This Old House: Year Two

 

Last year I wrote an essay titled "This Old House" about a month after we moved in.  I think about this old house a lot, about how grateful I am for whoever dreamed it up and thought about the placement of certain rooms, the size that the windows would be.  I was organizing our cleaning closet yesterday and found several scrolls of the initial plans for the house.  As a creative, I love seeing the processes of other creators.  I love hearing about how writers come up with the storylines for their books, how they develop their characters and the relationships within the stories.  I love to watch interviews with artists who share their creative processes-- the type of environment that they need to be in to paint, what sparks inspiration for their works.  

Opening the scrolls for our home with its original plans felt a little bit like seeing into the creative process of the architect and builder of this old house.  There were three different scrolls that we found, and what we learned from each is that they were each a different veneration of the plans for this house.  One had scribbles all over it in blue pen, with marks through certain things and different dimensions written out.  Another looked like maybe it was water damaged, but also had various markings and words written throughout.  And then there was a third scroll that I assume was the final draft, the official document that was used to build the house.  It was well-polished with no scribbles or ink bleeding through the pages; the very far right of the document showed many of the building materials that were used, in great detail, down to the brand and size and thickness of boards.  

That third scroll turned into the three dimensional home that we now live in; those boards and materials that were outlined on paper turned into the front room that I'm now sitting in, writing to you from.  The cathedral ceiling in the entryway that was sketched out as a design reflective of the time in which the home was built has turned into the beautiful tall ceiling that allows for our home to feel like a wonderland during the holidays when we put up a larger-than-life Christmas tree that can be seen from outside of our home as well as from many rooms in the house.  I suppose it's like when an author outlines their novel and drafts the characters, the plot, the setting, and months (maybe years) later, it turns into a hardbound book displayed at a bookstore.  In this case, the design turns into a three dimensional piece of art that becomes a home where memories are made and where dreams are lived out.  It becomes a place where children are raised and where dogs play in the yard, where babies take their first steps and where someone breathes their last breath with loved ones at their side. It's a place where memories run deep within its walls.  

I'm sure the architect and the builder of this home were proud when they finished building this house.  I know that we take great pride in ownership of such. beautifully crafted, well-built home.  There are features about it we would change, but nothing related to its bones.  We would replace the laminate flooring throughout the house with an oaky wood floor, and we would probably pick a different stain for the wood trim throughout the house and around all the windows.  On the topic of windows, we'd replace the originals for the well-being of our power bills, but we'd keep to the original integrity of the window design, keeping natural light pouring in from all angles.  

I remember coming to see this house with our realtor for the first time.  We had been looking at houses mostly in South Asheville, near Arden and Fletcher, where we thought we would be settling down.  Everything we looked at was overpriced and needed a major overhaul.  We've done two home renovations together now (three if you include the one we helped design but ultimately had our brother-in-law carry out) and were prepared for doing another, but the prices of the homes we looked at were beyond a price we felt comfortable paying knowing we'd have to do a major renovation.  

Our realtor, a builder himself, was unimpressed with everything he took us to see.  "I just wouldn't feel comfortable putting you in this home," he said about one home we looked at with gaps in the windows and shoddy paint work, clearing covering up major issues beneath the layers of paint.  We stood in one room with him and all of us thought "is it leaning?" He told us that he had a really well-built home that he wanted someone to purchase out at Lake Junaluska, in Haywood County.  This was about 30-35 minutes from where we had been looking at houses, and when he told us the price we thought it was well outside of the budget we had set.  He assured us that it had good bones and that any money put into the home would be met with return on investment, that homes out at the lake retained their value.  

We agreed to go see it just to entertain him, but we had no real plans of purchasing the home.  We drove up to the house a few days later, finding ourselves enchanted by it.  I could see what our realtor saw-- I saw the "good bones" he was referring to.  I was thrilled over the cathedral entryway, the tall ceilings throughout the midcentury home, and the big windows in almost every room.  It had a fireplace and mantle that was decorated for Christmas, and I had visions of our Christmas stockings hanging from there while a fire crackled, dreaming of how many stockings we could possibly hang there as our family grew.  

Scott and I stood in the brown kitchen with Billy dreaming up our vision, looking at which walls could be pushed out for a bigger kitchen and discussing how to deal with the wood paneling all throughout the living room and dining room.  Billy and Scott walked around knocking on walls and checking headers, trying to figure out which walls were structurally important and which ones needed beams installed to create more support with the changes we wanted to make.

We surprised ourselves with offering on this home and moving out to a location we really hadn't been considering much at all.  We went through months of offers and counter offers, of praying over the brick house on Pepper Avenue. I have a prayer journal where I write out both prayer requests and answered prayers, and for many months this home was a prayer request.  I was thrilled when it turned into an answered prayer. I keep a separate list of gratitude in my prayer journal and I think I've mentioned our home at least once or twice a week for the past year and a half since we have moved in.  

The longer we live in this old house, the more I understand why its other owners didn't change much about it.  It holds real charm in each room, like there are things that you could say "oh that's outdated" about but about which, from a different perspective, you could say "well isn't that neat? You don't see that much anymore."  We've changed one thing so far since moving in, and that was painting the brick fireplace to bring some light into the living room.  We've played around with other ideas for the house like painting the paneling, whitewashing it, renovating the kitchen, painting the outside brick a light color, painting the front doors, building a deck in the back, painting the walls that are not paneled.  We have settled into this old house hoping it will be the home that we actually grow old in, that it will be the home where we raise children, where many dogs will live out their lives and run in the yard, where we'll return to after traveling the world to sit in the comfort of its walls, where we'll make job changes and career changes and send off children to college from.  

For now, we haven't done much of anything to change this home.  We are respecting its history and its "good bones."  We are listening to its walls and as we live within them, learning as much about it as we are ourselves.  As we reflect on the things we would change about it, we are ourselves changing and transforming into something different within its unchanged walls.  

I still dream a lot about the life that we'll live in this old house, and I still envision what we'll do to bring new life to it in the years that we live here. But for now, we are really enjoying our days nestled into this old home.