There’s something romantic about the concept of buying and renovating an old farm house.
Surrounded by acres of pastures, meadows, woods and deep ravines, you might imagine it will all be lovely: carefully taking apart the rooms of the old house, revealing the decades-old oak studs, stepping back and imagining the new floor plan, complete with more windows, skylights, maybe a greenhouse attached to the house.
It’s all kind of romantic, for those inclined toward the rustic, and toward doing things yourself.
And it is fun and idyllic for a time: the demolition proceeds well, and you begin to understand just how the house has been put together over time. You know where the supporting walls are by heart, and you have half of the house torn apart and can now see where you are headed.
And along the way, you’ve been cleaning up mouse crap, and dead bugs, and dead mice that have been encased in the walls for years. And the house starts smelling of old dirt and dust and who-knows-what, and the blown-in insulation in the attic keeps falling through the holes in the ceiling you have revealed, and you try a few different ways for removing the insulation effectively and cleanly, and nothing seems to work well, except spraying down the fluffy, mouse-dirt-infested stuff with water, grabbing it with both gloved hands, and filling cardboard boxes with the awful stuff.
You begin to really dislike the whole idea of blown-in insulation.
You buy a P100-rated air filter mask (which removes 99.97 percent of nasty things), and the mask really works! No allergic reactions anymore. Unfortunately, you can work at removing the insulation now — no excuses.
It’s not all romantic, of course, and we knew that, going in. Now that the first phase of the demolition is over, there’s time-consuming, unromantic work ahead. Removing insulation in the attic is a big project, and it looms over us, threatening to take over many long, hot weekends.
One step at a time, they say.
Don’t look too far into the future.
Accomplish a few things each week. Keep moving. Take a lot of breaks.
And enjoy the land — which we did this last weekend.
We mowed walking and running paths around the perimeter of the “future goat pasture” and the “upper meadow,” and friends visited and ran and walked the paths Sunday, and we had a wonderful, fresh breakfast of duck eggs, basil, and tomatoes under the cedar tree by the house, with a little jazz playing on the iPad in the open window.
Balance is key — is always key.
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