Waiting for the Reveal

Home renovation programs are all the rage. Rich and I have spent countless hours watching homes be transformed from sad, abandoned, unloved, beaten up and condemnable structures to a showcase of uncluttered, designer rooms of our dreams. Each projects completion is revealed in the hour (or less) of the show’s programming, minimizing the actual blood, sweat and tears that go into this sort of endeavor.

The plot line is always the same. The home buyers present a list of wants and needs for their new home. 3 bedrooms or 4. Basement or garage. Open floor plan or closed. Master suite. In-law apartment. The host takes that list and prepares a showing of typically 3 properties. Each property is ultimately lacking in one way or another. All in need of repair. The subjects deliberate over a cocktail to make their decision. The audience is left in suspense as the program goes to commercial. After the 2.2-minute break, the clients reveal which house they chose. They are presented with the design plan for their new home. The possible transformation is amazing! How would they be able to pull this off in their 6-week window?  And within the budget provided?  The crew immediately gets to work and starts tearing down walls – it’s demo day. Oh no! They found old plumbing that NEEDS to be replaced. Oh no! That wiring was a hack job. Oh no! That wall is a supporting wall.  What are they going to do? {insert eyeroll}

Now, I make fun, but seriously I am totally addicted to these shows. I watch them over and over again. I adamantly and vocally disagree with the homeowner’s choice in properties. As a daughter of a seasoned realtor, I know what is a good investment and mentally check off what the home is lacking for resale. As a mom of 4 and on our 3rd home ownership, I know having an open floor plan is not what it is chalked up to be.

When the inevitable bump in the road comes during the show, I too wait to see how they resolve the situation. I too, get disappointed that they can no longer have the master bathroom they wanted. I relish in the moment that the husband or wife make secret requests to surprise their partner. I mean how sweet and thoughtful. And then the reveal.

I absorb the design choices made and try to figure out where I might do that in my own home. I immediately go to Pinterest to pin the picture to my “new home” board. I admire the clean colors, contrasting textures and soft materials of the furniture like it’s my job. The finality of the episode leaves me feeling complete and satisfied.

I love every minute of this type of programming. This is probably how I ended up in a 160-year-old farmhouse that hasn’t seen an update in 70 years.  I love to blame it all on Chip and Joanna, but how did I really get here?

Rich and I purchased our previous home in 2004.  It was also a 19th century home that a contractor had purchased and renovated as a flip. The first time we looked at the house was a dark rainy afternoon. Because it was vacant and newly renovated the electricity was turned off. I still remember Rich and I running through the house like school kids taking it all in before we lost daylight. He loved the old Victorian look of the outside of the home while I felt comforted in the newness of the fresh renovation. It was a perfect blend of what we both were looking for. We had just sold our 2000 sq ft colonial house on an acre of land in Duxbury to move closer to my family and my hometown. This new house was 2 bedrooms and 1300 square feet on a postage stamp of property. My mother (our realtor) looked at us in bewilderment. What were we doing? This wouldn’t be the last time we did this to her.

At the time, we only had Jacob and he was only 4 months old. On the day we passed papers, the listing broker said to me “well, I hope you aren’t planning on having any more kids”. How rude?! I thought. We loved our little “Sandcastle” (I give everything a name) and continued to live snuggly inside the cozy cottage of a home with the intention of forever. We held onto that notion as our family grew from 3 to 4 and even at 5 we were still finding comfort in our cozy little home. That was until we were surprised to find out I was pregnant with our 4th child. We agreed it was time to find a larger home.

I made my own list of wants and needs:

4 bedrooms
2 bathrooms (at least)
Separate living area for kids
Office Space
Large yard
Dining Room
Amazing kitchen
Oh! And this dream future home also had to be newly built. I was tired of living in an old home with no storage, no closets and drafty windows. I needed closets to shove the obnoxious amount of stuff that comes along with 4 kids and a husband who also owns his own business.

Fairly early in the search, we realized we were going to have to loosen the purse strings. Well, Rich realized. I knew from the start that we were not being realistic. Increasing our budget meant we would have to sell our house first.  We put the “Sandcastle” on the market and by the first weekend we had 4 offers and my head started spinning out of control. Here we had a home we loved, in a neighborhood we loved even more, under agreement and we could not find one piece of property that we saw suitable for our large family. I continued to be insistent that our future home was out there and something would come on the market that checked all our boxes. And then he swayed me….

Rich has always loved the character and the workmanship of older homes. He admires the detail put into moldings and ceilings. He revels at the waviness of old glass and how the liquification of the glass makes it seems like you are looking through water.  Over the years Rich has helped me admire all the fine details in the architecture of these old homes too. And I get it. I do. I love the front porches and the fireplaces. I have always romanticized the history of the captain homes as I drove through our old seaport town. But it isn’t what I wanted for us. It isn’t what I pictured when I thought of us in our new home. Then the “Castle on the Hill” (or that is what I call it now) went on the market. The home had been for sale on and off for years. I had seen it in my real estate listings as I scrolled through but always dismissed it as” too much work” and “not what I was looking for”. What I didn’t realize, Rich had been in the house multiple times. The owner was one of his business clients. When he caught wind that it was back on the market, he showed me the pictures online and persuaded me to just look at it. I agreed to go to the open house but it was only to appease him. In my mind, there was absolutely no way I was going to agree to actually buying it.

On a warm spring day, we turned onto the dead-end street on the top of the hill. The house sat on the end of the road and appeared lonely and bleak. It was a drab shade of grey that may have been white at one time but dimmed with age. The big boxy square of a home had a porch across the front. The demeanor of this large house appeared sad and forgotten. There really is no other way to describe what I thought when I first looked at the house.  The front porch had been enclosed by glass sliders that hung at obscure angles, the screens of the sliders torn in numerous places, you could tell by looking at them that they were no longer on their tracks.  Each of the sliders had an unfinished 2×4 nailed across them as a makeshift railing to prevent falls – just adding to the abandoned demeanor of the home. This wasn’t what I wanted. There was no wow. I didn’t admit it aloud, but I wanted a wow factor. I wanted something that I could be proud of when I hosted all the fabulous parties in my dream future with my NEW large house. This wasn’t what I pictured at all. And then I turned around.

The house had the most magnificent view of Gloucester’s outer harbor. The water glistened in the sun as small fishing vessels and lobster boats bobbed along. Across the harbor stood a classic white New England lighthouse with a breakwater of granite extending into the sea, sheltering the town from the inevitable harsh storms of the Northeast. It was a view I only dreamed I would ever have. In that moment, I could see this beautiful seaside town in all its glory. I began to imagine what this view looked like in 1860 when the home was built. The fishing schooners that sailed across the horizon and the generations of fishermen who followed. It was breathtaking.

And then I turned back and there was that big old sad house looking in the direction of the water. I started imagining all the people who had sat on the porch where I stood, looking over the very body of water I was admiring. Surely this house was built for more majesty than the state it was now in. I took a deep breath and followed Rich inside. Everything was yellowed, peeling or both. We walked into a large foyer – a broken mirror on one wall, the remnants of a bull stead on the other. To the left was a large living room with a fireplace.  One wall was covered in wood paneling, the windows hung drab, dusty gray curtains (the very first thing I pulled down when we passed papers). To the right was another living area that lead to a butler’s pantry and the largest dining room I ever saw. Even though this was a fantastic flowing floor plan for all those joyous parties and holidays of my future, I still couldn’t see myself actually living here.

Beyond the dining room was what was left of the kitchen. Old, dingy white cabinets probably from a 1950s renovation hung down a long corridor creating a narrow galley cooking area. The countertops were made of Formica and were torn and burnt from decades of use. The working area lead to a large square room that served as a casual dining area.  The layout and the state of the whole room made it hard to imagine cooking for my family of 6. But I saw what it could be. I saw the potential. And it scared the crap out of me. In my mind I started to reconfigure that kitchen to something out of a magazine, off Pinterest and all my HGTV binges started running through my head.

We continued the tour and found that each room not only had a closet but large ones and ones with built in drawers and nooks. Every corner we turned, the Atlantic Ocean glistening through the window, catching my eye and my argument against this fixer upper started to dim. There was just so much possibility. And there would be a lot of work to make it what we wanted. But both Rich and I, with visions of HGTV sugar plum reveals dancing in our heads plunged forward. We wanted to give this house all the love and attention it deserved. My mother, once again, looked on with bewilderment as she handed us the papers to sign on closing day.

The project began with a bang. In the dreamy haze of delirious possibilities, we picked up the kids from school and drove them over to our new home – hammers in hand. It was Andrews demo day and the kids were in their glory.  We gave them each a wall and let them just go at it while the baby peacefully napped it the car. Eventually, the entire first floor was brought down to studs, taken apart and put back together. All new hardwood floors went in and we removed all the unsightly radiators adding dreamy radiant heat.

We removed the wood paneling, layers of wallpaper and drab window treatments.  The walls, moldings and ceilings were painted over with a soft neutral beige and bright white.  I designed the kitchen of my dreams (and Pinterest board) with tall white cabinets, honed black granite countertops and soft blue-green backsplash. We added cool elements we saw on our renovation shows such as the pot filler above the stove and a glass paneled top row of cabinets – just for show. Three months after we passed papers, moved between parents, in laws, and a short-term rental we finally moved into our Castle on the Hill.  But the renovation wasn’t close to being finished. Chip and Joanna weren’t in my front yard with a big banner of what our house used to look like. Even if they were, from the outside it still looked the same as the day of the open house.  The exterior is phase 2 and will be done over the next 5 years.  It took nearly a year to install that blue-green tile backsplash in the kitchen. Even as I write this today, over a year later, our contractor is behind me installing my pantry door and capping the moldings in the kitchen. There are still walls that need to be painted, windows to be replaced, shelves to be installed, porches to reconstruct, and, and, and…..

When we first moved in, everyone was asking to see what we had done. Why hadn’t I posted more pictures on Facebook? Some days, it is hard not to focus on what still needs to be done. Not the amazing accomplishment Rich and I have made and the beautiful home we have created for our family. You get hung up on the areas that need painting, the toys that need to be picked up before you can take the Insta-worthy photo, the lack of window treatments still needed to be purchased, the artwork leaning up in the spot where they will eventually be hung, I could go on. Most days, it takes a conscious effort to zero in on all we have accomplished and stop looking at what we haven’t. It is the days that I find the strength to do this that I feel proud and happy.

The renovation shows are great and we all know that they are made for TV. When we took on this renovation project, there was a level of expectation (albeit naïve) that there would be a completion date and when that date arrives our vision would be revealed in real time. Boy was I wrong! As I sit here recounting the past year and chuckling about expectations vs. reality, it strikes me how life is full of these little mini reveals.  We are always waiting for that nice neat BIG package at the end.  But how about the little ones.

Here at the castle, we continue to chip away at our project list. As each item is checked off, we peel away another piece of the sad house and bring a little more joy within the walls of our home.  I don’t know if there will ever be an end to this project.  I am certainly not waiting for any big reveal. I just hope to always be able to take a step back and appreciate the process that brought us here.