Summer Project

You may have noticed that my posting has decreased from three times per week to two over the last couple of months. One reason is that during my low-buy year, I haven't had nearly the amount of new things coming in and that has been my main reason for taking outfit photos all these years, so it is just a natural side effect. I also haven't been taking on as many collaborations this year as well because I have been trying to focus on a few home projects that have been demanding a lot of my time this summer. One in particular has been rather demanding, in fact I've spent 3-5 days per week there for two months now. You see, nearly 100 years ago, my great-grandfather gave his son a piece of his farm to call his own and built a very small two bedroom home for my grandfather and his new bride, my grandmother.

My father grew up there and since he grew up and moved right across the street to raise his family, I basically grew up there too. I got off the bus there everyday after school and spent most of my summers there too.After my grandparents died, my parents sold their farm (which also used to belong to my great grandfather) and moved across the street into what became known as "the farm house." My parents lived there until they built a new house, by which time I was married and had my first child, just a few months old. We were renting a house and struggling to make ends meet, so we moved into the farm house to save us the housing expense and enable me to stay home and raise our children. It was an incredible blessing. We spent some money fixing it up when we moved in: new carpet, new sheet rock, new tile, paint, and wallpaper. Those five years we spent in that home were some of the happiest of my life, and the years I spent there as a child myself made up the rest of all my happy years.

My husband received a job offer that took us far away from our little farm house, and within a few years, another extension of my family, who were down on their luck, moved in. They lived there only slightly longer than we did, but unfortunately had not the love and fond memories that I had to make them want to care for the little house. And so I recevied a call from my parents a few months ago saying that the other family had moved out because the house was literally falling down around them and on top of them. I arrived a few days later with my parents permission to salvage every possible part of the house before it fully collapsed.

My mother put her arm out across my body to stop me as we approached the door. I turned to look at her. She took a deep breath and said, "please don't be too disappointed." She was preparing me and I knew it. I stood for a moment, then nodded my head and we went in. Disgusting. Shocking. Shameful. There really aren't words descriptive enough for what I saw. I won't post pictures here because I don't want anyone to remember that dear little house that way. My grandparents were poor farmers, always poor, but my grandmother planted flowers everywhere and even though they didn't have money, her home was always tidy and cozy and the perfect comfort.

I cried a few tears on the way home that first day. Then spent the next few days forming a plan for what I could save. Summer days are hot before the sun is even up. I woke up before dawn each day for weeks, loaded up my tools, dust mask, and gloves and drove to the old house to start work as soon as the sun was up enough that I could see to work. On my first day, I took down all the cabinet doors. I discovered that several had become load bearing structures, keeping the ceiling from collapsing. I also salvaged two antique doors, one with a glass door knob and art deco plating, although someone had scrawled what I'm telling myself is a rockship across the top half. (Come to think of it, I see "rocketship: graffiti like this everywhere; I think America really misses the space program. I'm kidding, of course, it's genitalia and I'm going to have to sand and refinsh this door, but I'm determined to save it.)

On my second trip I focused on taking down windows, which even after all this time still worked perfectly. Then I began the work of trying to save the hardwood floors. Some were a total loss due to the ceiling caving in and years (yes, they lived with parts of the ceiling caved in for years) of rain pouring through. Also the previous tennants had an incontinent dog, so there was that as well. However, some secluded rooms had floors that were beautifully preserved under layers of carpet and at least four layers of linoleum in the kitchen. Peeling back that linoleum was like going through the decades in that home. There was the early 90s layer, the early 80s, late 60s, and finally the late 50s which was the most beautiful of all. I know it was the late 50s because I found a stack of newspapers from 1957 used as padding in the kitchen between the floor and linoleum. I set them aside for my dad to see, knowing that they were there from when he was born and my grandparents built an addition to the house to be his room.

My dad also revealed that when he was a little boy there was a hole in the dry wall between the front bedroom and the front door and he would sit there and put pennies down that hole. On my next visit, I decided to crack open that wall and see if his pennies were still there. Sadly, no pennies emerged, but I did find an old matchbox, a tin of St. Joseph's Aspirin, one of my grandmother's curlers, a whetstone, a couple of pencils, some Christmas stamps also from 1957, and underneath a heaping pile of dust, I found the skeleton key to the antique front bedroom door with the glass door knob. I remember being a little girl and totally absorbed by the beautiful old door with the door knob that looked like a jellyfish and the haunted mansion key hole. I asked my grandmother if she had the key and she said it had been lost for many years. Now, after 60 years in hiding, I brought the key home, and went to the door, now resting under my shed. Seeing that key turn the lock was almost as good as seeing a treeful of presents on Christmas morning.

Prying up floor boards, tearing down walls, and peeling back layers of wallpaper and linoleum has been like opening a time capsule. I see the years roll back through each layer and it's given me a glimpse into the life my grandmother. She was a woman I adored even though I knew so little about her. She was a true member of the Silent Generation and never talked about her past, or her interests or tastes. Seeing the papers and tiles she chose has made me feel closer to her, helped me to get to know her in a way I never did before and it's all the more meaningful to finally find out whose sense of taste I inherited. I love all her choices right up to the 1980s when, let's face it, everyone lost their good taste in a haze of wood paneling and shag carpeting.

As difficult as it was let go of this house filled with so many good moments, and although there were times when I was ready to give up from frustration or despair at the state of the house, I kept going because I just couldn't live with myself if I didn't try. In the end, I think this was the perfect way to say goodbye to all those memories while still holding them close. As we build new rooms onto our home, I hope to use the old windows and flooring for a sunroom, the perfect place to sit quietly both to remember the past and make new memories.