The Devil’s Advocate

I swear it’s not intentional, I just can’t help it…I’m the devil’s advocate.

Last week my future son-in-law, Kyle and I were talking. Well, he was venting and I was providing feedback. He has two beautiful little girls and an ex-wife who drives him crazy as seems to be the job of the ex. This particular venting session involved his ex’s choice of living quarters. After their divorce she chose to buy an old fixer upper which my son-in-law wasn’t happy about. While I’m certain the frustration came from more than just the vintage home she had picked for herself, today it was his choice of grievances.

“Don’t you agree the girl’s room should have four walls and a ceiling?” Was the latest complaint.

My poor, poor son-in-law. All he wanted was someone to sympathize with him. I suppose if I had tried hard enough I could have…but I didn’t. Instead, out came the devil’s advocate. Also there was The Rose, my precious, precious Desert Rose.

Have you ever simply landed somewhere?

Someplace you had no intention of living yet there you were. That is how I wound up in Utah so many years ago with Chris, my husband at the time. Utah was not where I ever planned to live but circumstances contrived otherwise so here I was. And since we were going to be here for awhile, we bought our first home. To call this place a fixer upper would have been giving it too much credit. Nonetheless, I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. The exterior paint was badly peeling off (it was completely gone in some places), the front picture window had a large crack sealed with caulk and the current owner was a druggie. How could I resist? For me though, all I saw was the former beauty of what it must have looked like when first created, a vision helped by the random pieces of Victorian moldings found both inside and out,

Built in 1891, it was a small 3 bedroom single bath 1100 square foot house with a pitched roof, large yard and plenty of charm. I called it the Desert Rose because there were several rose bushes on the property which were indestructible. I transplanted a few of them to better locations and they bloomed not only in their new locales but in their original ones as well. That part was a bit trying.

“Belle’s told you about The Rose?” I asked Kyle, returning from the past.

There was a bit of an eye roll and a yes. “But your kids had their own rooms with four walls, correct?”

Ummm…sort of…kind of…sometimes. When The Rose was purchased my kids were teenagers who lived with their dad in Colorado and would visit for the summer and holidays. We had a very limited budget and Chris had numerous health problems which meant most everything that needed to be done took a long time and was left mostly to me. Therefore, the house was in a constant state of renovation.

Belle helping with the bathroom

The attic was visited often

The light green was original, the yellow was the new color

The wiring hadn’t been updated since the fifties and the only thing holding much of the plaster in place (all of the walls were lathe and plaster) were several layers of wallpaper. Shortly after we moved in, Chris cut the electrical to the living room because he felt it was dangerous due to the age of the wiring and how many items would need to be plugged in. Instead he opted to run extension cords into that space. Granted, one of the first things we did upon moving in was to have an electrician replace the existing outlet box with updated wiring and run new wires to the stove and one outlet in the kitchen but the rest of the house remained stuck with what was already in place. Humorously, this power arrangement for the living room lasted until I moved in with Dave and we were able to finish gutting the place and properly fix it up for renting.

Mostly finished

Also at the beginning of my tenor as a homeowner, the back two rooms had to basically be rebuilt, including an exterior wall. This meant that particular bedroom had three walls, including drywall!… after the first couple of years. Because of the rebuild both rooms did have the only insulation in the house though so they stayed the warmest. The fourth “wall” separating them was just framing for much longer than I wanted but such was life at the time.

Then there was the summer after my divorce when I basically lived in a pavilion in the backyard and my son stayed in a tent during most of his visit. Belle, who had moved in with me by then, had her own room in the house. The part/s of the house being worked on prevented everyone staying inside so we improvised.

Through it all, I did my best to ensure my kids were happy. I wanted The Rose to be a home for them, not just a house. I wanted them to be able to look back fondly at their time there and say “yep, that happened” and laugh instead of remembering an old dilapidated building that ate time and money. The anecdotes over the five years I lived at The Rose are numerous.The memories are both happy and bittersweet but I succeeded and for my kids and I it will always be a home.

I’m not sure I convinced Kyle that a home is more than four walls and ceiling…the examples given can seem a bit sketchy if you didn’t live through them…but he’ll figure it out.

#Home #Renovations