Handy Kids

Our house is old – 190 years old to be precise. And it’s a work in progress still after 13 years of owning and working on it.

When we bought the house we got it off foreclosure. It had been empty for a few years, had burst pipes, and feral cats. One was dead in the basement, and we found muddy cat prints in the attic. They had clearly spent time peeing on the carpeting throughout the house.

You’d have thought the first thing we’d do was tear out the carpeting, but the mortgage lender required us to rebuild the front porch first, which was termite dust held together with green paint. So that’s what we did. We spent the summer with the porch roof on supports and redid everything below it.

In 13 years Seth has put in new flooring throughout much of the first and second floors, we had a patio and walkway poured, Seth and his father built new back stairs, Seth put in a new wood burning fireplace insert and rebuilt the fireplace box, rebuilt the stair railings, and fixed a lot of wiring and lighting. Now we are in the midst of a full bathroom gut and renovation. Down to the studs and joists. Seth is *amazing* at all renovations and repairs.

Our projects are always reaaaaally something. The people who owned the house in the 1990s took out most of the lath and plaster and put in new wiring and windows, for which I am grateful. But they cut a lot of corners, and we always have to take things down to studs and joists and fix all their mistakes before we can get to installing new materials. We have found areas of flooring that were spongy feeling because there was essentially nothing supporting them. The old fireplace insert was teetering on the brink of falling into the basement because there was no floor under the back half of it. You can’t trust that the circuit breakers contain any logical collection of outlets and lights. The floor in the upstairs hallway was a full 4 inches higher on one side than the other so it was at a crazy drunken angle. And so on.

Basically, we are always working on something on the house and it’s always an adventure.

Naturally, because we are us, we get our kids involved in the projects. Kiddo in particular loves power tools and is really good with them because of all the time she’s spent helping Seth on projects.

We want our kids to have diverse life experiences and skills. It’s so good for Kiddo in particular – who struggles with self esteem – to know that she has a variety of skills.

Even Tiny has gotten in on the action. Small as she is, and only two and a half, she can hold her own with a small impact driver – she helped us put together our Little Free Library – and the amazing thing is that Seth didn’t even have to teach her how to use it. She just figured it out from watching Seth. I so wish I had photos of her in action, but I’m the photographer in the family – and alas, Seth didn’t think to capture it. Next time though!