When Old House Character Doesn't Work for You.

Our home's name is Ruth. She has a personality. She's modest from the street-side, her heart is larger than you'd guess if you only saw her from the outside, she has quirky angles like many old ladies do, and yet she also has a comfortable lap, like a good grandma, and loads of charm.

Ruth's front room, circa 1963

I'm a lover of history, and have researched my house's architecture; it's a Colonial Revival Cape Cod, built in 1939. I am the fourth owner.

A house this old and older will have quite a few layers on it. I'm thoughtful about those. There's also a range of opinions out there about what to do about it, from the extreme of gutting them completely and putting modern builder's-grade interiors in them (which personally horrifies me), to being supremely dedicated to maintaining period authentic details in every way one can. That extreme I can appreciate a little better, for the sake of its desire to preserve original details from the era in which the house was built. But it's tough for me to be that rigid in my own life. I've got some pretty eclectic tastes, and being stuck in a narrow window of the late 1930's wouldn't work for me.

Besides, people don't live that way. As much as scrupulously period-authentic homes teach us about the way people lived in whatever era, they can be museum-like, and sort of artificial in the sense that it is the rare person who built a household from scratch in exactly the year, say, 1955, and kept it that way for 63 years. More often, people launch in adult life with hand-me-downs and heirlooms from previous eras, get tired of certain things and fall into the fads of the decade (shag carpet, anyone?) in the interim, feathering the nest over the years with what's needed, what works, what delights, and what feels like home.

In addition, one must embrace (me: strong simple graphic design) or survive (me: beige everything, granite countertops) the current home design trends and fashions of one's own time. "Dated" is the word home improvement shows squawk over and over again to describe older homes. Of course it is. Whether or not it's a pejorative is largely up to the house, and its owner.

My house has postage-stamp sized foyer, only a few feet by a few feet, and another, larger room we ingeniously refer to as the "front room" because it is, uh, at the front of the house. In the 1960s, someone paneled this room, and it was where the gentleman of the house lounged, smoked, and watched television.

That purple fabric across the top of the wall hid stereo speakers. It was just as attractive as you might imagine. 

While I like me a good rustic paneling, as seen on our recently renovated screen porch ceiling photo below--

...this was really not the same. It was made of a rather expensive veneer plywood (it's either mahogany or cherry) dark-stained, but not skillfully installed at all. It had gotten orangey over the years, and it made the room gloomy. Then a later owner had sawed a big, unfinished hole to get his big screen TV into the wall, and left that hole behind when we moved in. It was like the hall closet had a picture window into the front room. I hung an old sheet across the hole and put an old sofa in front of it. Which the kids used as a place to pile coats and backpacks.

Not proud, but it was real life here. I also tried to love the paneling. It's historic, I said to myself. Paneling was a thing in Midcentury houses. Part of the charm. 

And practical too. The scuffle of four boys was well hidden by those dark walls. I tried to foof it up with some of my own things:

And still really, really hated it. I just couldn't make myself love that dark room, and even if I'd been able to repair the hole in the one wall, it wasn't worth it to me to be this miserable for the sake of period authenticity. To hell with wood paneling, at least in this case. I needed light. I needed color.

It stuck around awhile though, because I didn't have the carpentry skills and budget to change things up. It's hard to bring yourself to spend money on a room that holds the coats and boots, mostly, when you've got so many other things to do with your house.

When Tom arrived on the scene, we decided that while we still did not want to spend a lot of money on this room at this point, we needed to make it one that better reflected that we both lived here now, that I work from home here and wanted it to be creative, and that we both wanted to invite the sunshine in as much as possible.

I only have two not-so-great cell phone photos from the renovation period, but they sum up the two big things that happened.

One was fixing the sawed-up wall, and adding another bookcase to the room.

You can see into our L-shaped hallway.

The second major part of the reno was paint. Buckets and buckets of primer, paint, and more paint.

If you look at the top of the above photo, you can see how dirty the ceiling tile was from the smokers who previously lived here. While it looked okay in contrast to the dark paneling, once we started painting it was obvious just how disgusting it really was.

The rest of the decor was a matter of assembling things we already had on hand.

Before we updated the room, I had put a folk-art style rug in there in colors that I loved to try to cheer the place up a little bit. I decided that would go back in, and be the inspiration for everything else.

Then Tom's hall tree went into the front of the room, so visitors have a place to leave their coats.

Tom made it from salvaged paneling and wood. I love that it is there to greet his kids when they come home.

The window has a simple white cotton curtain on the lower half for privacy. The room originally had wood cafe shutters, and I would like to do that again when the budget permits. The basket in the corner is to corral shoes (lots of boys, lots of tennies).

The green dresser is a crappy little old thing I rescued off a curb and spray painted. I've had it forever-- it just keeps changing color. It is tucked just on the other side of the front foyer, and holds incoming mail, change, keys, etc. The drawers hold the things you always needs right before running out the door-- mittens and hats, umbrellas, sun screen, insect repellent, etc.

My work space is usually much messier than this, but this is the "blog-pretty" version:

I have a preference for things with a history or a connection, so I'm always more likely to go with old/used furniture than with new. The oak desk belonged to a friend of my mother's. The printer stand is actually a record player/music stand from my Great Aunt Elizabeth's house. The lamp is hers too. 

The floor in this room is 1960s era vinyl composition tile. If it were new or in good shape I wouldn't mind it at all. I like the pattern. But it had carpet over it when I moved in, is full of staple holes, and has cracks and crumbles in places. The next time this room gets an overhaul, it will need to go, I hope in favor of tile or wood flooring.

I'm most pleased with the bookshelf area.

Lots of old friends live there.

Some of the shelves are extra deep, which is a plus for me. I'm famous for squirreling books away. The desk is a curbside find, and Tom uses it for his work-from-home days. The big baskets hold camera equipment and random electronic odds and ends.

I wanted to have fun in this room, so I gathered second-hand store picture frames, spray-painted them in black, ivory, orange, and green (to echo the colors in the rug), and framed family art.

I did not feel constrained by rules here. That part felt good. I like how grade school ceramic projects and family photos and favorite books mix on the shelf

And as much as the paint helped freshen this room up, having art made by people I care about, things that show their personality and humor and love, is the best part of this room by far.

When this room gets another round of attention in the future, it will most likely get some of the things that honor the 1930s Cape Cod heritage of the house, walls with painted wainscot paneling to match what is elsewhere in the house, wood flooring, and trim. In the long run, we'll have both fully respected the heritage of the house, but kept it fresh and for us. For now this redo fixed the biggest problems, and fits our personal style so much better. I only wish I hadn't waited so long.

Fear, Remorse, and Home Repair (is that all?)

I have not been a responsible homeowner.

There. I said it.

Now that I've confessed, let me go back a bit, and explain.

On the same day I was shooting and then posting this deceptively calm and composed photo:

A crew of men were in my basement cutting steel i-beams, welding, and generally making an earth-shattering noise in my basement. 

So much so that the dining room post published that day was an act of clinging to sanity more than anything else. I needed to focus (pun intended) on an accomplishment rather than the chaos going on literally under my feet. I could barely write a coherent sentence. I'm still a little at a loss for words. 

It all started back in the summer of 2012, the year after I bought my house. My basement was a mildewed and funky 1970s dark paneling fright of a black hole. It looked like this: 

It smelled. It was ugly. It was......hard to know where to start. And I didn't know where I wanted to end up. My first act was to send samples of the ceiling tiles off to be tested for asbestos. The test came back negative, so we could start demolition safely. I think that was the last good decision I made about this space. 

My son tugged and yanked and pried and swore at that paneling for a whole summer in his spare time between his paying jobs. I really appreciated the help. And then we discovered this: 

Not a good-quality photo, but you get the drift. A crack. A horizontal one running at ground level and right under the windows, with a rather significant stair-step gap almost down to the floor. It had all been hidden behind the paneling in the basement, wasn't noticeable to the eye from the outside, and wasn't obviously out-of-square in the upstairs living area of the house. The inspection at sale had entirely missed this rather significant flaw in the structural integrity of the house. 

The consensus was that it had been there awhile, and had in fact, happened mostly all at once, when someone did a really shitty job pouring the driveway down the south side of my property in the 1980s. It butted right up against the foundation, and the initial pressure, followed by the settling and shifting of the concrete over the years, caused the damage. 

It wasn't progressing, but the very sight of it overwhelmed me to the point of not progressing, either. Typical of my over-thinking nature I researched the problem a lot, assembled a list of contractors and then.... couldn't move forward. And every few months a more immediately urgent problem and financial issue would come up, like a water heater splitting open, and it would move to the back of my mind again. 

This was the house ownership version of being so afraid of a lump under the skin that you don't go to the doctor to get it investigated. It never goes away. Neither does the worry. It had been nagging me forever. But still I was afraid of finding out the answers. 

As it turned out, the research I did over the last four years (Seriously. Somebody slap me.) made initiating the repairs easy. 

However, making the first phone calls was the only easy part. There was a reason I was afraid to face this, and the collecting of bids, horrific expense, weeks-long lending rodeo with my bank, and scheduling issues meant I was right, even if I was stupid. If that makes any sense. It was almost exactly as bad as I'd feared. 

Except that it was fixable. And now it's fixed. The contractor reinforced the wall with steel beams so the crack can no longer progress, and the system includes a way to tighten the braces twice a year, so that the wall comes back towards true gradually over time (though it won't ever be 100% again). 

I don't really have any excuse for how I handled this whole thing, except that I was feeling overwhelmed. I've been overwhelmed since I bought this place, and how badly I don't think I realized until recently. And though the check I wrote was huge, so is my relief. 

My advice? Don't be me, an anxiety-ridden home-owning deer in the headlights. Secondly, old home ownership is not for sissies. I didn't think I was one, but this pretty well beat the snot out of me. 

It has given me perspective, though. I don't think I'll complain about painting woodwork trim. Not for at least a little while. 

Houses are for New Beginnings

Houses are constructed for new beginnings. We inhabit them physically. But houses, the really special ones, end up inhabiting us as well. They stand for things in our heart.

I believe this house was special from the beginning, before I knew it existed, before I was born. It was a wedding present in 1939 from a carpenter father named Hans to his newly married daughter Ruth. It became the gift-box that held her marriage and family life with three sons.

A few families and owners and decades later, the house became mine. 

Part of the reason I named my blog 'On the Doorstep' is because it represented that moment when a symbolic door swings open on a new life. I'd already spent a blurred and unhappy year in a downtown flat in the post-divorce recovery phase. This house was the beginning of the better and happily ever-after.

That's the beautiful part of the story. The reality part was a little more complicated.

It was a lot of damned hard work. With not a whole lot of money to do it with. 

In the nearly five years I've lived here, we've made a lot of progress-- torn up carpet, cleaned and painted, repaired windows and doors. But the list was tremendously long and the longer I lived here, the more I realized this was a project of years, not months.

As I mentioned in my New Year's eve post, 2015 was a year with some progress, but more things stalled out than got done. I felt bad about that.

Every weekend I was coming home and facing a full docket of the usual single parent things: dirty laundry, dirty bathrooms, errands and grocery shopping. I had a kid with special education needs who was having a pretty rotten year through no fault of his own, and he needed fully involved parenting. And then there were my three other kids, who also needed their mom. I won't try to put a pretty spin on last year. It was exhausting and anxiety-ridden, I felt overwhelmed and resentful, and I survived more than I conquered.

But to make sure that I am not turning this into some sort of victim saga, I also had plenty of things these last five years I enjoy, like sharing family meals and baking and travel and photography and writing. They were things that I wasn't willing to give up just so every spare second of my week could be dedicated to progress on the house. I wanted it, but not so bad that I wanted to give up those other parts of my life.

After a few years at this, I was beginning to spend some long hours thinking about exactly what I was getting out of this experience. It was hard to admit that while I still loved the house as much, or perhaps even more, than I ever did, I wasn't much loving the work it entailed. I was mad at myself for getting sold on the fairy tale of old house dreams and not being up to challenge of the reality. I couldn't figure out how to be true to my love for this house and still have room in my life for everything that had to fit into it.

It wasn't as though I already had a lot of these skills. Every last thing seemed like it was a new learning experience, often with the prospect of purchasing new (and expensive) tools I didn't already have. In an old house where routine repairs often quickly become complicated, this wasn't just an occasional thing, it was every damn thing I tried to do.

I'm not actually sure at this point whether I discovered I wasn't really as interested in teaching myself DIY as I thought I was, or whether I was just too overwhelmed by the steepness of the learning curve to cope, or just had too many things on my plate as a single mom to take this on. Probably a little of all of them? Anyway, I was beginning to feel like a fraud and a failure.

And into this situation walked Tom, the man I started dating in October.

Tom is handy in many of the trades, and this house just so happens to need a lot of help in many of those trades. So being a both a guy handy in the trades and a profoundly good-hearted person, he offered his help.

And I balked. I was too territorial to accept.

That's totally not his fault.

I ended up picking the least emotionally fraught project I could think of to do while I sorted out the reasons why I sat down in the middle of the road on the idea of someone, an increasingly important someone, helping me.

So, we installed a garage entry door. It went well, regardless of my misgivings. 

In the meantime, I figured out the house had not only come to represent my new life, it also had come to represent my independence. I don't know when that happened, honestly. But it burned fierce in me for so long, I had equated being independent with being single.

That was the problem. Because, well, I'm not single anymore. I'm in the middle of "an experiment of we" for the foreseeable future.

I'm in the process of rethinking what independence means to me now-- being capable, open-hearted, resilient in a house full of people I care about-- and trying to leave behind what it no longer means--me, alone with this house, struggling. That rethinking is taking some time because, well, I'm me, and I think about that kind of stuff a lot. Considering the gifts of this relationship, I believe it's well worth doing.

Besides, it's just a new beginning. Again. Life is like that, isn't it? And this house has seen a few of them. I think it'll handle this one just fine.

House History: A Gift from the Past

Houses, I've always believed, are more than brick and lumber, shingles and windows. They are also spiritual. Now, if you don't believe in ghosts or presences or in places having souls, that's perfectly okay with me. And while I can't say I've ever seen a ghost, I do believe that places have....I don't know what to call it. Something that goes beyond the mere substance of its physical existence. 

I feel that way about this house, and have from the day I walked in the front door. It felt like home, immediately. It felt like it needed me. I felt like I needed it. And those feelings were beyond the financial considerations, the practicalities, and the smell of the funky old carpet. It was some intangible truth, and it grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the rooms that I now occupy. My house even has a name: I call it Ruth. It always seemed to fit it, somehow. 

One of my goals this year was to delve more into the past of my house. I'd gotten some hints by reading the deed to the property when I first purchased it, but it was a lengthy document; I had a lot going on when we moved in (and still do), so I only skimmed: 

I also found this, most likely the lumber delivery label, at the bottom of a drawer in the upstairs linen closet: 

There were also some inadvertent clues from the man who inspected the house before purchase, who said after looking in the attic: "This house was framed by one person, perhaps with a helper or two. But it was clear the carpentry was planned and executed by one person, and he really knew what he was doing." 

It turns out he was right. Meet the builder of my house, Hans J. Hansen: 

This photo was taken in 1961, when he was almost 90 years old, and came to me courtesy of my local historical society. 

He was a master carpenter of barns and homes in the area, and was active in the community from about 1899. He was a Danish immigrant, at one time returning to his native country to attend a folks school to learn carpentry; then he returned. Between 1899 and 1940, he built over 50 barns and homes that have been attributed to him, perhaps more that are unknown. 

I found it astonishing that some of the homes he built in my hometown are ones that I have admired for a long time. When I was a teenager attending middle school, I often walked home past this Dutch Colonial and daydreamed about living in it. Mr. Hansen built it. 

He also built one of my favorite houses in my current neighborhood, just down the street and around the corner from my own. (These photos are courtesy of the county tax assessor). 

My house, the smaller and more modest Cape Cod, was built in 1939. It is possibly the last house he built. But it is also special for more reasons than just that.

He built my house for his daughter. Her name? It was Ruth.

Ruth Hansen Boast was married in 1936. Where she lived before she came to this crisp and tidy new little house in 1939 is unknown, but it is entirely possible that it was a wedding present from father to daughter and new son-in-law.

Of course, I already knew that there were children involved, and now I know more details, like their names: Richard, Charles, and Thomas. It seems no mistake that I, a mother of four boys, ended up with a house built by a grandfather to shelter his three grandsons.

It turns out that Ruth's name was always there, buried in the details of the lengthy deed (her husband's name was the only one on the purchase/transfer of property entry, and my eyes must have glossed over the rest). Did I internalize it somehow at the time I bought the house and read the deed, and that unconscious knowledge surfaced when I started calling the house Ruth? Entirely possible. Either way, I don't think it was an accident.

In the last three years, I've considered this house a gift in many ways. It was a place to find a future after my marriage failed. Room to create a home for myself and my sons. A challenge to meet. A part of my community's history for which to take responsibility. It's been the gift of a friend, in that intangible way that I spoke about houses having souls-- Ruth. Knowing that it may very well have been a gift from the very beginning makes it even more so. I only hope I'm able to live up to the grace it's shown me.

Darkroom Mystery

Admitting to my readers that there are parts of my house I'm not that familiar with makes it sound like I own a large creepy old mansion and that I keep finding undiscovered wings, like in some badly written gothic novel.

Trust me, my house isn't that big. And the only mad relative shut up behind these walls is, well, me. (Insert maniacal laughter from another room here.)

But it's true. Did I mention I have a darkroom? I do.

Or at least, one of the previous owners did. It's in the basement, an area of the house I haven't shown off to blog readers yet. "Shown off" might be the wrong term, since it's kind of basic down there, and that's being charitable.

The darkroom looks like this, in a corner of the basement under the kitchen:

In the corner opposite the sink is this old dilapidated cabinet, with drawers designed to hold film, negatives, and supplies:

The top right drawer held a mirror, a sample size of Aqua Velva, and a cheap 80's era point-and-shoot.

I am half in love with this drainboard sink:

It's been totally trashed by the amount of stop bath and fixer that's been thrown down it. Wouldn't it be grand re-enameled in some snazzy color? Red? or maybe Yellow?

I am also crushing on the faucet:

It's these vintage fixtures that have given me the (extremely long range) idea of creating a 3/4 bath down in this room, using them restored to their glory.

At this point I probably have about $7.52 saved toward that goal, which is why I say "extremely long range."

While my sister was visiting a few weeks ago, I was showing her the space and we were very surprised to find two photographs had been left on the drying racks (shown on the wall right of center in the first photo). I had assumed the racks were empty; I never bothered to look.

They are both wedding photos, but of two different weddings. The first is under-exposed, so much so that it's very difficult to see the face of the groom at all, and moisture has damaged the paper.

But I love some of the details-- The ruffle-front on the groom's tuxedo shirt, the lace details on the bride's dress. And since the wedding trend today is to outdo all previous ceremonies on weird/large/exotic floral arrangements, when was the last time you saw daisies in a bride's bouquet? It looks so sweetly simple.

The second couple's photo is in much better condition:

Here I love the beautiful neckline on the bride's gown and her traditional veil. The groom is rockin' a handsome beard. I even think I have an idea in which local church this photo was taken.

Who are they? Are they relatives of people who lived in this house? Are they wedding photos shot by a hobbyist who lived here? How long have those photos laid waiting to be found? Based on the hair and clothing, I'm guessing they were taken anywhere from mid-to-late 1970s, possibly early 1980s.

I am not, all gothic novel-like, discovering family curses and ancient manuscripts in this house. It would need to be built in 1539 rather than 1939 for that sort of thing to unfold. But the place is yielding, here and there, some mild and sweet mysteries, a few hints of its past. It keeps telling me its stories as we get to know each other better, like people who are going to be old friends in a matter of time.

A Messy and Full Life (and Blog Post)

This blog post will resemble my life right now. Which means it will lack organization, direction, and possibly sanity.

But it's better than no blog post at all, no?

I've been puttering along at both bathroom and exterior paint scraping. In a few areas, the paint has come off in gloriously large peels. Definitely a sign that the paint was in bad shape, but so gratifying to have gobs fall off all at once.

(And apparently it's also Toe Fetish Day on the blog. Enjoy.)

I've bought paint for the bathroom walls, but I am still busy filling holes and sanding patching. I didn't take any picture of that because, well....boring.

All that work is what made Housiversary Number 2 go by almost completely unnoticed. I'd had some grandiose scheme last year about a party-slash-open house, and I'm sure I was imagining cupcakes and drinks in pint jars and home-made party banners and croquet on the lawn like I was addicted to Pinterest or something. But the truth is that even under ideal circumstances I sorta suck at event planning.

So Mr. Man and I had one couple over for dessert. That I can handle.

The kids are back from Colorado and camping a la sandy underpants, and from Europe and a post-trip bout of jet-lag. Grant knows his mother's ultimately geeky heart, and brought back a reproduction folio of The Tempest from the Globe Theater in London. It makes me all swoony.

The weather is hot and humid, and I live in an old house without central air upstairs. We finally put one of two new window air-conditioning units upstairs on Tuesday night, and it ended up being a two-hour cluster-f#$% because the new units aren't quite as well designed to fit on an old house windowsill as the old ones were. Which begs the question: what brand spanking new house needs a window air-conditioner? Really? Aren't window a/c's for working-class families and old-home owners whose central air is non-existent to non-functional? So that's my home ownership rant of the week. And I've still got one more cluster-f#$% to go. Remember me in your thoughts.

Because it is hot and humid, I've also lost the will to cook. Unfortunately the boys have not lost the will to eat hot meals. They honestly want me to boil pasta in this weather? I could easily live on fruit, carrot sticks straight out of the bag, and this:

Edamame hummus. It's my new food "thing," eaten with whole grain pita chips. (Um, no. I don't do sponsored posts, they didn't give me anything, and I'm not getting paid to say that.)

Secretly I'd like to ditch all of bathroom and house scraping mess and garden. I'm enjoying the color and textures:

The daylilies are off the hook:

And the roses too:

And the Asiatic lilies are about ready to go:

But see that plant in the lower right background? Giant weed. I need to get on that too. What's keeping your summer crazy?