illustration by Trisha Krauss
Illustration of family in front of a big old house
The first time I walked through my would-be house, a doorknob fell off in my hand. When I lightly ran my fingers over a piece of yellowing, white-on-white textured wallpaper, it crumbled to dust. I walked on cat-pee-soaked garnet carpet that covered the first floor and headed up a grand staircase lined by peeling wallpaper. It was like a scene from The Shining.
But Reader, I was smitten. There was no other conclusion to reach: I had to have it.
I wasn’t exactly looking for a house to buy; I just wanted a peek at the 1921 French Revival beaut, set atop a hill south of St. Paul. From the street, it looks quite grand, but in reality, most of the house is just one room wide, like a life-size dollhouse.
“When I got the call that the house was ours if we wanted it, I nearly dropped the egg roll I was eating.”
When I got the call that the house was ours if we wanted it, I nearly dropped the egg roll I was eating.
I’ve since learned it was built by a man who was once the largest cattle buyer in the United States, and he was famed for knowing a cow’s weight just by looking at it. He also raced horses, including one named Panic Plus, which, look, is right up my temperament alley. But what really brought on the goose bumps was when I discovered my daughter’s name, Ruby, painted on the wall in what would become her bedroom.
As with the house itself, the path to buying the as-is aging lady was complicated. But six months later, when I got the call that the house was ours if we wanted it, I nearly dropped the egg roll I was eating. We’d have to fix that doorknob after all.
It’s no joke to say this place was a little—is still a little?—Grey Gardens. Worn around the edges. Quirky. Yet stylish. There may have been a raccoon living in the walls. (Just kidding. I think.) The first week we lived here, I flipped on the light my husband was standing under. As blue sparks showered from the ceiling, I thought, Well, that’s that, now I’m a widow and I have to sell this damn dream house already.
Since then, said husband has rewired all the knob-and-tube—original! We’ve demoed walls and tile, scraped through layers of wallpaper, filled multiple dumpsters with detritus. I’ve scrubbed nicotine-stained windows, changing the sepia glow the house was bathed in to yellow.
That was just inside. Outside, we pulled up acres of buckthorn, burdock, garlic mustard, and tangled vines that choked more than one century-old oak tree. The work is mostly sweaty, backbreaking, wildly unsexy, and nothing like HGTV makes it out to be.
After two years, walls are still missing from rooms we intend to build back. Not one room is finished, but pieces of them are taking shape. Like showing our battle wounds, when we take people through the house, still bruised and broken in its disembodied state, we say, “Yeah, but you should see the other guy!” The other guy is, of course, this same house, just two years ago. Or six months ago.
But I can see what she will be. Her potential. Every time I drive up the winding driveway, which we have outfitted with three watchful gargoyles, I see our pollinator gardens rising from the landscape. The remaining shady oaks form a leafy canopy on the lead-up to a circular driveway where we’ve planted a garden.
It still feels like a fairy tale: Obsessing over the plaster-and-tile fireplace, hand-stenciled exposed beams, and the French doors that open to a sunroom with wraparound windows. I think of myself like a goth lady of the house: Morticia Addams or Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice or Little Edie. Though it was vacant for years, there exists a well of good energy just bubbling under the surface, waiting for us to be the stewards who can make it the Wes Anderson set it should be.
And though our tax assessor said last year, “Well, this is certainly a project house!” I am undeterred by the magnitude of shining her up and saving a little piece of history—and of being a little part of that history.
Katie Dohman is a freelance writer. Follow her ongoing home renovation at dohmicile.com
