There is a book called "Renovating Old Houses - Bringing New Life to Vintage Homes" by George Nash that appears to have been written just for us. Every chapter and every page illustrate typical problems encountered in old american homes and we seem to have won the lottery. This book is a wealth of information about old construction techniques, but more importantly teaches you how to properly restore your house with materials available today.
What first caught my attention about this book is what the author calls "The Caterpillar Approach". This refers to people, like us, who chose to live in the house while renovating it. As George Nash says, there are serious drawbacks to that approach in terms of time, money, and maintaining a "simulacrum of domesticity", which means trying to organize your living quarters in ways that won't interfere with entire sections of the house that are out of commission. And that is precisely what we are having to do. It is like a giant puzzle that keeps moving. At first we could use the toilet and sink downstairs, but we quickly had to demo that bathroom to address a severe foundation issue right below it. So then we moved to the largest bathroom upstairs, which ironically was the only one that didn't leak below.
Coming from a relatively recent house in Marietta with plenty of cabinets in the bathroom and going to a house with only a pedestal sink and a medicine cabinet makes us hurt for storage. Where do you put toiletries, towels, even a bar of soap or a bottle of shampoo doesn't have any place to rest. So we repurposed a china cabinet that we had when we lived in a loft in midtown Atlanta. Despite its contemporary look with dark wood and silver metal door, it actually works well in this old style bathroom. It is a good example of how mixing old and new can complement each other.
But perhaps my favorite "cocooning" arrangement (since we are caterpillars) is our temporary kitchen / laundry / mudroom. While we are restoring what was the current kitchen, laundry and breakfast room, we temporarily relocated the laundry and kitchen to the back sunroom. To make that work, we ran new pipes for the washer and added a free standing sink. Then with some more open metal shelves and a restaurant preparation table (which we already had) we have a working kitchen complete with a toaster oven, microwave, hot plate (2 burners) and even a dehydrater.
This sunroom has quickly become the center of the house where you can do laundry, cook and wash dishes while listening to a conference call for work all without moving at all. There is something to be said about the simplicity of the temporary kitchen. Everything is close by, you don't need a ton of dishes, you wash everything by hand in 2 seconds, you see everything you own, nothing disappears in cabinets forever, and cooking is quick since everything is close by and you don't have to open doors or drawers. I am actually enjoying this basic kitchen. These are the memories you create while renovating a house. I still have fund memories of our camping nights in the den at the old house before we could use the master bedroom. At the end you're very happy with the final results, but the temporary living arrangements is what you reflect upon later in life that give you the warm and fuzzy feelings about the past.
It is true that living in renovations can be stressful and overwhelming, but we would not do it any other way. Taking the time to live in the house and getting to know every inch of the house is the best way to figure out how to improve it. If we had unlimited budget and could just hire people to do all the work in 3 months and then move in, we would not enjoy the process. I think that's why our old house was so well done in the end. We took the time to think through the smallest details and do it just right. So I hope we can do it again this time on a bigger scale.
Oh, and I wouldn't do it without this handsome man. He is a genius when it comes to this stuff!
What first caught my attention about this book is what the author calls "The Caterpillar Approach". This refers to people, like us, who chose to live in the house while renovating it. As George Nash says, there are serious drawbacks to that approach in terms of time, money, and maintaining a "simulacrum of domesticity", which means trying to organize your living quarters in ways that won't interfere with entire sections of the house that are out of commission. And that is precisely what we are having to do. It is like a giant puzzle that keeps moving. At first we could use the toilet and sink downstairs, but we quickly had to demo that bathroom to address a severe foundation issue right below it. So then we moved to the largest bathroom upstairs, which ironically was the only one that didn't leak below.
Coming from a relatively recent house in Marietta with plenty of cabinets in the bathroom and going to a house with only a pedestal sink and a medicine cabinet makes us hurt for storage. Where do you put toiletries, towels, even a bar of soap or a bottle of shampoo doesn't have any place to rest. So we repurposed a china cabinet that we had when we lived in a loft in midtown Atlanta. Despite its contemporary look with dark wood and silver metal door, it actually works well in this old style bathroom. It is a good example of how mixing old and new can complement each other.
But perhaps my favorite "cocooning" arrangement (since we are caterpillars) is our temporary kitchen / laundry / mudroom. While we are restoring what was the current kitchen, laundry and breakfast room, we temporarily relocated the laundry and kitchen to the back sunroom. To make that work, we ran new pipes for the washer and added a free standing sink. Then with some more open metal shelves and a restaurant preparation table (which we already had) we have a working kitchen complete with a toaster oven, microwave, hot plate (2 burners) and even a dehydrater.
This sunroom has quickly become the center of the house where you can do laundry, cook and wash dishes while listening to a conference call for work all without moving at all. There is something to be said about the simplicity of the temporary kitchen. Everything is close by, you don't need a ton of dishes, you wash everything by hand in 2 seconds, you see everything you own, nothing disappears in cabinets forever, and cooking is quick since everything is close by and you don't have to open doors or drawers. I am actually enjoying this basic kitchen. These are the memories you create while renovating a house. I still have fund memories of our camping nights in the den at the old house before we could use the master bedroom. At the end you're very happy with the final results, but the temporary living arrangements is what you reflect upon later in life that give you the warm and fuzzy feelings about the past.
It is true that living in renovations can be stressful and overwhelming, but we would not do it any other way. Taking the time to live in the house and getting to know every inch of the house is the best way to figure out how to improve it. If we had unlimited budget and could just hire people to do all the work in 3 months and then move in, we would not enjoy the process. I think that's why our old house was so well done in the end. We took the time to think through the smallest details and do it just right. So I hope we can do it again this time on a bigger scale.
Oh, and I wouldn't do it without this handsome man. He is a genius when it comes to this stuff!
I love the storage chest in the bathroom. I mean to ask about that. It reminds me of cabinets I've seen in doctor's offices where they might store bandages and such. It fits the bath very well!
ReplyDeleteKeep up the blogging and the work. Kevin makes a great dishwasher!