A House is a Home

I hear rumor that homes built in the “good old days” were made to last. While the range of time considered “old” is certainly questionable, my home’s qualification isn’t. I live in a 16^th century farmhouse, nestled on a few gingerly managed acres of property. My children are the fourth generation of Hartes to inhabit our home.  I moved into the house after knowing Ryan for only three months; along with my boxes and bags, I carried a grand idea of what the rooms could become. I didn’t realize at the time how much blood, sweat and tears (literally) would be poured into making this house a home. My grandmother wrote in her book about building be home from the ground up, using explosives to uproot the boulder interfering with her home’s foundation. We haven’t had need for dynamite, but we’ve pummeled through walls with sledge hammers, hacked down the tree trunks cut by hand to form ceiling joists hundreds of years ago, and Sawzalled door and window frames. We’ve gutted thousands of pounds of plaster and lathe, restudded walls, ceilings and floors, framed new hallways, installed electric and lighting, and recreated ten new spaces from their bare bones.  

I came home from work last night to find my husband as I’ve found him dozens of times before: covered in sheetrock dust and blue chalk line chalk, a tattered nail apron hanging off his waist and a seasoned power drill in hand.  The sight brought moisture to my eyes. This room- “The Mystery Room”- is one of the last “big” projects that the house will see. As I left that morning, the room was nothing more than new two-by-fours screwed between the existing tree-trunk wall studs, and strapping laced across the ceiling insulation. Coming home I found a new stairwell, new ceiling, new support beams boxed in with strips of sheetrock, and four new walls. Beautiful, unfinished, new walls. There has always been a satisfying sense of progress as each layer is completed, and then the looming wash of anxiety when calculating which huge project to tackle next comes. But, now they are nearly none…  I’m feeling conflicted about it.

A piece of our lives- our love/hate relationship with our fixer-upper- is coming to an end. I wish that I had chronicled this adventure more diligently.  It’s been an incredible one. Inscribed inside the neutral colored walls and under the hanging light fixtures, are love notes written from Ryan to me and from me to him. There are stick figure families scribbled in jest. We stapled photos and dollar bills to sturdy bark and hid them behind Pink Panther R-13. Ryan has, on more than one occasion, written “BURN IT!” in carpenter’s pencil across a misguided, misaligned, or misfitted  shim. Hammers have been thrown across rooms, and swear words have danced in the air with the mud dust. But, we’ve survived. We’ve had an experience that most young couples forgo intentionally or never have occasion to be a part of. We’ve learned about the inner workings of a living space, and we’ve learned about ourselves. Our home is built to last. And it will.