Why Are We Doing This?

In the Northeast, there is this saying:

“Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without.”

It is the epitome of Yankee frugality. It is my own motto!

We bought this house a decade ago. It was a broken-down bag of roof leaks, plumbing woes, and ancient electrical wiring. It is livable, in a batten-down-the-hatches-winter-is-coming kind of way. We freeze every winter, and like most old-house homeowners, we freeze in the summer. The house has 100-year old windows, 70-year old electric wiring, 50-year old flooring and furnace ducting, and a disturbing 40-year old kitchen remodel from which Norm Abrams might flee. The house was beautiful in its day. It was no squire’s mansion or gem of the county, but it was attractive with typical middle-class style. Most of the interior woodwork is hemlock, but the Living Room is beautiful walnut (but has been painted over ten or eleven times). The house is now past the flower of its youth. We intend to restore it to its usefulness, and hope to bestow on it the mature grace that comes from a well-worn home.

Certainly I’d love a brand-new house. New walls, new windows, new cabinets! But a new house is not always the best option: 1) they are expensive, 2) what will become of the old but graceful ladies of the 1800s, and 3) new homes are so big and bloated that they are inefficient and wasteful for thrifty living. Plus, new homeowners tell me that new houses are not necessarily better built or longer-lasting. This is our adventure to bring new life to an old lady. Ourselves.