Old House Romances: The Dark Side

By Max Denzer

See the happy young couple. They've just closed on the house of their dreams, a 12-room fixerupper from the 1890s. They're in marital/domestic-partner bliss on this beautiful spring day as they proudly nail a cutting of their favorite wallpaper to a stud in what will be their kitchen. They pledge to each other that they will work hard at their respective jobs and return each evening and weekend to enthusiastically restore their love-nest. Tenderly, they assemble a scrapbook of paint chips and pages torn from magazines a montage of what their lives will look like in three short years.

Their third February in the house has past; they trudge by that wallpaper cutting, now yellowed and curling, still nailed to the oxidizing stud, still illuminated by the bare bulb pigtailed to the Romex. No longer do they spring from their bed each Saturday morning hammers in hand. The animated conversations of potential dinner parties and weekend guests have turned to talk of roofs and furnaces and whether they can possibly last another season.

Sunday breakfasts used to involve thoughtful discourse on hardware-store sale flyers and plans of action. Now there are long silences. One of them thumbs dejectedly through seed catalogs with the creeping realization that the cottage garden will never be more than muddy ruts, while the other contemplates the merits of various brands of table saws, their prices far beyond reach. If he could just have that one tool, it would deliver him from the Sisyphean labors that seem to double each passing week. They drift into separate fantasy worlds of weekend getaways that don't involve punch-lists and lumberyards.

No longer do they work on projects together, the act of conjugal paperhanging is an emotional minefield. For now, one stands sequestered in an upstairs bedroom, scraping rockhard putty from endless window muntins while listening to a radio playing songs that will only darken his mood. ( And I'm free, free-falling... ) Downstairs the other, exhausted from pulling nails out of door casings, aimlessly doodles exterior paint schemes onto Xeroxes of the facade, grinding her Prismacolor pencils to nubs. Beneath them both, tree roots bore into their sewer pipe, harbinger of a basement full of grey water.

The House. The House. Everything revolves around The House. The House has become a greedy child. Birthdays are excuses to buy faucets. Christmas means a gift to each other of a replacement water heater for the one that ruptured Thanksgiving morning. They moped in anger and then sponge-bathed in cold water while the turkey desiccated and the vegetables wilted. Weekends and holidays, once anticipated Restoration Time, have dissolved into mantras: We can't go out; we're stripping wallpaper. We'd love to join you, but unless he solders that feed line we won t have a working toilet. We're not going on vacation this year [read: decade]; we're saving for a roof.

Then there is the plaster dust. They feel it in the farthest reaches of The House. It's as if the magma of every three-coat wall and ceiling in history has funneled to the surface and burst forth into the plenum of their hot air furnace. Gritty powder lurks everywhere, piling into corners until it obscures drill bits, falling on the coffee maker where shaking morning hands clutch at filters, and worst of all for this increasingly fragile bond, between the bed sheets. Sheetrock scraps piled next to their pillows, they wonder if they will crawl the rest of their days through debris both physical and mental. Will it prove too much? Will there be tearful calls to Mom, then to realtors and attorneys?

All old-house couples have an unshaken belief: Someday they will be that happy pair in the magazine, eyes shining in the firelight emanating from a marble mantel, laughing as they sip Shiraz with friends. Their shellacked woodwork will gleam; the metallic gold bits in their wallpaper will sparkle in the glow of a bronze chandelier. So they stay together for the sake of The House and eventually a corner is turned. They seek professional help (perhaps of several kinds). While contractors hammer and hum, they use the last of their dwindling cash for a long weekend in Aruba. Much remains to be done, but they return both tanned and more realistic.

Flash forward three years. Now the ornate parlor is all they dreamed, but they are feeling restless. In the flickering firelight, they gaze into each others eyes with mutual desire: Honey, how would you feel about having another old house?

Max Denzer is a veteran of several restorations and relationships.


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