Home Sweet Home -- Not!

A couple of you were kind enough to inquire about my continued existence, and commented (rightly) that we should be "home" by now.  The idea of "home" certainly opens a philosophical can of worms for me, but that's not the point.  The point is that we ARE "home" now -- "home" being a street address in the Continental United States.  And on Friday night, for the first time in 18+ years of marriage, my husband and I (well, and the kids, too) slept in our VERY OWN HOUSE!!

This is a momentous occasion!  This deserves a celebration!  Did we celebrate?  We did not.  Instead, we sat in the living room, drinking heavily, and staring at each other, and at the peeling paint (literally) and the holes in the walls (literally) and the Japanese stink beetles happily scurrying in and out of those holes (literally) and the zillions of unpacked boxes (literally) and the complete absence of anything resembling a closet in this four bedroom house (literally).....   We looked more shell shocked than celebratory.

So, about those holes....  You'll remember that we bought a 1949 farmhouse at auction last year?  Now we know why this house didn't go through the traditional real estate market:  The last time anything in this house was up to code was in 1949.  Maybe.  It's a good house, solid as they come, built with rough hewn oak that's harder than steel.  We've even found some handmade nails in some of the studs.  It's got good bones.  Sort of like Ugly Betty has good bones.

But now let's talk about the electrical system!  Do you want to laugh or cry?  It's your choice, and both are valid options!  The first time Gary opened the electrical box, he cried for 15 minutes.  The most obvious problem (beyond the fact that the panel was of a type neither we nor the contractor foreman had ever seen or even imagined before and we had no idea how to turn off any of the circuits or if there even WERE any circuits) was that the house was NOT GROUNDED.  In what seems -- in hindsight -- like laughable optimism, we went out and bought a grounding rod and some copper wire, thinking that would solve our most immediate problems and we could get on with life.

Well, it quickly became apparent that we could not, in fact, get on with life if life were going to include anything involving electricity.  In fact, anything involving electricity in this house might well have resulted in death.  I am SO glad our renters didn't die last year.  I don't know why they didn't, but I'm glad.  And, as a child of the 20th century, I must say I'm quite emotionally attached to electricity.  So is the pump for our well; our refrigerator; and our stove.

With our furniture scheduled to arrive in 2 weeks, we contacted a reputable local contractor who blithely assured us that he could rewire our entire house for a very reasonable cost CERTAINLY in less than two weeks.

I will pass over the following five, VERY EXPENSIVE weeks with just one comment:  Ha.  Ha.

But, now we have fresh new electricity!  Every day the foreman was on the job here (and there were a lot of days, let me tell you), he told me that he didn't know why the house hadn't burned down before now, the old wiring job was so bad.  For example, sometime in the past, the previous owners had tired of a light fixture in the bathroom.  So, they removed the bulb, shoved the LIVE fixture up into the ceiling, and covered it (poorly) with drywall.  AAAGGGGHHHH!!!

Well, the holes in the wall.  Right.  The contractors had to cut into every single wall and every single ceiling in this house in order to install wiring.  Once the job had run THREE TIMES over the original estimate, we weren't really in the mood to shell out the exorbitant sums it would take to patch up those holes. So they remain.  Also, we discovered in the course of this project that there is no (as in ZERO) insulation in any of the outside walls.  ???????  So, when we do patch the walls, we'll need to take out all the old drywall (which is good because most of it has mold in it) and add insulation before re-drywalling.  Those holes may be there a loooong while.

Because, before we fix the holes, there's the little matter of the bathroom we gutted.  A decades-long (and extremely fixable with $10 and an hour's work!) leak had led to the entire bathroom being absolutely impregnated with mold.  Gack.   And, in our defense, we started that project before we realized how serious the electrical situation was.  So, we took out the bathroom.  It started innocently enough.  We just removed the wall paper (a clouds and seagulls motif).  The exposed dry wall looked so good in comparison, that it led us to chip off the irregular mosaic-style gold and turquoise tile that covered the lower half of the walls.  No, you really can't guess how ugly it was.  The bare drywall was such a HUGE improvement in the appearance of the bathroom, that we decided to just go ahead and take out all of the dry wall, remove the linoleum floor (and the tile floor underneath that) and take it down to bare studs and the subfloor, since, by that point we had also discovered the leak and the mold.  Now our bathroom is an empty shell (we left the cast iron bathtub in place.  We're not stupid.), and it looks MUCH better than it did when we started.

However, since the re-wiring project ran so far over projected costs, it looks like the bathroom's going to remain an empty shell for some time to come!  Fortunately, we have a second bathroom, but it needs to be gutted and fixed up as well, and we are all eagerly waiting the day that can happen!  At least it doesn't look as ugly as it did when we first got here -- we stripped off the wall paper, knocked a few tiles off the walls, and the electricians added a few holes.  All of which, I ASSURE YOU adds considerably to the charm of the room.

So, here we are at "home," shell shocked and glum.  Because, to top it all off, our furniture (finally) arrived.  The last time we saw this furniture was 14 years ago.  Our furniture consists of:  2 beds, 3 dressers, 2 arm chairs (compliments of my husband's days in the army), 1 salmon pink couch, 1 dining table & chairs.  Bookcases.  End tables.  A very nice hand-made buffet from Germany.  That's it.  End of story!  If you've done the math, you'll be thinking that that's really not adequate for 5 people and 4 bedrooms.  And you're right!  We've convinced the boys that sleeping on an air mattress is like camping and that it is fun, fun, fun!

But, the good news is:  the furnace here works GLORIOUSLY and the well water is like fine wine.  The view is gorgeous and the boys have plenty of space to run.  And the boys are the main reason we bought this particular place in the first place.  So, I encourage them to spend lots of time outside, whacking things with sticks and digging in the dirt and climbing trees.  And they're happy.

Because they know if they come inside and pester me, I'm going to stuff them into one of the holes in the wall.