I could tell you the processes of reconstructing a house since I was 10 years old. First, we started with the upstairs of the house in the Fall of 2010. We had moved in when I was 6 in the fall of 2006, but in 2008 my first sister, Ashlyn, was born. There wasn’t room for her to have a bedroom; we only had 2 bedrooms at the time. In my mind there was no way that I was going to share a room with someone 10 years younger than me. However, in 2010 I began sharing a room with her as construction began; my mother was also pregnant with my youngest sister at this time and she was due that December. It was a nightmare.

The Winter of 2010 was definitely a cold one, at least for people with construction going on. At this time we were putting in a sliding door in the back part of our kitchen and the upstairs had been torn down in order to be remodeled. At the peak of construction my mom had my youngest sister, Kailey. Now there were 5 of us between 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. As construction progressed we ran into problems; the sliding door wasn’t where it was supposed to be and it had to be moved and contractors weren’t showing up when they were supposed to. Construction has always been a nightmare for me and my family. If something could go wrong, it did. My memories are vague from the early pieces of construction, but I do remember when Spring of 2011 brought a lot of rain. At this time the upstairs was still being fixed and we had laid tarps down, but water leaked through our ceilings. Water wasn’t the only thing to come through the ceilings, nails and screws poked through and caused dust from the wall to fall on my bed and the floors of my sister and I’s room.

Moving to 2015, I was starting my Freshman year at Goffstown High School still sharing a room with my sisters, who were 5 and 7. It was cramped, but construction was being finished on our house after almost 6 years since the beginning. The only construction left was work on the attic and stairs. Little did I know how much longer it would be to do work. The attic and stairs didn’t get finished until the Spring of last year.

I believe that the current construction on our house has been worse than any other work done before. In the Summer I spent a month in North Carolina with my family; my dad had to go back to work after a week and my sisters, mom, and I spent the rest of the time with my grandparents. When we went back home we received an unpleasant surprise. My dad had spent his Summer tearing apart the downstairs. The 2 bathrooms in the house became 1 again, the kitchen was ripped out, and the walls had been ripped to the studs. My nightmare had returned, but it was much worse this time. However, we had finally been moved upstairs at this point for construction on the downstairs and after 8 years I finally had my own room. At this point I was approaching 18 and after years of dreaming of my own space- I finally had it.

However, as I’m currently writing this article I still don’t have a kitchen in my house. It has been about 7 months at this point and I’ll admit it hasn’t been easy. I will say that construction takes time and money, both things my family has struggled with. However, I’ve learned a lot from living in construction for a large chunk of my life. I’ve learned to be innovative and use things in different ways; if we don’t have something in the house like a fork or a spoon then you have to be creative if you want to be able to eat a piece of pie. I’ve also learned to appreciate what you have and appreciate that my family has the ability to reconstruct our house because a lot of people don’t have that opportunity. I wouldn’t say that if I had the chance to live through all of this again I would, but I would certainly say it has changed me as a person. I believe I have become more mature, thankful, and have grown as a person because of this experience. I mean I wouldn’t suggest reconstructing an entire house for anyone else to grow as a person, but after all of this is done it will have been worth the long wait.