Ramblings
30 Years in an Old House
After nearly thirty years at House 173, I’ve started finding the work of a mysterious previous owner. Unfortunately, I know the guy.
There is a time-honored tradition among people who own old houses.
You find something strange.
A board cut at an inexplicable angle. A screw where no reasonable person would put a screw. A wire that seems to have no earthly purpose. Three layers of paint covering something that probably shouldn't have been painted in the first place.
You stare at it for a while.
Then you shake your head and say:
“What was the previous owner thinking?”
It's one of the privileges of old-house ownership... blame the previous guy.
Except I've developed a problem.
I've lived at House 173 since 1997.
And increasingly...
the previous guy was me.
There Have Only Been Two of Us
House 173 is approaching its hundredth birthday, and one of the remarkable things about its history is that it has had only two owners.
The Moshers.. and us.
That's it.
For years, that made the phrase previous owner pretty simple around here. If I uncovered something old, unusual or mysterious, chances were good that it came from the Mosher years.
And Mr. Mosher left me plenty to ponder: electrical work has been particularly entertaining.
But after nearly three decades, the math has changed.
We've now owned House 173 for almost thirty percent of its entire existence.
That means there is a growing layer of House 173 archaeology that has absolutely nothing to do with 1927.
It dates to 1998.
Or 2001.
Or 2011.
And I know the fellow responsible.
Unfortunately.
“Who the Heck Did This?”
Every once in a while I'll be working on something and discover an old repair.
I'll study it.
Maybe even criticize it a little.
Why didn't somebody make this straighter?
Why did they put that there?
Why didn't they just...
Oh.
Wait.
I did that.
Apparently twenty-five years is long enough to forget your own craftsmanship.
It's also long enough to become considerably more confident about criticizing it.
That seems particularly appropriate for an old house.
Although around here, experience is sometimes the name we give our mistakes after we've forgotten making them.
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| That's me wearing the hat. Replacing the steps that were here when we arrived. That was awhile ago. |
Apparently, I Have Eras
The funny part is that I can now see different versions of myself around the house.
There was 1997 George, who had just bought an old house and was willing to tackle practically anything.
Enthusiasm was abundant.
Money was not.
Then came 2001 George, who put up the backyard fence and apparently believed staining every single picket by hand was a perfectly reasonable way to spend his limited time on Earth.
HOUSE 173 Link!
That fence lasted more than twenty years.So I'll give him credit.
But when it finally needed replacing, 2022 George owned a paint sprayer.
2022 George was wiser.
Or lazier.
There is a surprisingly fine line between the two.
Then there's 2011 George... He was busy.
He built things from scraps. He made a phone stand. He built a garden bench. He replaced thirteen porch windows and a door. He remodeled things, painted things and apparently generated enough blog material that I can now look up what he was doing.
That may be the strangest part.
I don't merely encounter my old work.
I can occasionally find the blog post where I bragged about doing it.
Nothing keeps a man humble quite like photographic evidence accompanied by his own enthusiastic commentary.
Some of My Temporary Solutions Have Become Historic
House 173 has also taught me that the words temporary and permanent are largely aspirational.
I've made things thinking:
This will do for now.
Twenty years later, there it is.
Meanwhile, I've completed projects I was absolutely certain would last forever and eventually found myself taking them apart.
The $5 potting bench I built from leftover lumber lasted about eleven years, before being replaced.
The backyard fence we installed in 2001 survived until its replacement began in 2022.
Parts of the back porch have been done, reconsidered, repaired and done again.
During the 2024 back porch rehab, I found myself correcting work I'd done thirteen years earlier.
I suppose that's what happens when you stay.
You don't just maintain a house.
Eventually you maintain your own history with the house.
We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. — Pascal Mercier
I Think That's Actually a Good Thing
It's easy to look at old work and see what you'd do differently now.
I certainly do.
My carpentry is better.
I know more about old houses.
I take more time.
I understand materials better.
I have better tools.
And, perhaps most importantly, I've finally learned that when something doesn't quite fit, staring angrily at it does not alter its dimensions.
Usually.
But I don't really regret the imperfect work.
That younger fellow was learning.
He was working with the tools he had, the money he had and whatever he knew at the time.
Sometimes he got it exactly right.
Sometimes he got it close enough.
And occasionally he left a problem for an older version of himself to discover while muttering about the idiot who did it.
Fair enough.
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| Nearly thirty years later, the tools are better. The scrap-wood situation remains largely unchanged |
The House Is Keeping All of Us
I've written a lot lately about preserving the history of House 173.
The Moshers.
The original windows.
The old trim.
The things we've discovered beneath paint and inside walls.
As the house gets closer to its centennial, I find myself increasingly interested in what survives.
But maybe I've been thinking about that history a little too neatly.
History isn't divided into their stuff and our stuff.
It accumulates.
Mr. Mosher's work became the old work I inherited.
Someday my work will be the old work too.
Some future person may pull off a piece of trim I installed and wonder why in heaven's name somebody attached it that way.
I hope they'll be charitable.
They probably won't be.
I certainly haven't always been.
But perhaps they'll notice that somebody tried to take care of the place.
That things were repaired instead of automatically discarded.
That old pieces were reused.
That scraps were saved because surely they'd be useful someday.
They might even discover that the scrap pile in the workshop has achieved historic-landmark status and must not be disturbed.
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| The original woodwork is holding up rather well for nearly 100. Its finish, however, has begun dropping hints about my next project. |
The Previous Owner Was Me
That's the part I hadn't expected when we bought this place.
I thought we'd renovate House 173.
Finish projects.
Improve things.
Make it ours.
I didn't understand that if we stayed long enough, we'd eventually begin circling back.
The new fence would become the old fence.
The little tree would become the big tree.
The freshly painted room would need painting again.
The project I proudly finished would eventually need repairing.
And the young homeowner who did all that work would slowly become another character in the history of the house.
House 173 turns 100 next year.
We've been here for nearly thirty of those years.
Long enough that I occasionally uncover something, scratch my head and wonder what the previous owner could possibly have been thinking.
Then I remember.
Oh, yeah.
Me.
⚜
A Few Questions Before You Go
Because old houses always leave a few questions behind.
When did you buy House 173?
We bought House 173 in 1997. The house was built in 1927, so we've now been responsible for nearly three decades of its history.
How many owners has House 173 had?
Remarkably, only two: the Mosher family, who were the original owners, and us.
Why keep old renovation photographs?
Because eventually they stop being project photographs and become history. They show not only how a house changed, but how the people caring for it changed too.
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Keep Wandering
There’s more to see around House 173. Choose one below and wander in.
99 Things I've Learned From a 99-Year-Old House
Nearly three decades of projects, mistakes, tools, gardens and lessons from good ol' 173.
Back Porch Rehab '24: The Megapost
Including the peculiar experience of correcting something I did myself thirteen years earlier.
From Scrap Lumber to Shabby Chic Phone Stand
A 2011 scrap-wood project that's still part of the everyday landscape of House 173.
The Shed Refurbishment
One little backyard shed, several rounds of improvement, and plenty of evidence that apparently I’ve been leaving projects for my future self for years.
