Dandelion Bungalow

Our Dandelion Bungalow is a work in progress!  Last spring a small bungalow home came up for sale in our county seat.  Kenny has always wanted a bungalow home (ours is a ranch) and we needed a home for our beginning business, ..bring Mae’s flowers. So we began the process of buying the bungalow. 

Kidney Transplant and purchasing the bungalow

We were already on a pretty major journey with Kenny just being put on the National Kidney Registry for a transplant.  Both matches from our family had been disqualified. Therefore, I was going through the process of becoming a living donor so that he could get a living donor (more on this later). 

Anyway, we were on a journey.  It just so happened that we closed on the house just weeks before I was able to donate and he received his new kidney a few weeks after that.  We were so excited but had so much going on that we couldn’t dive right into renovations.  Months of recovery and doctor visits went by with us trying to get our business up and running online and me going back to work.  All we could do with the bungalow was visit and make plans about what we wanted to do with it.  

dandelion bungalow and ..bring Mae’s flowers

We knew we wanted to house our business at the bungalow. We also knew the business itself couldn’t support another mortgage for us. So we decided to turn half of the already small space into an Airbnb.  We continued with all of the things going on in our lives and also made further plans. 

We wanted to name the bungalow something meaningful and we hashed out several names before deciding upon Dandelion Bungalow.  I think dandelions are cheerful and bright yellow, but they also have such interesting and fun seedpods!  They are also very beneficial little plants!  You can do your own research about the health and lawn benefits of dandelions because I have read that there are quite a few.

dandelion bungalow symbolizes resilience

Similar to one of the reasons that we named our business ..bring Mae’s flowers, dandelions symbolize resilience,  just like the flowers that come in May after April’s rain.  You just can’t get rid of them permanently!  They always return with their sunny yellow blooms.  All of us have struggles, some we may talk about and some we don’t.  We could all use a reminder sometimes that trouble only lasts for a time and then we can happily bloom again!  

We used the long uncertain days of fall and winter making a plan for Dandelion Bungalow. As soon as Kenny was somewhat able (and against my will), he began tearing out walls and we started saving for the remodel.  It has taken a while to find someone able to do the renovations. All of the contractors in our area were tied up with helping folks rebuild from a catastrophic flood that hit our area at the same time as we were going through the transplant process.  (I forgot to mention that when I was describing the journey!)  

Despite all of the setbacks, we have a carpenter and we are ready to begin some of the remodel.  The bones of this house are good so we hope to have our Airbnb up and running by next winter.  We also look forward to having a brick and mortar for our little business.  Stay tuned and we will keep you posted along the way if you are interested in seeing how Dandelion Bungalow turns out!!