April 5, 2013
When our youngest daughter was an infant and we were searching for a quieter, safer place in Crawfordsville, Indiana, my husband found a 1950s brick ranch out in the country. The house itself wasn’t remarkable. In fact, it needed too much work. But the location was idyllic, with cows grazing across the road, a small neighborhood behind us and the Sugar Creek Trail just a short walk away.
We watched that house for months as it languished on the market, and when the timing and price were right, took a chance on our third fixer-upper. The house had only two bedrooms and a single bath. The roof was actively leaking, and the dark walls and ceilings were dreary. But it was, we thought, the perfect place to raise our children and grow old together.
As soon as we moved in that August, we began the work of making the house livable. Two bedrooms became three. The electricity was upgraded. And the roof was replaced (for the first of two times during our tenure there). And over the ensuing years, we stripped wallpaper, replaced fixtures, removed walls and put up new ones, all the while working and raising two very active children.
We thought we would live in that house forever. So we took our time with the renovations, saving money by having Joe do most of the work. But gradually, our lives began moving north. Joe took a job in Lafayette. Then I began teaching part-time up there. Then I was offered a job with my favorite university, and we enrolled the kids in school across the river from Purdue. By 2009, all four of us were commuting in my Prius five days a week, leaving our home behind every day.
Meanwhile, Joe continued to slog away at this Home of Undone Projects. A property that simply could not be sold as-is in the midst of the country’s worst housing crisis. And we continued to live in a state of renovation, me splashing new paint on the walls every now and then to pretty things up while Joe hammered, spackled and drilled.
Over the ten years that we lived there, our children grew from toddlers to adolescents. On Christmas, they discovered overflowing stockings on a fireplace mantel constructed from an antique chalk rail. On Easter, they searched for eggs in the spacious back yard, where we had replaced the crumbling brick patio with a deck. And three times, they said goodbye to beloved pets, all buried where the garden pond used to be.
Then last summer, a foreclosed builder’s model we had been watching on the south side of Lafayette was relisted at just the right price. A month later we were packing up a moving van and saying goodbye to Crawfordsville.
I have to admit, when I moved out of the house last summer, I was relieved. After three house renovations over 22 years of marriage, I was beyond burned out. But when we left, the house and all its undoneness still beckoned. And so for six months, my intrepid husband commuted back to Crawfordsville nearly every weekend, installing trim, touching up woodwork and repainting walls and ceilings one last time.
Halloween came and went. And then Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Finally, the weekend before Easter, the house was complete enough for a for-sale sign.
This morning, less than two weeks after the house entered the MLS, we accepted an offer from a man who, we were told, has fallen in love with our house. That we found an enthusiastic and willing buyer so quickly is testimony to my husband’s meticulous attention to detail.
It’s also a testament to his perseverance. I have complained, and admittedly, cried, many times in frustration over this home renovation. But Joe has never wavered in his dedication to see this project through to completion. He gets all the credit due for this victory. And my immense gratitude for finishing a home he will never get to fully enjoy.
Hydrangea Studio 