In Addition

Hello, friend. Thank you for joining me here!

“We plan, God laughs.”

When we first saw this old farmhouse, I had a vision. I tend to be a big idea person. There were enough things that were right that I was able to mentally shift the things that were glaringly wrong in my mind into a livable, hopefully beautiful, future haven. The wood was good: the floors boasted hardwood that just needed to be refinished. The trim around all the windows and doors was intact, and I liked the millwork. The staircase was solid as a rock. I knew that the crazy 1950/60s wallpaper could be removed and that paint was the easiest upgrade around. There was stained glass! The porch and gables had the most charming, gingerbread wood trim; sure, it needed to be stripped and repainted—along with the rest of the exterior—but that would come in time. I thought the necessary renovation work was mainly in the two rooms that had been “upgraded” in the 1970s: the kitchen and bathroom. I believed this because I could see it. Those rooms were ugly, friend, there’s no other way to put it. The point is, I saw the obvious work. It was a lot, but it was manageable. Heck, it might even prove enjoyable! What I did not see was all the work that lay beneath the shag carpet and inside the flocked paper walls. 

I believed this house was a bargain. It’s on 7 acres, and it’s got great bones. For the purchase price, I felt confident that we would be able to take on the needed projects, once our East Coast house sold. Friend, I had no clue. Zip. I saw the obvious costs, but I’ve been FLABBERGASTED by everything that actually needs addressing here. It is a very good thing that our other house did sell and that the cost of living in Minnesota is significantly lower than in New Jersey. I now 100% understand why the children of the previous owner sold the place “As Is.” I’m sure there was lots they simply didn’t know about their mother’s house, but I’m also betting they had a clear sense of how dire the situation was. 

I know I filled you in previously about our saga with upgrading the electricity, a massive undertaking which is by no means complete. I also told you about the crazy journey of our living room, with notable stops in the realms of floor refinishing, drywall, asbestos encapsulation, wallpaper stripping, lockson, sanding, and painting—an epic journey that began with the smell of cat pee. And yet, I thought the things I could see would be our focus. I thought that a working kitchen and bathroom were sort of basic requirements when you have a small child. I thought we all thought this. Well, think again. 

I cannot overstate the sheer number of projects that have simply come up. Did you know that you can find advice on YouTube for nearly every home issue imaginable—even issues you didn’t know you had? Indeed. Frequently, over these past few months, I have thought to myself: “Out of sight, out of mind,” for goodness sake! I mean quite frankly, I don’t want to know about all the possible catastrophes just waiting to befall us if we do not immediately insulate/clean/scrape/remove/add/rig/overhaul/prep/move/dig /support/cover/ correct the myriad disasters lurking everywhere. When you start opening the pandora’s box of information on the internet, home ownership can easily become a full-time job (this made more extreme by the fact that we are all still stuck in our houses due to the pandemic). I just want a functioning kitchen, but how can I argue my priorities (even in my own head) in the face of looming danger? It is exceedingly difficult to balance the putting out of raging vs. smoldering fires. Nowhere has this been more in evidence than in the journey of our back porch.   

It all goes back (again) to that scent of kitty urine, the unmistakable odor that lead to our unexpectedly finishing the living room first. In the domino effect of floors to walls to ceiling on that project, I posted on the local Mom’s Facebook page for someone to drywall over our sparkle popcorn (and probably asbestos-filled) ceiling. One woman responded that her husband used to have his own drywall company, but now did the work on the side. We got in touch, and he did a great job. Plus, we really liked him. David enjoyed chatting with Nate about home repair projects (it was like YouTube come to life!), and I enjoyed that Nate always wore a mask, and worked hard and fast. Turned out that not only was he good at drywall, he was kind of a Nate-of-all-trades. Almost every question David could come up with, Nate had an answer for. The advice was great, and it seemed like he would be an incredible help on many aspects of our renovation. Nate was game to expand his work at our house, and once he completed the living room ceiling drywall, we started to consider our next priorities. Of course we needed to do the planned work on the kitchen and bathroom, but David was hopeful he and his son could tackle those rooms.

At this point, it was early fall. I was trying to imagine the winter weather and how we would deal with snowy boots and cold climate gear. Remember, the main entrance to the farmhouse is from the back. Like most homes built in the era before cars, the house itself is pretty close to the street. Before the automobile, those same roads were used for horses. No one really considered the noise of traffic or the desire for privacy when building back then since there were fewer people, and the pace of life was slower. In fact, having quick access to a thoroughfare was a benefit. Roads were simply well established paths from one farm or town to the next. And, once cars entered the picture, growth meant paving what already worked. Nowadays, people don’t like to have a house on a busy highway. I don’t love it either, but the fact that we have a thicket of lilac between us and the pavement helps. Our cars are parked where there is room, back by the old barn, and there is a paved walkway that leads past the pump house and up to the back porch. And that leads me to the current distraction numero uno.

That old back porch was a mess. It was clearly a latter day addition, maybe built in the 1940s? Basically, it was a rickety box attached to the kitchen, with windows on three sides and a falling-off door. There were dried hornet’s nests throughout and some abandoned 1980s rag rugs filled with decades of grit. The windows were mostly broken or separating from the wood trim, and the outside wall was being held up by a car jack. The overgrown plantings around the foundation covered that up at first, but we soon saw how unstable the whole thing was. My worry was that it would actually fall down and then we would be mid-renovation on the kitchen, with no buffer to the outside. In my head, it would be a nightmarish mixture of mud, ice, dust, tools and new appliances waiting to be ruined. Somehow, the porch became the thing to fix next. And that, my friend, was where it all went off the rails. 

There was no saving the wreck that was there. We knew it would have to be ripped off and replaced. David is handy, but he’s no architect, nor professional carpenter. This was a bit beyond our scope. We mentioned the project to Nate, and he jumped into action. Guess who always wanted to be an architect? Yep, that guy. As he asked questions, the possibilities for what the space could become expanded. He brought up ideas we hadn’t considered. I was just wanting a quick fix, to be honest. A mud room. Same footprint. And finished yesterday, so we could get on to doing the kitchen and bath. But then we found out that we had to get permits to simply rebuild exactly what was there. That changed something. It meant we’d likely have our property taxes raised no matter what we did. And if that was true—increased tax just to put back what was crumbling—why not do more? Ugh. Why do I always start dreaming big?? Slowly, but surely, our little entryway project expanded. The dimensions of the kitchen (which we are retaining) are not generous, and this attached space could change that. There is nowhere for a table in the kitchen footprint, but if the porch was 4 season and fully insulated, we could have a breakfast nook! Have we discussed breakfast nooks? I looooove them. In our last house, we had the sweetest spot: an arched alcove lined in 1920s white and mint green subway tile. It had a window and we hung a chandelier over the table. We spent a lot of time there, and it proved to be my favorite corner of that sweet house. Suddenly, I had dangled before my beauty seeking eyes the prospect of creating something similar—maybe even better—in the farmhouse. Well, of course I wanted that! So, the work began…

First, there was a week plus of demolition. The work was basically outside, so it felt safe Covid-wise. Nate had a series of buddies who helped. They tore that old porch off with relish, and David was so there for it. On a series of nights and weekends (because Nate has a 9 to 5 job at a construction company) the work continued. I was in charge of making all the design decisions, and Nate was able to create amazing architectural renderings that helped us envision our goal. As each element was questioned and discussed, do you think I made the choices that would be finished the fastest? Do you think I stayed motivated by wanting to get back to the kitchen? Well, no. I got all caught up. The porch grew—literally. We found out that the permit and tax situation would be about the same regardless of the size of the finished product, so we added a few feet here and a few feet there. In the end, I think we at least doubled the square footage. Gulp. We debated the function that the space would serve. At first, David wanted an airlock: a set of doors with a small area between them to keep the heat in and the cold out, kind of like a mini-entryway. These were big on the east coast where he’d lived for so long. Nate had never really heard of such. I wanted a mudroom and the aforementioned, and all-important, nook. We kept trying to make all three zones work until Nate finally challenged the airlock idea. He said no one does that here. It’s cold, but you come inside and shut your (one) door and get over it, basically. And it was true that no house here that we had seen had anything but an entry that lead straight into the living space. The mudroom could serve as the single “landing spot,” and the storm door would do what storm doors do. OK! So, two zones: mudroom and casual eating area. That decided, we could move on to framing.

In order to frame walls, you have to know what windows and doors you will be installing. The one thing we liked about the old porch was the number of windows. Unfortunately, they were in such disrepair that there was no question of reusing them. Same with the door. And, like the size of the new addition, my ideas increased as my mind imagined the finished space. Now, I think you know how I feel about plastic and its like. In my opinion, putting vinyl doors and/or windows into a historic home would be a crime against humanity. This house, I hope, would rise up on her foundation and scream bloody murder if we did something so disrespectful, so fake. Wood is wood is wood. This home was built with Old Growth Trees—wood that is naturally more fire and pest resistant than anything available today. Because it comes from trees that grew for 100+ years before becoming lumber, the rings are much more dense than any wood you could buy today. Tight growth means stability. Most Old Growth wood is made entirely from Heartwood, the inner portion of a tree that makes up the majority of the cross section in any specimen that’s been allowed to grown long and slow before being cut down. Friend, it’s called Heartwood!! That kind of says everything. You do NOT mix in crap. You say, “Thank you, Ancient Trees.” You preserve and you serve. All right? All right. I’ll step off my soapbox. Many, many people suggested vinyl windows for our project. It is really hard to even find all-wood, in fact. There is one company we located that will make custom wood windows, but their representative came to give us a quote on the kitchen windows a while back and then ghosted, never to be heard from again. Nate had a contact at Andersen Windows, whose factory happens to be 20 minutes from us. It did seem right and good to support our local industry, and I liked the representative a lot. However, Nate kept getting quotes that were for their ‘400 Series’ windows which have a wood interior and vinyl exterior. I kept asking for the ‘A Series,’ which is wood inside and wood composite outside—the closest I could get to all wood from Andersen. We actually went back and forth like 3 times before I could get a quote for the correct product. I get it: windows are tough in this part of the world. Energy efficiency is no joke when it’s 24 below zero, as it was last week. Most people here would put in vinyl and never give it a thought. But we wanted modern technology wrapped in a historical package. The ‘A Series’ felt like the least compromise to serve both needs. The Andersen rep confirmed this, stating that those are the windows that have been chosen for many historical renovations in the state. He rattled off a few impressive sounding buildings in which they’d been installed, and I was satisfied that I wasn’t going to totally screw up our gracious Victorian with the choice. So, the order was placed: four double hung and one large picture window. Onto the door!

Again, I can’t tell you how hard it was, in this part of the country, to find a decently priced all-wood entry door. You would think this would be a readily available product, but no. There are plenty that cost $5000 and up, but that was out of the question. Nate found a great looking door online at Home Depot that had the design I wanted to coordinate with the front door, but upon further inspection, I saw it was made of fiberglass. Most doors up here are. As with vinyl windows, this makes sense. Who wants their hefty investment summarily destroyed by Mother Nature? All the non-wood products boast that they are entirely (or practically) maintenance free. I will admit, especially as we fall deeper and deeper into our deep pit of projects, that no maintenance sounded really tempting. But in the end, I could not, would not, put a fiberglass door on a 150 year old house. After much research, I located a door in the design I wanted made from knotty alder. Bonus: it would arrive in a week. Come to me, sweetheart! It was so pretty when it got here, I nearly swooned. It even smelled intoxicating. Done and done!

OK, just as a reminder, all this was going on as winter was coming, and nothing was happening in the gutted kitchen. The bathroom was at a standstill, too. The focus was on the porch addition…annnnd a few other things. Beyond getting caught up in the new construction, we got a bit sidelined by our lack of storage. You may recall that when I first arrived in August, we rented storage boxes that we set up behind the house. They held 87 book boxes(!) from David’s mother’s house, various sentimental furniture items that didn’t fit anywhere inside and items we do not need access to more than once a year (hello, admitted Christmas decor obsession). Frankly, the rented Smart Boxes were ugly, and they were getting expensive. It dawned on me as the weeks went by that we were not going to be able to create a library for all those books anytime soon and that a more permanent storage solution was needed. I weighed the options of various shed situations, taking into consideration the price, size, availability, weather resistance, and design. Nothing was perfect. If we had all the time in the world, I would have loved to build a wood structure with a metal roof and poured foundation. Hahaha! I’d also like an apartment in Paris. In this one case, I relented to the convenience of plastic. We found a decent looking shed on Wayfair that would arrive before it got too cold to build—they actually have temperature limits to avoid breakage during assembly. It’s a long(er) story, but they sent us the wrong item and in fixing the issue, we somehow wound up with two smaller sheds, rather than the desired—but out of stock—original choice. It was a customer service headache and also caused a delay that put us up against those weather warnings for the building of the pair, but we ended up with more storage space than planned. I quickly designated ‘His’ and ‘Her’ sheds. Books and furniture in one, holiday madness in the other. This pleased me greatly. But—and this is actually the point here—all this took up more time. Those new structures, which had no bearing on the house improvements, had to be ordered, re-ordered, delivered, built, and filled. A few days were spent figuring out where to place them so they’d be well hidden, but still convenient. Once located, the ground had to be leveled and a solid foundation had to be built. All that took us away from the inside projects, but it meant we could say goodbye to the pricey eyesores that were our rental units. 

So, back to the porch. The windows arrived right before Christmas. By then, David, Nate and a few other helping hands had completed the demo, the digging and pouring of foundation piers, the platform, the framing of walls and roof, and the sheathing. The day they installed the windows was amazing. We had gone from an original entrance area that felt both sad and unsafe, to a ripped open patch of muddy wasteland, to a brief outdoor platform “stage,” to an enclosed cave of OSB. Suddenly, over the span of a few hours one Saturday in December, huge holes were cut out that let in massive amounts of sunlight. Because the old porch had a series of smaller windows only, I really had not understood what the impact of a six foot picture window would be. When they carefully slid the actual glass into place, I wanted to sing the Hallelujah Chorus. It finally felt like a real room. The next weekend brought the hanging of the back door and its sidelights. We had to prime those ASAP to protect the virgin wood from the approaching onslaught of Minnesota winter. We definitely pushed the envelope on weather; heaters were set up so that we could get the primer on without it freezing. All the wood trim on the farmhouse exterior is painted, so don’t blame me for covering the alder. Always, always, I try to return to the house itself for guidance. The door looks gorgeous, even with just primer, but it turned out to be of a less common thickness, so the standard knob set we had purchased didn’t fit. At the moment, we still have a lockable door on the once-and-future kitchen, so we place a heavy propane tank behind the porch door at night to deter wild animal entry. The number of improvised, temporary solutions in this house grows by the day. I am not a fan of unfinished projects. I find that if the quick fix you come up with works just well enough, you are in trouble. You will be able to function, and therefore, you will not have to finish anything in order to live life. In doing this, nothing is ever really done. Ingenuity is a double edged sword, my friend. I have to mention here that every person who shares a living space will inevitably have different thresholds for the status of the environment. For example, some of the areas that are crazy chaotic to me might feel crazy fun if you are six years old (see: Finley building forts with boxes). Likewise, some of the time and brain power used to come up with a workable construction compromise might feel gratifying if you are my husband. This is a man whose father used to come up with creative pulley systems for various household quandaries; it’s in his blood, you see. On the other hand, I have a nagging voice in my head (that now often escapes from my mouth) which warns, “Finish what you start.” It keeps me—and everyone around me—in a fairly constant state of anxiety. I mean, if I’m being honest at this point in our renovation process, we won’t be “finished” for a decade. Cue silent scream. But, I see that recognizing this challenging reality leads me to a helpful thought.

Is anything ever really done? Houses age and need constant tending, even if you are not remodeling anything. Same with bodies. And relationships. Our work in this world morphs and stretches, if we are lucky. Staying static is not the nature of life, because life is literally a living thing. To live is to grow and change. That’s good when things are bad: you know that eventually it will get better. I recognize that this house will slowly continue to evolve into a place that looks and feels more and more like what I picture in my head. In many ways, the fact that it will take a long time for that to happen allows for it to become even better than I could imagine. In theatre, we rehearse for three to four weeks before performing in front of an audience. Non-actors often wonder what we do six days a week, eight hours a day for a month. After all, it’s one play, that typically lasts two hours. How many times can we say the same words to each other and make a difference in the result? You’d be surprised. There is a fascinating truth I’ve come to trust during the rehearsal process: you cannot hurry discovery. When you dive deeply into anything, there are periods where you work on it, and periods where it works on you. Sometimes, a key to the character comes to you in a dream. Sometimes, you look at a billboard on your walk to the theatre and see a word that becomes your window into a scene. Sometimes, you have a toothache and the pain gives you the agitation that was missing from a moment. Life teaches in its time. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” says the Tao Te Ching. And so it is in all things. I know how to let my work to take shape. I observe my life doing the same. This house is moving forward in fits and starts, but maybe the in-betweens, while it’s all in process, are creating space for even better visions to come. Inspiration isn’t always on call. Believe me when I say that I want the bathroom and kitchen done, already. If you get me worked up on the subject, I’ll add some invectives. However, I will allow for the possibility that all of this is happening in its own time, as it should. 

I will always plan. I love a list, and I like to accomplish goals. Sometimes I write down things I already did, just to have something to cross off. This house means I can never get bored, because the list will probably remain endless. If I can just remember that, like life, it doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful…

That is the real To Do.