This Old House

I have undertaken a project. I don't do this too often in this house because I am definitely no expert.....Keith is. He handles the house projects and I handle any of the medical emergencies that arise with the pets. Seems like a fair trade. I have a tendency to be a little impatient with getting things done so I don't take the proper time or care, not to mention the fact that I rarely use the correct tool for actually doing something. I have found that flat screwdrivers can be used for just about everything from opening a paint can top to fishing out toast from a toaster (provided it is unplugged and the toast is no longer on fire)

That said, I took on this job. It started by painting the room while Keith was away. I did it as a surprise for him while he was gone working at my brother's house for a week. I did it while he was away (and called it a surprise) because he would have hovered and fretted over whether or not I cleaned the brushes out well enough after I was finished with them. This sort of "hovering and fretting" drives me absolutely nuts and is part of what prevents me from taking on other jobs. So, I did it while he was out of town.

Problem was, the paint job looked too good when I was done.....it made the floor look terrible. I mean, before when the wall was bad at least the floor looked the part, but now there was such a difference that it just would have killed me to move the stuff in there with the floor looking that bad. So, after Keith came home and had a chance to inspect the room and declare the paint job "good" and also verify that his brushes were in fact clean enough, he agreed that the floor needed something.

I have always favored the idea of refinishing the floors. This is an old house - 101 years to be exact, but the floors upstairs are pine.....wide plank, pine floors and Keith was generally in favor of just painting them again and calling it good. I volunteered to do the work - "I'll sand and stain them" I offered - that was only fair right? And so it began and Keith was nice enough to get me a new sander and set me up with the proper tools which is a very good thing or I would still be at it with a single piece of 20 grit and a flat screwdriver.

At first it was just a job, one of countless projects to be done on this house before it is technically habitable. I figure we will get it completed about the time that the kids all grow up and move away, much like my own parents did. Slowly, the layers of paint came off and the wood emerged and slowly it dawned on me how old this house really is. The smell of old wood is not something that can be easily explained. I realized what it was when I walked into the room to work one day and was suddenly transported back to my grandparent's attic in their South Dakota farm house which was also made of old wood. One hundred and one years ago.....1909 - before my grandparents were born, this house was finished by Meyer's construction, as evidenced by the name of the builders and the date that was found on one of the beams in the attic....that is a long time to imagine. No motorized vehicles, no television, no e-mail, no electricity....old.

I wonder who the people were that built the house. They were probably in their twenties or thirties. Did they have families? Where are those families now? As I was cleaning out cracks in the floor that have now dried and split enough to allow entrance to necklace beads and crayons and other small child paraphernalia, I would come across the head of a nail that had been hammered in generations ago.

Where will I be in 100 years? Will I have left anything of any lasting importance behind when I go, like these men did? Will there someday be someone who is refinishing this same floor and wondering who the last person was to sand and stain it? It is a humbling thought to think that I may not leave anything of any real importance in this world. But then again, I am leaving my children to it and, with any luck, my grandchildren.

As with any tedious job, this one moves slowly, but I feel as though I know each board individually. Which led me to another realization. I was moving some of the trim boards around one day and I managed to get a wicked splinter in the outside edge of my foot.

Have you ever attempted to take a splinter out of the outside edge of your foot? It requires some amount of Cirque du Soleli maneuvers. But as I was fishing the splinter out, it dawned on me that this wood was probably two hundred years old! The wood that would have made up that room had to have grown for quite a while prior to being harvested, dried and cut for flooring. Two hundred years! 1809! Shortly after we gained independence from England, before the war of 1812. The forests that made this floor was likely standing during the time of my great, great grandparents and before all the Native Americans had even left the area.

Now, I realize it isn't Pompei. It hasn't been around for thousands of years, but even something as old as this floor, in the Midwest is encouraging - maybe things we build really can stand the test of time, weather the storms, and still be useful. I know there are many that like "new", but unfortunately, in today's age that also tends to equate with "fast" and I have yet to see a new fast house stand up to any serious time. I am also a big fan of natural materials....wood and stone. The "new" vinyl siding that the previous owner slapped up fast sometime in the 80s is now completely ruined, but the wood that we uncovered under part of it was just fine.....needed some paint, but otherwise fine. It had been there for almost 80 years with the same rain and sun that the vinyl had been exposed to and failed to stand up to.

I understand the new and improved mentality, but have yet to actually find anything "improved" upon in most cases. I see most people living in subdivisions where all the houses essentially look the same - all have the big garage out front and some variation of "greige" color, ....where is the originality? Where is the individualism? Where is the craftsmanship? I understand that most of the houses built in the early 1900s were also very similar, but they took their time, used excellent materials, and, I will let you in on a little secret that I have learned while living with an architect that has also done construction work, the older houses are cheaper AND better built! Yep, most people don't want to live in the "old" section of town, but would rather have the "new" house in the new subdivision. It is entirely possible that in 60 years, chances are very good that the "new" house will have been razed to the ground and rebuilt due to some design or construction flaw at least once, while the old house will still be standing.

So, I applaud the men that built this house (and the man that continues to build this house), their time, their skill, and their patience. I think of them often and can only hope that the next few owners of the house walk into this particular room and marvel, if only briefly, at the floor and all the work that it must have taken to make it look so nice.