister Toldjah 💙 (@sistertoldjah) July 31, 2026
Where Mom and I sit in the living room, we can look out the picture window every day. Though we have many other windows around us, we've talked about how we've basically been able to watch the seasons change through that window, the only one in the house that doesn't have a blind or curtain attached to it.
We've witnessed the leaves beautifully changing color in the fall months, blowing in the breeze. We've watched the snow softly falling in the wintertime, the redbud trees and dogwoods blooming in the springtime, and the sunlight glaring and the rain pouring down in the summertime. It's not uncommon to see the birds perched in one of the trees before they flit off to one of our bird feeders.
Sometimes when I've looked out that window, I've thought about my own "season of change," and how my life didn't take the trajectory that I'd originally planned. Around the time I had decided to get my house ready to sell, my dad, who was already dealing with so much healthwise, suffered a fall from which he never recovered, and he died two months later.
Instead of selling my house at that time and buying another one, I put off listing it and moved back in with mom, opting to put my house plans on the back burner because I couldn't take the stress of that combined with everything else that was going on with family at the time.
All of this was something I never saw in the cards, but it had to be done because mom needed my support, and I needed her shoulder to lean on. Not only was my dad sick and (unbeknownst to us) in his last days, but she had her own health issues, later determined to be colon cancer.
Eventually, I did sell my house, but instead of mom and me packing up and moving from the house she and my dad bought all those years ago, we decided to stay and invest in it, concluding the risk was worth it. So the crawlspace was redone. A new roof was put on. Plumbing and electrical have also been worked on, although there is more to be done.
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There are other plans, of course, some pricey and some not, but one thing that will never change is that picture window Dad installed. I'm looking at it right now, remembering all the hard work he did on it and the house in general, and thinking to myself, "Dad, if you could only see the house now." I know he would love it, and more importantly, he'd love the fact that Mom and I picked up where he left off when he was still able to do such things.
Home is where the heart is. Mine just happens to be located by the picture window that Dad built.
