Lucy loves to watch television shows that deal with fixing up houses; total makeovers, landscape overhauls, one room paint jobs and things like that. I can watch for awhile; just not for hours as Lucy will. This morning when I got out of bed; my early meetings at church having been canceled so I could sleep in, they were changing the front of a house to make it look more appealing; a curved retaining wall on a slope complete with new plants and sod, a new front door, flower boxes and a weather vane on the roof.
The second fix it up show started with a home built at the turn of the century; no, not 2000. The house had been built before electricity was in common use so the new owners had electrical cords like spider veins hooked to the few outlets available. The fellow who came to inspect the house opened the electric box on the outside; it had maybe four or five breakers, none of which worked the way they’re supposed to work. They were going to have to replace the entire electrical system of the house to bring it up to present expectations both for safety and convenience.
I had seen enough as I remarked that it reminded me of our first house, built to accommodate the post WWII boom. I suppose they figured that most folks were poor and only needed a basic structure with few closets and a few electrical outlets, maybe one per room. With each successive owner the house had been altered to meet the demands of time; an addition of a large den nearly doubled the size of the house was added just prior to our purchase and the entry cut the kitchen in half. Lucy cried when I told her we would buy that house in spite of my promising to make some changes that would make it look nice. It was our chance to get out of apartment living and the strange woman who lived above us and took baths at all hours of the night all night long.
One of the first things we did was to cut a door to the den where a window had been, where it should have been from the start, and seal up the other so the kitchen was whole again. Then we tore the gold flocked wall paper from the dining room, wall paper which had been painted a sickly pale yellow ocher. Once that was painted and paneled with a maple wainscot we found a chandelier hanging in the middle of the room that we hadn’t taken notice of before, the room having been so depressing; Lucy stopped crying as the house began to look better.
We took on the job of completing the den which had been poorly done, more like a large cluttered storage room, by learning how to put sheet rock on the ceiling and walls. I went to plug my power tools into the outlet only to find that it didn’t work. I took the face plate off to see if the wires had worked loose only to find that there were no wires, never had been. They had cut a hole for an electric outlet just to make it look like there was electricity in that room.
We had an electrician install power to that room and continued to make other improvements. I cut an archway between our bedroom and the adjoining room and installed closets with a window seat between them. That was the weekend that I blew out a lung and ended up in the hospital for a few days; they called it a collapsed lung. I won’t go into detail other than to say it was not any fun, none at all.
We partitioned the formal living room into a parlor with the other half being turned into a huge food storage closet and work area. I put in an old fashioned wheat grinder, the kind with the stones that were turned with external pulley belts that I’d hooked to an electric motor. It was hypnotizing to watch the wheat berries work their way down a large funnel on top as the stones ground them into flour; slowly and inefficiently but it got the job done. Lucy later replaced that with a fancy self contained unit that sounds like an airplane taking off when the last of the wheat berries run out of the funnel; grinds the wheat twenty times faster and can be adjusted to almost any desired consistency of flour.
We had the wood floors repaired and resurfaced, a dark oak that had been covered with cheap carpet and neglected for years. I guess that’s why they call your first home a “fixer upper”. We learned how to do basic carpentry, dry wall, electrical, painting and when we were done the house looked really nice.
In the back yard I put in a chain link dog run for our Labrador. Then I put in a curved brick planter box next to it to make it look nice. There was a dead pine tree, maybe 75 foot tall that had to come down. Someone smarter than me would have let a professional come over; but I was working on a limited budget and decided to become a tree monkey.
I remember my neighbor lady watching as I climbed ever higher with my bow saw, the tree swaying in the light breeze, “Should I call an ambulance now or wait?” That was funny, yea, say something else encouraging. I got about two thirds up the tree before my fear of heights kicked in. I cut a wedge into the trunk in such a way as to aim the top portion away from the house and the dog run; luck was with me and it fell without killing me or hitting anything, glad I watched that show on lumberjacks. Once the tree was down we used it as a border for the garden.
That about does it, don’t know if I’d be up to that kind of challenge today. I’m sitting in my favorite chair in my living room. We just had wood floors installed, a nice looking oriental carpet to bring out the colors of the freshly painted walls and the new curtains that we installed last week; no, I don’t think I’m up to that kind of stuff any more.
Here are links to show some of the work that went into this latest improvement. I hope to find photos of that first house and scan them so I can eventually show those also.
http://tfsternsrantings.blogspot.com/2006/11/almost-there_24.html
http://tfsternsrantings.blogspot.com/2006/11/wood-flooring-going-in.html
http://tfsternsrantings.blogspot.com/2006/11/progress-is-being-made.html
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