From Wooden Box to Luxury: My Home Transformation Journey

I live in absolute luxury

I live in absolute luxury. I have a house with two bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen with appliances, carpeting, and nicely painted walls. What? You don't think that's luxury? I certainly do, especially when I compare my house to our first house. Let me tell you about it.

After years of apartment living

After years of apartment living during college, I got married. My husband and I decided to build a house. We bought some land - flat, treeless land, and looked into our options. We could spend a lot of money - which we didn't have - and have someone build a finished house for us, or we could go a less expensive route. We took the cheap route and had a shell built.

Living in a wooden box

Now, this shell home was not exactly luxurious. A shell is basically the bare bones of a house: the roof, side walls, windows, and exterior doors, but nothing else. There are no interior walls, no flooring, no ceilings (other than the roof way up there), no electrical outlets, and no plumbing. Basically, we had a wooden box.

To save money, we moved into our wooden box. We had the bare minimum electricity and plumbing installed - outlets, overhead lights, sinks, toilets, and showers. Imagine a kitchen, though, that has nothing but a sink, a refrigerator, and a couple of card tables. We had no range, no oven, no dishwasher, and no garbage disposal. We had a microwave and an electric skillet, and we bought a refrigerator. Cooking with the skillet, we could look into our bedroom. In fact, from the kitchen, we could see into every room in the house since there were no walls anywhere. At that point, we realized that no matter how much we loved each other, we needed to put drywall on the bathroom walls for privacy.

The transformation begins

Perhaps the funniest part of our shell house was the living room - so to speak. I have a beautiful, black grand piano. There it sat in a corner on a plywood floor, with a background of pine studs and electrical wires. Just for fun, I nailed a huge nail into a stud and hung a picture in the living room.

In time, we made rooms, added cabinets, painted, tiled, and carpeted, until we had a regular house. But by then, we had decided to move on. I learned quite a bit from my house-finishing experiences, and I now feel that I could survive in most situations. Nonetheless, I don't think I'll leave the luxury of our current house anytime soon.

What dominant impression does the writer convey?

C. an elegant and luxurious home