Renovation

Eighteen years ago, we bought a big, sprawling fixer upper house on a quiet street. It had six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a family room. I hoped that, since most of the living would go on in the family room, the living room would always be company ready. HA HA HA HA! (Never happened.) It needed everything - paint, carpet, new windows, you name it.

Here's what it looked like at the beginning of this summer:

The original owner had added on to a house that was originally four bedrooms and two bathrooms, adding two more bedrooms, a bathroom and a family room. He was a building inspector who wrote his own permits and signed his own inspections; nothing in the addition was up to current building codes. The plumbing runs on the outside of the walls (as did the Romex cable for the bedroom light fixtures). The bedroom hallway has a little 1 1/2 inch step between the original house and the addition - just enough to be annoying. One bedroom no longer had a window, since the addition was added onto the wall where the original one had been. The studs are 24 inches apart. The joists run the opposite direction from those in the original half, so no ducting (for instance, for a furnace) can run from one half of the house to the other. The family room is paneled in plywood, with no drywall underneath, and the only source of heat was a wood stove. (The upstairs master bedroom also had a stove for heat.) The addition went 10 to 12 inches over the kitchen window and an upstairs bedroom window, so looking out of those windows, you looked at the wood used to construct the addition. There was just enough space - about half an inch - between the wood and the glass, so that it was constantly full of whatever blew in: grass, feathers, dust, just general crud. In the family room, the two large "windows" were made of sliding glass door panels, turned sideways and glued into the wall.

There's more, but you get the idea.

We bought it from the original owner's son and his wife. The wife hated the house. She actually tried fairly hard to talk us out of it. "What will you do about this?" she asked, dragging us through the house. "And this?" Pointing to the overhang over the windows, she demanded to know how I'd deal with it. I shrugged. "Right now," I said, "I'll hang curtains. Later, we'll replace the windows." All of our paperwork on the sale said "AS IS" in capital letters.

We didn't take any photos of that. We should have, but we hated it so much that we really didn't want to immortalize it.

"How long do you think it will take to fix all this?" people asked. "Twenty years or so," we'd say. They'd laugh, thinking we were kidding. We weren't.

We're fast approaching twenty years. We're not done yet, but oh, the progress.

The first thing we did was redo the children's rooms. We painted, made new curtains, and ripped out the carpet to replace it with vinyl. I hate carpet. I will happily sweep, daily, if needed, but I can't stand vacuuming. Plus, carpets get dirty far too easily. They're not recommended for asthmatics or people with allergies, and that's me and roughly half of the rest of my family. People thought we were crazy, but over the years those floors have seen diaper accidents, vomit, broken fish tanks and other incredible messes, and they all cleaned up with damp paper towels. On carpet, it would have been a total nightmare.

We started replacing the windows next, sometimes one or two at a time, once in a batch of 4. The old, single pane windows were so awful that the curtains blew in the wind even when the windows were closed. With the new ones, the house was warmer, less drafty and prettier. We replaced the front door and one of the sliding glass doors. We ripped out more carpet, replacing it with parquet and vinyl. We painted indoors, but not outdoors. We wanted to replace the siding, so why paint? When we replaced and resized the windows with the overhang, I did the happy dance. I was giddy for months. Frankly, I'm still giddy when I think about it. We replaced the sliding glass door panels glued into the walls with actual windows, and I was beyond giddy. They open! They close! They're amazing!

We installed a wall heater in the family room.

We replaced the roof, which was so bad that it had begun to leak. I was so delighted with my new roof, especially when it rained or snowed.

We had a small deck off of our bedroom, with stairs going down to the yard. It was made, nearly as I can tell, with untreated lumber, because the decay rate was tremendous. Plus, it grew moss - moss! In the desert! The last time anyone walked on it, years ago, their foot went straight through the wood. We barred anyone from even thinking of walking on it.

We had holes in our siding and our roof to accommodate the chimneys from the wood stoves (which we had to tear out, as they're now illegal in our county). We had flaking paint, peeling wood, birds nesting in the rafters... it was a mess.

One of the many incompatibilities between myself and my husband is in our decision making processes. For me, the only reason to contemplate any decision is to make it and act on it, preferably quickly. Why even consider something if you're not going to DO anything? For my husband, the entire point of a decision is to consider all the possibilities. He loves considering the possibilities, often for years (and years). Making and acting on a decision actually makes him quite stressed out. He worries that: 1. any decision might be the wrong one, and 2. once you act on something, you have "cut off all the possibilities." When we're done with something, I am always relieved and delighted. He always feels at least a bit let down.

Imagine trying to balance this dynamic while making home repair and remodel decisions. He cannot imagine why I spend all of my time trying to eliminate possibilities. I cannot imagine why he can't just DO something and stop endlessly discussing it with no action in sight. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or even in total chaos, he is soothed, knowing that he could, in theory, do any one of hundreds of things. As long as a project remains undone, in progress or in chaos, my anxiety level goes up and up.

We ran into this problem while making decisions about the outside of the house. We weighed doing things ourselves vs. hiring pros, vinyl siding vs. hardboard siding vs. stucco, chose contractors that went out of business, turned down outrageous bids, weighed varying options for financing such a large purchase... it took years. YEARS. And years.

I mean, come on. Does that look even habitable to you?

Finally, decisions were made, contractors hired, and we got our last window and two doors replaced, the deck rebuilt, and stucco put on the house. It was not a moment too soon, in my opinion.

(Yeah, that's the plywood. Eventually, it will be replaced. Right now, there are bigger fish to fry.)

It looks gorgeous. Our neighbors have all complimented us. "What are you doing to your guys's house?" one 20-something neighbor wanted to know. "Are you moving?"

"No," I said. "We just got tired of looking at it."

I cannot describe how delighted I am with the results.

We still have to paint our front door and garage door, but that's small potatoes.

And my deck! Look at my deck!

After having the yard covered in scaffolding for most of the summer, I'm now in serious outdoor improvement mode. By the time winter hits, the yard should look pretty amazing, too. Here's our new fire pit, and the new chairs my husband made. Yes, marshmallows have been roasted.

For 14 years, this fountain has had no, well, fountain attachment. The original one, a spitting fish, mysteriously walked out of our front yard. This little frog recently replaced him. I'm happy every time I walk out the door.

And just for good measure, here's a shot of my iris, shot this spring, and my daylilies, which are recovering from the trampling the stucco guys gave them.



Yes, indeed - life is good.