“What the hell did you get us into?”: the first thing my husband said when we finally walked into the home we’d I’d bought online.
Wasn’t like it was his first rodeo. From our initial 1880’s house in Philadelphia close by the art museum, to the 1930’s house in Steamboat Springs, to the two-flat Victorian wreck in San Francisco, and even the 1920 extended craftsman in Berkeley, with its lovely garden, mottled pink stucco. and dark green shutters (later resold as “Giverny in Berkeley!” by our enthusiastic realtors), every adorable pre-used house I set my heart on needed rehabilitation, the San Francisco one so derelict, he wouldn’t sleep there with me. We were always just done with the chaos of a renovation when I fell in love with another antique. Another money-pit, another wreck with potential.
For him, black mold growing through the wall above his head was a hard NO. For me, it was just part of the challenge; I knew that smallish but ornate SF stick Victorian could be gorgeous. When the renovation was done, it was indeed beautiful, a little jewel box, especially our flat, with one bathroom’s William de Morgan fish mural, handmade blue and white tiles as the kitchen backsplash, walls open to graceful arches, and new flooring finished with faux cigarette burns to match the old wood that could be kept. Our Berkeley house was similarly charming but the en suite bathroom had to be gutted and enlarged and the filthy walls repainted, and… here we were again, now in Pennsylvania, gazing down at dead field mice, cabinets disintegrating into sawdust, and a bathtub, painted with peeling wall paint, looking as if it had a skin disease.
As my long-suffering spouse looks online at the bank balance and works in a makeshift office while contractors bang away, he always grumbles, “You like charm, but I like modern plumbing!”
True, but plumbing can be redone and the skilled craftsmanship and charm of the past is nearly impossible to replicate. It has to be conserved.
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