I grew up in an old (for California) house and neighborhood. Our neighborhood was known for its Craftsman and Victorian houses, with a few mission styles, tudor and assorted others thrown in just for fun. The neighborhood began as just a few plots of land owned by a few individuals and surrounded by orange groves. Gradually, these individuals would build houses on the land and then sell them. The house we lived in, along with the house next door, and two houses across the street, were built by the father of the woman who lived across the street. She lived in the �big� house (it was 2 story and large). Behind that was a small one-bedroom house (probably meant as a guest house to the �big� house. Then there were the two houses across the street where we, and another couple, lived.
Our house was a one story Craftsman �California Bungalow�. We had a big stone porch on the front that at one point wrapped around half of the house. One of the prior owners had taken an exit door out to the side part of the porch and built it into a huge closet and then blocked the porch from the backyard. I guess it seemed safer to them that way.
Inside the house, were all these built in wood features. In our dining room, there was a huge built in buffet, with drawers and cabinets. The walls had wood panels spaced about ever 2 to 3 feet and then on those panels (well, I guess panels is the wrong word, they were about 4 inches across by 1 inch deep) there was what we called a �cup rail�. I have no idea what the technical term is, and since I�m not pursuing a career in carpentry or architecture, I doubt I will know the term. But basically, it was a small shelf (about 3-4 inches deep) that ran around the length of the room, about 3 feet down from the ceiling. Our ceilings were tall. We called it a cup rail because when my grandmother died, she left us a collection of cups and saucers. She used to collect them, so she didn�t have a full set of china but she�d have a cup and saucer from all these different sets. I used to love to sit in the dining room picking our my favorites. There was this one that looked so plain, it was just a normal teacup, kind of a sea foam green, but when you picked it up, you could see that it had a butterfly for a handle. Another one seemed plain, but had the design painted on the inside of the cup.
Between our dining room and living room was a large opening, about 8 feet. It had two doors that slid into the wall and would come out and shut the rooms apart, or you could keep them open for the more �free flowing� feel. The kitchen had all the counters and special shelves built in, a large pantry with metal racks with holes in them. There was also a vent in the ceiling and one in the floor. This was so you could put your �pies� in there to cool off. This house was built pre-refrigerator. The best part of the kitchen was our stove. It was an old O�Keefe and Merritt stove. It was your basic 4 burner stove, but the middle was a big griddle (yay pancakes!). It had a separate broiler and oven so you could do both at the same time. And it was just special because you couldn�t get it in any home. I loved that stove almost as much as I love my first doll. I think if I could miniaturize it and sleep with it every night, I would. Oh, and also, it had built in salt and pepper shakers!
Two of the bedrooms had window seats. I loved how they opened and you could store stuff underneath them. Unfortunately, by the time we lived there, you couldn�t sit on the window seat and stare out at the fabulous countryside or orange groves as a house had grown there since our house was built, but still, I felt very much like a fairy tale princess with my own window seat.
Every room in our house had wood around the doorways and a wooden rail along the top of the wall, about 2 to 3 feet below the ceiling. Our bathroom, which we guessed was a converted nursery, had a built in cupboard, that seemed like a window seat in that you opened it from the top as opposed to draws or doors in the front, but the window was so high that it didn�t function like a window seat. The toilet was in a separate room, a room that used to be the closet. Then there was a whole room we called the service porch. It opened into the hallway and also the kitchen. It had the water heater, the washer and dryer and those sorts of things in it. I imagine that before electricity, they probably used it for their laundry basins.
Every where you went in our house were cabinets built in. At one end of the hallway was a linen closet, and at the other end, was this cabinet, it was kind of open though, with a surface about mid-waist height and then underneath, two shelves, but it wasn�t closed in. We had real walk-in closets. And panels in the ceiling that led into the attic. In our tiny garage, there was a big hold in the floor covered with wooden boards. When you took the boards out, you could see the box created in the ground. It was built when cars were first starting to catch on and it was called a car pit. You would climb in to the pit, then someone would drive the car over it and then you could work on the underbelly of the car.
To me, this is the ultimate home. Whenever I see Craftsman homes, I just think of childhood. I lived in that home from 3 months to 18 years when I went to college, but my parents remained there, with a room for me, until I was 21. I was so sad to say goodbye. I wasn�t just sad to say good-bye to my childhood home, but I was sad because the house had a personality. It was real to me, like a character in my life. And it held so many memories.
At some point in my childhood, my parents made the decision to redecorate the living room. As this was an older house, they really had no idea what an undertaking this would be. As we were not well-off, this would be a family job, done on weekends and evenings and everyone had to help to the best of their abilities. Our living room had the typical fireplace, but the special part of the living room was the ceiling. Instead of each wall going straight up to form a 90 degree angle, each wall curved up until wall slowly, unnoticeably became ceiling.
Well, the first thing we realized as we began this project (And I�m sure we began it because we were tired of the yellow roses clashing with the avocado carpet), is that after 60 years of being lived in, the living room had accumulated quite a few layers of wall paper. Like 6 or 7. And that they get really stuck after that many years. Much scraping was involved. Plus, this was pre-drywall, so it was boards and mortar and plaster. This would not have really been an issue EXCEPT that over the years, there were areas where there had been small drips which rotted the boards under the plaster. So what at first was thought to be a simple redecorating job, became a remodeling job.
Our living room was hermitically sealed in plastic. Our dining room became a joint living and dining room (thank god for big rooms in old houses). It was cramped, but we managed. For two years. As that�s how long it took us to redo the room. We had to remove all the old wall paper, this required much muscle work plus some kind of glue remover as they used different glues back then. Then we had to remove the broken plaster and rotted boards and rebuild the walls. The hardest part, was maintaining the curved ceiling while rebuilding this. And all this work was done by my us. My mom and my sister and I did the wall paper removing, but the wall-rebuilding, that was all my dad.
When we got started, we had no idea it would be a two year project. It actually kind of became a joke � Hey, remember when we used to have a living room? Hahaha. My dad had to do most of the work on weekends and evenings as he worked a full-time job and commuted quite a distance at that time. So, the work went slowly. If it was simply a matter of pulling off old wallpaper (non-heavily-glued wallpaper), slapping up some new wall paper, it wouldn�t have been such a big task. Oh, and I forgot to mention how we had to refinish all the wood in that room as they were painted over. So that meant turpentine and paint remover and scrapers on all the wood. Wood, which surrounded every opening to the room, as well as went around the top of the room and the base board. It was a lot of work.
So as we worked on creating a new and more beautiful living room, we sealed it off and lived without it for 2 years. The things we used to do in that room, we now did in other rooms of the house. We managed. It�s what you do. And who could live in that room with holes in the walls and water dripping in every time it rained. It needed to be repaired and it needed to be done right. In order to do that, it had to be empty.
I think we are like this as people. Sometimes, there are areas of our lives where we think we just need to do a little redecorating. Hey, don�t worry, let me just spruce up this area of my self-esteem and it�ll be good as new. Then once we start scraping off the years of paint, we see that there�s more work that needs to be done. I mean, what�s the point of slapping on a coat of paint if the walls are rotted. Eventually, the rot will show through.
And sometimes, that means that you have to shut a room off for a while, months or years in some instances, while you renovate. I�m starting to think that�s what I need to do with my love life. I just need to enclose it in plastic, take off the old wallpapers from decades of past relationships, scrape off the old paint of pain, find the rotted boards and broken mortar. First I need to evaluate all that is broken and have it removed. Only then can I begin rebuilding and repairing. And once it is repaired, then I can make it beautiful again, make it a place where someone would want to come in and stay awhile.
Along the way, there may come someone who appreciates the work I am doing and wants to help me, maybe they�re willing to help clean up the mess that someone else helped me create, but they will need to provide a very good resume if they wish to help in this project. I�ll need references from former employers. I�ll need to give them small jobs, like sweeping the front steps, then build from there. Maybe, as a final test, I�ll see what they can do with my O�Keefe and Merritt stove. If they can clean that up, then they�ll be allowed into the room where love lives and I�ll let them help me. But ultimately, I know, this is my room, I have to do the work. And I can�t do it while living in it, at least not right now. So that room has been shut down. There�s a giant plastic barrier blocking it from the rest of the house. I mean, if you really want to, if you work hard, you can find where the plastic overlaps and you can sneak in, but it�s not a task for the ordinary. And I deserve better than ordinary.
This year, it wasn�t really my intention to look for love or any kind of long-term relationship. I mean, there was the whole Brian thing, but in my heart, I never really think he�s going to be what I need him to be. Even when we thought (correctly but with a sad ending) that I was pregnant, I really didn�t envision this happy home together. He said that�s what he�d do, marry me, move me in, etc, but really, I just couldn�t see it. Hello family, here�s my wife, I know you don�t know her but here she is� Nah. That scenario never set well in my stomach.
So for him, I just view him as a friend. I think we�ll always be in each other�s lives. There�ll be a part of each of us that wishes things had gone differently, wishes that Afghanistan hadn�t ruined the person he used to be, but even he knows he can�t give me what I want. I stopped asking after I lost the baby. It was like the message in the bottle telling me that this was dead. Any vision I had of a future with him, died that day along with the baby.
So this year, I thought I was redecorating the room of love. A few people wandered down the street randomly (meaning, I did not seek them out � no personal ads or anything like that) and said, hey, I�d like to help you paint, that�s a nice color you selected. And then before the paint can was barely open and 1 wall was painted, they both scrammed. Oh, did you mean you needed the whole room painted? (Well, truthfully, neither one of them even said that much � from one I got, �well, I�m sort of starting to paint this other house so we�ll have to see how it goes� and from the other it was more like �I�m not good at painting, did I forget to tell you that? And I can�t forgive myself for messing up that brush stroke the other day so I�m gonna leave�.
This has all made me realize that this room needs more than just a coat of paint. It needs renovating. I don�t know what that entails. I have no idea how to renovate an emotional room. I�m sure it entails therapy, which I�m ready for. I�m sure it entails much crying in the night, which I am not ready for. I do know this, it entails plastic curtains around the openings of the room. Anyone who gets in there, is going to have to REALLY REALLY want to be in there. And they�re going to have to be able to deal with paint fumes and plaster spatters. It�s not going to be pretty. But when it�s done, it will be beautiful.
