When Kathy and I began remodeling our 127-year-old house, I promised her I would have it done "within a year, tops." After all, I had more than a dozen years experience in the construction business. "Trust me. I know what I'm doing," I assured her - and I really meant it.
But I guess ignorance really is bliss because I had absolutely no idea we would be living in construction chaos for the next five years - and it looks like it could be another five years before we are finally done. Even with all the work we have done, we still live in near-frontier conditions with every room in the house under some construction.
So a couple weeks ago - right in the middle of our heat wave, I might add - Kathy and I made a trip south to visit our daughter. She just bought a new house and wanted to show it to us. After living with construction dirt 24 hours a day for the past five years, I thought it would be good to spend a few days in a house that didn't have a table saw set up in the living room as a permanent part of the decor.
Let me say right up front that Catherine has a great house. Everything in it is new and doesn't need an engineer on call to fix whatever it is that happens to breakdown without warning like my house does. But the best part about her house, at least from my perspective, is that everything is so clean. Never once the whole weekend did I have to wipe off a chair before I sat down, nor did I have a single meal with sawdust sprinkled in my food. And best of all, I never had to spend 20 minutes rearranging any tools stored in the bathroom just to take a shower.
But to tell you the truth, I couldn't wait to get back to my old house again. After five years of crawling through decades of dirt and debris from the stifling heat of the attic to the water-soaked corners of the basement, after patching and repairing nearly every wall, floor and ceiling in the house, and after nearly getting killed by falling debris on more occasions than Kathy every knows, my house - my aging, cracked, sagging, leaking old house - has become a like an old friend to me.
I know Catherine's house has a new bathroom, and granted, there are no plaster droppings in the sink, and the toilet doesn't lean to port because the floor has settled over the years, but there are no hidden walls to be discovered when you remove the medicine cabinet, and there are no extra shower tiles stored in the basement wrapped in a 1938 newspaper from the day it was installed.
And yes, Catherine's house has new bedrooms, but there are no notes from 1913 found hidden under the wall paper and signed by the man who installed it nine decades ago.
And sure, Catherine's house has a new kitchen, but there are no 100-year-old flour sifters found hidden in the cabinets.
And sure, Catherine's house has air conditioning that can make even the most stifling Kentucky July afternoon seem like a cool evening in September, but there is no front porch where you can sit and get to know your neighbors. How would I ever know that Robbie has two new cats living with him, or that Hayley was mad at her brother because he had teased her, or that Chloe had learned to talk if I didn't spend most of my evenings on the front porch?
I had a great time at my daughter's new house, but after two days I couldn't wait to get back to all the dust and dirt and debris - and even the summer heat - of my house. Not just because it was home, but because, even with all the obvious problems of living in a massive remodeling project, and living without air conditioning during one of the hottest summers on record, my house has something that Catherine's new house can never have. My house has personality.
Now if I could just convince Kathy to come back and enjoy all these luxuries with me.
John Graham is an Advocate Columnist. His column appears each Sunday in the Advocate. He can be reached at jgraham19@woh.rr.com.
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