House Rehabilitation on Market St.

Market St. House, Summer 2009

It has been a while since we have focused on the Market St. house. Giving a house over to your children--not without some significant rules, mind you--means that you stop with renovations. We brought the house to a point that, with the exception of the attic and the upstairs bathroom, was pretty close to where I wanted it to be. It is a house with an arts and crafts feel on the inside that is really very pretty when you peel away the layer of clutter that somehow continues to occur no matter how much it upsets me when it happens. So I have taken a big break from this house, because it is too hard to keep being upset about how it is treated.

Market St. House, Summer 2012

My husband, however, is another story. He built a small shed in the back yard, and this summer he gave the house what it really needed on the outside--a scraping down, and a quality paint job. The excellent news is that the boards were largely in very good condition. The rotten ones were replaced, but there weren't that many of them. The lead paint is gone, the nail heads have been resealed, and it has been painted in a manner in keeping with the era it was built in. The trim highlights some of the architectural details, and it just looks much more elegant with a new paint job.
Our community is replete with century old houses.  Many of them have not had a loving hand to care for them in a very long time, but there are people who are trying to bring older homes back to their former beauty, with all the conveniences that the 21st century affords.  I am very pleased with what we have been able to do with this house, and now that I have a much more complicated project on my hands, I appreciate how relatively smoothly this project has gone.

Tile, Tile on the Wall

I love ceramics. I always have. I have my grandmother's china and my great-grandmother's china. And my own. And a couple of yard sale purchases. So as we approach the end of the first phase of the Market St. remodel, I am thinking about what the second phase will hold, and I want to include more tile. The decision is two-fold: where and how.
The first time I saw tile being widely used for decorative as well as functional purposes was in Barcelona in 1992. Park Guell took my breath away. Gaudi used many overstated architectural elements to create a memorable statement (something he referred to as evolved Gothic architecture). While I love the buildings and the design elements that are characteristically Gaudi, what I brought home from that trip was a love of what could be done with broken tile, beyond the mosaic.

Gaudi did do some representational tiling, but the things I love best are those that are free-style murals of color. At the time we were finishing our guest house and I did a Gaudi inspired countertop, breaking all the tile myself and arranging it into a cautious design. I am not going to do a countertop in this house--but a backsplash? Maybe in the kitchen? I think it will be too busy and there is already alot going on there.

The second place that I saw ceramic decoration outdoors was in Thailand--this photo is from the Royal Grand Palace, but I saw it everywhere. I don't know how they achieve this effect, but it has the appearance of pieces being cut out, glazed, and then put together in a 3-dimensional mosaic design. I am not ready to do an outdoors major art project (benches for the upcoming deck would be one option, but it might be too grand--I am already having trouble finding the creative energy to re-upholster the seats of the mismatching dining rooms chairs I have picked up for the house!). Maybe the upstairs bathroom? That would entail taking down the fake tile wall, putting up green wall and then tiling, but that might be a forgiving project in terms of not many eyes on it while it is in progress. I am starting to visualize white subway tiles, then a wide band of broken tile, maybe a foot wide encircling the room, with another two to three white tile rows on top of the broken tile band to set it off. Maybe a black cigarette tile above and below the band to set it off, maybe not. That might be a good start.

The House

The first thing I did for the second half of my life was to buy another house. A smaller, older, more beautiful ,and more complicated house. A much smaller house. The impetus for this is multifactorial.

The house that I live in now is going to be very hard to leave behind. It is close to work, in the woods, rural enough to not lock the front door and leave your keys in the car because that is where you are going to need them next. Over the 15 years that we have lived in it, it has managed to be flexible and meet all of our needs (including housing a homeschool for 17 children for 4 years). But already it feels a little big when everyone is not home, and when everyone is home it feels too small. Yes, I am Goldilocks, it is true. Just right seems to be eluding me. So I am not quite ready to leave this house but I can see a day when I will, and I want it to be something I look forward to not something to dread. So this house is for me in about 10 years. Which is how long I estimate it will take me to get rid of enough things so I can actually fit into this house comfortably.

What about now? Well, it is for the boys to live in as they pursue various educational opportunities in Iowa City. We have lived in our current house in parallel, and this house we will live in in series. I think it will be cool for all of us to have a relationship with a house that we don't live in together.

So, how has it gone so far? All of us, plus significant others have been working on fixing it up (with the help of a contractor for the things we really can't do, which are plentiful). Participants can comment (as if I could stop them) but I have really enjoyed it. The one thing that has been a little painful--both physically and mentally--is that I can no longer work on a home improvement project for a 10 hour day and then still be able to move the following day. At all. Not one muscle could be moved one inch without significant discomfort. What happened to me? The last time I did this kind of project I had no trouble? Well, 24 years happened. Turns out that is not an insignificant chunk of time. So I lost my ability to see myself as being able to do this, no problem. but the upside has been working side by side on things with my children, and for them to see that they can do this.