Restoration of Joy #2

Monday, March 14, 2011

Wouldn’t it be great if design projects could come only from a place of creativity, fueled with enough money to make all options possible?

I’ve been around renovation, restoration and decorating since before I could stand up in a crib – and trust me, waiting for the day when this work is nothing but well-funded fun, is like waiting for the tooth fairy. On top of it, far too often these projects start with something close to a disaster. And -- regardless of the nature of the problem, it’s never a good time. All to say, very few of us will ever approach this kind of work with a calm head and ‘extra’ money. I know that we didn’t.

When it was clear that we were going to have to gut most of the house, the options of change were enormous. Where to start? Well, I knew we couldn’t raise the roof, and – at least on this stage of development, we wouldn’t change the footprint. We chose to have plumbing stay where it was, with some minor changes. But interior walls could move. Detailing could be added. Doors and hardware could be upgraded. Bathtubs could be bigger, or they could become showers. We could have storage and closets, insulation and thermopaned windows – the things an 1830’s house (with a hundred years of badly informed and executed accretions) weren’t giving us.


So that’s a good place to start. List the challenges, and embrace your limits: the things you can’t do, won’t do, can’t afford. Talk about them. Negotiate, if you have to, or you’ll be floating free, with no way to frame your choices or your options. Limits are the very thing that begin to give a project shape. They gave us the freedom to create a sliding entrance out of a 19Century door, and to trade a shower for a closet. Because we didn’t want to pay for major moves of plumbing, we knew where we had to steal 6 more inches to enclose a deeper, wider, soaking-tub. These were very practical beginnings. But vital.
As far as aesthetics, we also knew that we didn’t want to lose the quality inherent in the age of the house and its elegant small, square rooms. In fact, we wanted to enhance this authentic quality. We did not want to lose the wonky, tilted floors or the scrambled angles in the upstairs ceilings. Clearly, we would have to do this with a very light hand. And a lot of reference.

I’ve collected design books since I was a teenager. I go through them more than you’d think – and I mark their pages with post-it tags. Just as Joy Harkness does in The Season of Second Chances. Between my books and the stacks of design magazines through which I forage, hunting the thing that makes my heart beat faster, I mark and tag, tear out and note, until I have hundreds of references. Before we did a thing, Frank and I reviewed them, talked about everything, and saw things with new eyes as we did so. I don’t always know what I mean by what I’ve marked until we look at all of the things we like, laid out together for comparison, and then we see it: Ahhhh! Only when we saw them together did we see that most of the floors were painted and light. Or that many of the walls were patterned. A color palette emerges. Another recedes. We thought we wanted color, but the things we liked best had very little, but when it was apparent, color was powerfully used. Most of all, we saw trim detail. Wainscoting, picture rails, floor and ceiling moldings, visible beams in the ceilings. The things we liked looked authentically old and worn, but they also looked polished and loved. And things begin to make sense.

We could see from those pictures that craftsman’s detailing was inherent in the looks that we most liked. It meant that the rooms themselves might stay, for the most part, very much the same in structure, but very different in detail. And that was a major insight. Surface and moldings, hardware and paint were going to be important. And, we agreed that as much of it as possible should be handmade. We were very lucky in that we had the supremely talented craftsman, Jeff Memoli, heading up our team.

So – in approaching design: Limits and inspirational reference. Somewhere between the two you’ll discover your project.

Next, we’ll begin to move inside. Hold on to your hard hats.

The Restoration of Joy #1

Monday, March 07, 2011

The appearance of a dumpster outside our little farmhouse says it all: This house is about to be taken apart. Exciting, I suppose, but disturbing a nest can be scary. Especially since we didn’t intend to do it.

Last winter, after having contractors and builders all over the property for the years it took to build the barns, hack out the new drive, sink the well, make the court, and generally manage some very unruly property, we were looking forward to quiet and privacy. Then came the leak in the ceiling of the den.

The investigation turned up so many things wrong with the plumbing, dating back from the turn of the last century - that we had few options but to rip it all out. We meant to rip out the plumbing, a big enough job in itself, but what we wound up taking apart was – everything.

A house built in 1830 is going to have “issues”. Some of them, like the wonky floors, are part of the charm of an old house. Some of them, like dangerous wiring, no closets, crumbling chimneys – were anything but charming. And so, as we walked from room to room, noting the things that were dangerous or broken, and separating them from the things that were just infuriating, we found that we couldn’t avoid disturbing, if not replacing, a single surface.

We’ve been living in the guest room of the barn for more than a year. It’s a very pretty, very comfortable room for a long weekend. Do I need to say more? But in that time, we’ve turned around all kinds of problems and challenges, one floorboard, one nail, one paint chip at a time. Frank and I have agreed on almost every detail. And the very few times we had a difference of opinion, we each took turns trusting the other, and found we were exactly right to do so.

This notebook will register the renovation of our house. Every week you’ll see more of what we faced and how we solved a problem or expressed an idea. Many of the issues we faced were reflected in the challenges my central character, Joy Harkness faces in The Season of Second Chances. Especially since I believe that a house tells you what it needs in terms of bones and light and its moment on earth. But if it’s going to be a home, what it wants most of all, is to serve. And for that to happen, you have to know what you’re going to ask of it. How do you live? How do you want to live?

We suggested, when our publishers did not want to call the book, Teddy Hennessy, as I had titled it, that the name be: The Restoration of Joy. They didn’t like that either, but SoSC won their approval. Now that I’ve come out the other side, I think The Restoration of Joy is, indeed, the most appropriate name. I even know what it feels like.

On top of it, this whole process is a great way to celebrate the printing of The Season of Second Chances in the trade-paperback version. Take a look at it’s smart, fresh, renovated cover!

Check back each week for the next installment. And share your ideas with our readers and followers. Together we’ll discover some great examples of real-life-style!

Paper Whites

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Today, while the sky is full of snow, while mountains of the fluffy white stuff change the landscape between the house and the barn to a moon-like surface, with paths almost too icy to navigate, I began an exercise that promises Spring - at least indoors. I 'planted' Paper-whites.

Many years ago my friend, Joyce Castleberry showed me how to do this, as she's shown me so very many things that mark the seasons and punctuate life with grace. Not that it's difficult; anyone could order the bulbs and position them in rinsed gravel (or marbles or river stones or sand - or anything that doesn't decompose, but allows water to nourish the roots of the bulbs while holding the bulb itself high enough to keep it from rotting away). But here's the hard part --- just when the idea of Spring itself seems the most unlikely possibility, you have to remember to do it.

And, if you're going to "do it" on a big scale, you'll need to give over a whole afternoon to the task. In fact, I hadn't meant to, but I gave two afternoons to the exercise. This year I remembered to get on the Internet and order bulbs right after Christmas. I was ambitious; as long as we're in for a penny, I must have figured. And the week before last, they arrived; dozens and dozens of them, stored in net bags and packed in a massive brown cardboard carton. But last weekend, after the second (or is it the third - or the eighth) of the January blizzards, the hardware store couldn't get to their sacks of gravel because eight feet of plowed snow blocked the doors to their shed.

I'm not sure I was right in my concerns, but I feared our bulbs might rot, waiting a week in the warmth of the barn - so facing no gravel, I poked toothpicks into their rigid little bodies and suspended them all over dozens of bowls and cups and vases and glasses of water, their bulb-bottoms just barely submerged; and I placed them near windows and French doors, all over the barn. When Frank and I came back to DogWood on Thursday night, after just four days in the city, we found that roots had all grown inches and bright green stalks had begun to emerge from the fat little bulbs, full of optimism; a kind of stubborn, foolish idea that in spite of everything you can see, nature is still capable of delivering on a promise.

We continue to live in the barn, a year and a half after we moved out of the house to make way for the house renovation that was supposed to take three months, after a pipe burst. But as we opened the walls and floors and to our dismay, found that we needed to review every pipe and wire, it seemed that every possible mechanical and operational device in our 1830's house had to be repaired, replaced or eliminated altogether. And putting it back in a way that looked just as an 1830's house might have looked, was challenging. And not a fast job.

But now, at long last, the wallpaper is nearly done upstairs and we're almost ready to move our furniture back to that floor, dressed and ready with closets it hasn't found a way to accommodate in more than a hundred and eighty years. Downstairs, the kitchen is finally beginning to show signs of the more workable, charming - but most of all - safe -- kitchen it will become. Only the fireplace in the dining room will need some attention after that. And then all the floors downstairs will get sanded and painted, the walls will get fresh coats of paint, and by Spring, Frank and I will get to go home.

Among our domestic tasks this weekend, we bought a kitchen sink. Simple and white. No airs. Just a nice, clean, fresh, plain sink. And since it made us think about dish-racks and colanders and our dear old Wedgwood plates, we ducked into the smaller barn to look at our stored cache of pots and pans, dishes and linens. We opened boxes and poked around, noting the things that will go back to the house, and separating the things that have served us well, but will make their way to the little shop that benefits the work of the Congregational Church. It was like shopping in our own personal store, looking at things we'd not seen in more than a year, and falling in love with them all over again. It was actually kind of thrilling. Like getting the taste of better things to come, knowing they were ours, all along. So there we were, looking forward. Not so unlike the Paper-whites, putting out their first green promise of Spring.

Your Second Chance

Thursday, December 09, 2010

One of the many gifts The Season of Second Chances has given to me over the last nine months, was the chance to connect with readers who reached out to tell me stories of their own Second Chances.

I've heard tales of courage and fortitude, wit, wonder, wiles, windfalls, set-backs,plenty of serendipity -- and some cases of what looked simply like blind luck. But scratch that surface, and it's rarely the case. The stories I heard reinforced a truth that now seems more evident than ever we carry our fortunes with us. Luck may have less to do with success, than being prepared for the moment. Many of those stories followed the same themes. And many had the same great outcomes full of hope and optimism.

Do you think you could condense your stories down to 140 characters, so that SO many more people could be inspired? It wont be easy but I hope you can!

And to encourage you to do so, if you'll tweet them with the hashtag #2ndChances this week, on Monday the 20th, I'll pick my favorite story--tell you all why--and send the winner an autographed copy of The Season of Second Chances in time for Christmas giving.

After all, as so many of you said about this William Morris-dressed, end-paper enhanced, deckled-edged book--its a beautiful object on its own.

We think it looks like a gift that's already been gift-wrapped! Talk about seizing the moment!