Tuesday, July 6, 2010

noble house




When we first bought the country house, and even before when we were just contemplating moving, I thought I could never leave my house, the one in the city. So much of my life happened there. I bought that house when I was between, between one marriage and the next, and I was just starting out on my life as an artist. I had already met my real husband when I moved in though we weren't yet living together.

It was a beautiful house in an old inner city neighborhood. An old house, nearly 100 years old on pier and beam but well kept up with it's little porch on the front, it's hardwood floors, it's 10' ceilings, it's diamond pattern double hung windows with weights, it's claw foot tub in one of the bathrooms and the single wide porcelain sink and tile counters in the kitchen, it's deep eaves that shaded us in the summer.

I bought it from the widow of the man whose father had built it way back when. During WWII, she had divided it up into a duplex straight down the middle, turning the one big bathroom into two and making the kitchen smaller in the process and adding another bedroom on the back of one half, off the kitchen. The utility room/mud room became the second kitchen of the smaller side. I had two back doors then. It had been converted back into a single dwelling by the time I bought it.

It had it's charm but it also had it's quirks. Like really old plumbing and really old electrical wiring. It was not uncommon to blow the breaker when I vacuumed if too many other things were on. Like the shiplap and molding that was so old and hard that you couldn't drive a nail into it without drilling a hole first. Like no closets except for a very small one in the most recently added bedroom off the kitchen and a storage closet also off the kitchen. And if you were in the back of the house on one side, you had to go all the way to the front of the house to get to the other side, unless you wanted to go out one back door and in through the other. Oh, and it was drafty in the winter with no insulation. We spent a lot of time huddled around the space heater.

Eventually we made our own changes, enclosing the small back porch to make a hall that connected the two halves of the house in the back. We took out the more modern tub in one bathroom and had it replaced with a tiled stand alone shower. We got rid of the the storage closet, making the boy's room a little bigger and giving him a way in that didn't include having to go through his sister's room. We laid insulation in the attic. We planted the magnolia tree in the front yard.


So much life. So many memories. We got married in that house. We raised our kids in that house. We made art in that house. It was our home and our studio. It sheltered us and our kids and sometimes our friends. We buried our pets there. We loved and fought there and fought for our love there. We welcomed our grandkids there, their other home. It was a sanctuary for all life, a no kill zone inside my fence.

Eventually, the kids grew up and made homes for themselves, the grandkids were growing up and making lives of their own that didn't revolve around us. The neighborhood we knew and loved was changing. And we, we were older and realized that if we were ever going to do something new, something different, now was the time to do it. So we cast about until we found the country house.

Pulling up my roots was a slow and painful process and set adrift we bounced back and forth for nearly three years. We sorted through all our stuff, took most, left some behind. Now when I go back, when we go back to do the fabrication on jobs, it's depressing. It only contains the left behind stuff and I see how run down the place had become, something that was well hidden when it was full of our life. The paint is stained and peeling inside and out; the wood floors, so beautiful when we moved in, are now worn and dirty. The cords holding the weights in the window frames have all rotted and the weights have fallen so that now the windows need to be propped open. The skirt on the outside of the house, removed when we had it leveled, was never replaced and shows the foundation on the piers. The plumbing is so clogged now in the kitchen it backs up quickly. And termites are slowly eating it up.

This once beautiful house that has stood for over a century is slowly crumbling, fallen into such disrepair. This house that sheltered us from storms and gave us refuge needed more care than we could give it.


19 comments:

  1. The first house Dr. M & I lived in was actually an orthodontist office - we rented the two rooms on the second floor in exchange for cleaning & mowing. It was a beautiful old house. I remember the time Dr. M went back just to see how things looked & it wasn't there anymore - just gone. That was an indescribable emotion - probably not as intense as what you're feeling, but it gives me a glimpse of that glad and sad to be gone feeling...

    ReplyDelete
  2. That sounds so final....

    Does this mean she will be put on the market or maybe you will renovate her and fill the house with your lovely glass?

    By the way, Ellen... I love this line: "We loved and fought there and fought for our love there." Wow you said so much in so few words.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh if those walls could talk ... It seems like so much of your life story is contained in them. It's like a book, really, able to be read in the details.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It lost the pulse that kept it thriving - a family. A house is almost like a living, breathing thing that needs care, attention, upkeep and passion. Beautifully recounted Ellen.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Such a heart felt recollection of that portion of your life in your then house. You have such a wonderful way of expressing emotion. Tears for the house and for the family that lived there but tears of joy as well, what a magickal block of time.

    ReplyDelete
  6. How very sad indeed. Old houses need to be loved and cared for. Give the house what it needs or maybe let someone else be happy there.
    If the house were here it would probably be protected and listed as an original and you might get a grant to renovate it.

    We lived in a 17th Century cottage before we came here, but we got just too stiff to keep bending over to get from one room to the next. And the dark beams and studs and the huge fireplace, all very romantic, when you first move in, all got too much in the end.

    Now we have a large, airy, modern house.

    ReplyDelete
  7. You brought a tear to my eye. When I look back on my life I can't think of any place that has a part of me in it. A Navy brat, I grew up without roots in any particular place. The only constant in my life was my grandparents in Georgia. Every time my dad would leave on a long cruise we would move back to Georgia and live with them. They were farmers and the last home they had was a small brick house that was built by my grandfather. I still remember the pride in her voice when my grandmother would tell people that she lived in a brick house.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh how sad...the end of hopes and dreams in a home. But new one emerge and will soon replace the old ones. And someone new will come along and take your old place and make it into their hopes and dreams and the cycle will continue.
    Hugs
    SueAnn

    ReplyDelete
  9. Alix - I don't know what we will do. We don't have the money to fix it up when we are still trying to get the new shop built in the country and the first thing would be having it tented for termites, a several thousand dollar prospect. sometimes we think about doing just some cosmetic things and renting it out. Eventually, when we don't need to come in to finish our jobs, we will sell the property and the house will be considered a tear down.

    Friko - we could have had it registered as an historic building, perhaps still can but then there are very rigid (and expensive) guidelines about what can be done to it, how it can be fixed. And it would be much harder to sell in a neighborhood that is tearing everything down and building two modern town homes where one cottage used to stand.

    Sue Ann - Unfortunately the house is too far gone, no one will want to make the financial investment, though there is one builder in the neighborhood that does restorations so I have hope that perhaps he will be interested. This house needed some one with more income than a couple of artists raising kids.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I see how much you cared and loved and tended that old house. Things tend to rot at a greater rate when not occupied. What do you plan to do with it?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I used to live in a house like this...

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ohhhh. What a beautiful tribute to a wonderful home. Sometimes the word doesn't necessarily infer things that work properly. Sometimes a home is a feeling. It sounds like this house had tons of that.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It kinda reminds me of my aunt's house in New Orleans, with lots of charm and potential. I own an older home in Maryland and the maintenance and upkeep is killer and expensive. Your country house sounds delightful!

    ReplyDelete
  14. It's not your fault Ellen - you've been getting on with life. I'm sure it lives in your memories as it was in it's prime time.

    ReplyDelete
  15. You capture so well the emotional lifeblood of the family home. Your pictures provide a sense of this endearment. So true, about how maintenance can quickly fall behind.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I love "We loved and fought there and fought for our love there."

    In that one sentence you have described the essence of a home.

    Wonderful post.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This one of my favorite posts of yours. Sweet and sad all at once.

    ReplyDelete
  18. What a beautiful home you had to shelter you all those years! "We loved and fought there and fought for our love there." Wonderful phrase! You obviously did a lot of living there!

    ReplyDelete
  19. I can feel the love for this home. It has to be so hard to realize that its time is coming. Beautiful tribute.

    ReplyDelete

I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.