So we're building this house. What a happy day it will be for everyone around me when I can say "So we BUILT this house"- I know ya'll are getting plumb wore out from hearing about it.
But lets talk about ME.
More specifically, lets talk about the mess our current house is in, the lack of amenities in our new house, and how that all relates to and affects the Christmas Spirit in our family this year.
Because we're supposed to be moving (first promised "in by Thanksgiving" then "in by Christmas" then "probably in by the housewarming we've already sent invitations out for")I was loathe to haul out the boxes and decorate this house. Why do that when we'd have to take it all down right in the middle of the season?
Of course, there's nothing to hang a decoration on over yonder yet.
The one thing Alec requested that we retrieve from the holiday boxes was Christmouse.
Christmouse is a little stuffed rodent who hops (with the help of Alec, and his brother and sister before him) from one numbered pouch to the next from December first through the 24th.
So we lugged the boxes out of the attic and scrounged around till we found Christmouse, then pushed aside samples of stain and sealer, made a weak attempt at eliminating cobwebs from his spot on the wall, and- thanks to a loose nail- hung him crookedly in place.
Ta Daa. Oooooooh. Festive.
The tree is up- it's always up. It is also, however, somewhere behind a gabazillion boxes awaiting packing and still decorated with September's decorations, which are fall leaves and sunflowers.
Fa la la la la
La la.
La.
La.
How to describe our house?
In the best of times, I'm a very casual housekeeper. If there is a game trail from one room to the next, and the bathroom fixtures aren't actually talking back to us, we're good.
Oh, I've got my 'pet things' that have to be done for me to feel like we're living in a house and not any ol' landfill- the dishes must be done, the bed must be made, and the laundry clean if not folded and put away.
With all the time spent at the new place, and the lack of energy and basic give-a-shit-ness after working all day at the new place, the house is...startling. And not in a good way.
Pack rats all, our stuff has taken on new configurations and astoundingly, the more we haul out, go through and throw away, the less neat the house is. It's even spreading from the bedrooms (main repositories of clutter) to the hallway to the living room to yea verily the kitchen counters that have somehow shrunk from 2 ft wide to about an inch and a half wide.
I took a deep breath and with a dramatic sweeping gesture I made enough room on the kitchen counter to bake a single solitary batch of sugar cookies, which we will frost and sprinkle tonight.
My family is terrific.
They're right there beside me, behind me, doing all things asked and unasked in an amazing constant never ending show of love and devotion that humbles me and makes me want to do more for them.
More Christmas.
More decorations.
More cookies.
More patience.
More time.
More.
We'll be working at the new house tomorrow- Christmas Eve.
After waking and opening presents Christmas morning, we'll be back out there.
Working.
Making our home a reality.
Together.
And I realize that we don't need More.
Because what we're doing together is enough.
After a hellishly difficult year, we're together.
And that's enough.
photo
photo by Sheri Dixon
Showing posts with label home building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home building. Show all posts
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Friday, December 10, 2010
The Resale Value Bugaboo
So we're building this house.
I may have mentioned that before a time or seventy.
This little house is everything that our little family desires for us to be comfortable. You'd think that would be a good thing, an understandable thing, universally. But we found out differently.
The young man with the computer program who turned my drawing in pencil on graph paper into an actual blueprint kept trying to draw in a dishwasher. I have three dishwashers, and their names are Ward, Alec and Joe. In my entire life I've had one mechanical dishwasher and I hated it. For the most part I used it to hide dirty dishes till I could wash them by hand. It WAS handy for cooking Lake Trout, though...
While doggedly drawing in a dishwasher I didn't want, he also kept leaving out the second stove in the kitchen- in addition to the gas range, we have a wood burning cook stove.
Causing the most consternation was the HVAC closet. When asked where it was going, I said, "We don't have one". Which he couldn't wrap his head around, since how can you have a house without central heat/air???
Like this- the house is site specific- set and arranged to take advantage of every ray of light, every prevailing breeze, every one of the hundreds of trees around it.
Considering our climate is truly temperate, most of the time the windows will be open. When we do need artificial cooling or heating, we have window air conditioners (one for each of the two bedrooms) and heaters- both wood burning and propane.
Why heat and cool rooms you're not using? So I told him we are installing "Zoned Temperature Control" and averted the explosion of his head.
Showing the blueprint to my best friend (lets call her Cathy), she asked where the refrigerator is in the kitchen. I told her it's not IN the kitchen, it's in the pantry, along with the microwave cart. The kitchen is in the actual center of the house with the dining room/kitchen/living room all being one big space, and I didn't want a big stupid fridge sitting in the middle of it, and the pantry is right off of the kitchen. Putting the fridge in the pantry makes it...exactly as far away from the sink, work area and stove as it is now in this house.
Cathy sighed (she's done alot of that in the 30+ years I've known her) and said carefully, "Sher, what about resale value?"
Here's the thing.
We're not going anywhere.
This house is not an investment, not being built to look like the houses around it, not supposed to impress anyone.
It's our Home, and once we move into it, we're not leaving.
And yanno, in years past that's how people built their houses. The old houses were filled with character, color, quirks of all sorts to shelter and nurture the people who were going to live there- not till the market went up, but for generations.
New houses are built in neighborhoods where one house pretty much looks like the next one, except for differences so slight as to be inconsequential. The interiors are stark, neutral, and once stripped of the portable things of life- furniture, things hung on the wall- revert quickly back into what they were built as- gigantic totes to hold stuff temporarily, till the next step, the next job, the next transfer, the next move.
And I can't help but wonder if our Housing Industry is a symptom or a cause of some of our societal ills- our pervasive sense of impermanence- of never setting down roots too deep- because while roots are unsightly on An Investment, they Anchor a Home.
I may have mentioned that before a time or seventy.
This little house is everything that our little family desires for us to be comfortable. You'd think that would be a good thing, an understandable thing, universally. But we found out differently.
The young man with the computer program who turned my drawing in pencil on graph paper into an actual blueprint kept trying to draw in a dishwasher. I have three dishwashers, and their names are Ward, Alec and Joe. In my entire life I've had one mechanical dishwasher and I hated it. For the most part I used it to hide dirty dishes till I could wash them by hand. It WAS handy for cooking Lake Trout, though...
While doggedly drawing in a dishwasher I didn't want, he also kept leaving out the second stove in the kitchen- in addition to the gas range, we have a wood burning cook stove.
Causing the most consternation was the HVAC closet. When asked where it was going, I said, "We don't have one". Which he couldn't wrap his head around, since how can you have a house without central heat/air???
Like this- the house is site specific- set and arranged to take advantage of every ray of light, every prevailing breeze, every one of the hundreds of trees around it.
Considering our climate is truly temperate, most of the time the windows will be open. When we do need artificial cooling or heating, we have window air conditioners (one for each of the two bedrooms) and heaters- both wood burning and propane.
Why heat and cool rooms you're not using? So I told him we are installing "Zoned Temperature Control" and averted the explosion of his head.
Showing the blueprint to my best friend (lets call her Cathy), she asked where the refrigerator is in the kitchen. I told her it's not IN the kitchen, it's in the pantry, along with the microwave cart. The kitchen is in the actual center of the house with the dining room/kitchen/living room all being one big space, and I didn't want a big stupid fridge sitting in the middle of it, and the pantry is right off of the kitchen. Putting the fridge in the pantry makes it...exactly as far away from the sink, work area and stove as it is now in this house.
Cathy sighed (she's done alot of that in the 30+ years I've known her) and said carefully, "Sher, what about resale value?"
Here's the thing.
We're not going anywhere.
This house is not an investment, not being built to look like the houses around it, not supposed to impress anyone.
It's our Home, and once we move into it, we're not leaving.
And yanno, in years past that's how people built their houses. The old houses were filled with character, color, quirks of all sorts to shelter and nurture the people who were going to live there- not till the market went up, but for generations.
New houses are built in neighborhoods where one house pretty much looks like the next one, except for differences so slight as to be inconsequential. The interiors are stark, neutral, and once stripped of the portable things of life- furniture, things hung on the wall- revert quickly back into what they were built as- gigantic totes to hold stuff temporarily, till the next step, the next job, the next transfer, the next move.
And I can't help but wonder if our Housing Industry is a symptom or a cause of some of our societal ills- our pervasive sense of impermanence- of never setting down roots too deep- because while roots are unsightly on An Investment, they Anchor a Home.
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