Radical Acceptance of Old Houses

Only once in my adult life have I lived in a new build - an apartment built to fit into an old neighborhood in Boston. I sometimes imagine the convenience of a new build. I have difficulty understanding the soul of a new build. This is because I lack the skills or fortunes to build the house for myself. I have spent my entire life infatuated with old houses. Our real estate agent shares old houses for sale with me by email each day. He knows I like to look at them even though I will not be on the market again for a long time. When I am, he wants to be there for me, he tells me during regular calls.

This morning Linda remarked that the housing market is gray and white. I had noticed it too. The stately old houses are cold and distant these days. Most everything is new, except the original (refinished) wood floors; painted white trim; painted white interior doors; some plaster walls or ceilings, and some exterior stucco, stone or brick. Rarely do I see an old house that its owners have not made to conform to updated standards.

By updated standards, I do not mean safety standards. Knob and tube makes me as nervous and sparingly do I turn on original wall fixtures.

Old houses have inconsistencies. Their unlevel floors cause toys to roll on their own. Seasonal sticking doors and windows are annoying in the spring. Sometimes houses groan in the middle of the night when the world is quiet. My approach to fixing up an old house is to work on it over a great number of years. Projects become a conversation among the house, Linda, and me. Through the course of the discourse, we come to embrace a great many flaws. We live with things until we discover a solution.

We arrived at this approach with our first house that we owned out of financial necessity and love of our house. We knew others doubted our decision to buy the house with so many problems in such an odd neighborhood. It is a judgmental society and introverted, sensitive people feel that at every turn. Our house did not judge us. We lived with problems like warriors and told stories about them like big fish tales.

We developed a form of radical acceptance in our first old house that we are now applying to our second old house. For example, We applied elbow grease to bring out the character of old wood rather than painting. And we placated the plaster walls to keep their cool, especially around nails.

I will be writing about my journey toward radical acceptance of old houses. How I learned to take the time to know what works with the light and our lives and resist the pressure to completely rehab a house. Tricks on how to decorate around the taste of former owners rather than discard usable materials. And stepping back and appreciating the old house.