Outdated Sounds Fine To Me

A couple days ago I got to thinking about the kind of kitchen I'd want to have in my future old house. Now we've all seen those old houses that stay true to the historic period and character of said house, the woodwork is unpainted, antique/vintage wallpaper adorns the walls, not an inch of carpet to be found, antique furniture is arranged in every room...and so on, but then you enter the kitchen and you're suddenly jolted into the 21st century. Polished stainless steel, granite counter tops, pure white cabinets and contemporary light fixtures.

Now maybe the owners of some old houses desired a kitchen such as this to suit their exemplary cooking skills, or perhaps they run a culinary business, or any other number of things. But as you've all probably heard me declare before on my blog, I am a die-hard traditionalist when it comes to restoring an old house. For me, everything has to be period-appropriate, including the kitchen. I know that may come off as more than a little ignorant, and truth be told, I can't explain exactly why I so firmly hold this stance, but I do know that the kitchen I described in the above paragraph isn't the type of kitchen I imagine in my future old house.

I understand that everyone has different skills and expectations their kitchen needs to meet, and sometimes those requirements mean updating the kitchen to the 21st century. But do people have to make it such a blatant transition? Or even worse, take the rest of the house with it? You know what I'm talking about. The full carpet on the stairs, all - or most - of the woodwork painted, soft, muted colors on the walls, plush furniture, carpet in the bedrooms, new windows, vinyl siding on the exterior. And once all of this is complete, like piling on dress after dress upon yourself, until you're lost within a maze of layers meant to conceal the aging structure beneath, owners of such houses still call them old. Well I'm not sure what can still be considered old about your house, but I don't see anything.

To me, when people install carpet, paint the woodwork, and update the kitchen so it looks like a polished and gleaming miniature scale of a New York City high-end restaurant, they're trying to create the new house they really wanted. Now that may be a completely judgmental way of looking at, but seriously? What you're doing is putting layer after layer of the present on what it took history hundreds of years to create, like laying down a ridiculously thick layer of butter on a succulent biscuit until when you take a bite all that fills your mouth is butter, and you never reach the moist body of the biscuit. How's that for a weird metaphor?

If home owners wanted a new house, why not just buy one? Why pull an old house out of the comfortable space of its history and update it with a false vinyl-sided facade? You're certainly not doing its history justice. And really, how can that be considered restoring it? To me, restoring an old house involves picking it piece by piece out of the dark, mildew-laden hole time has sunk it into and returning it to its original roots. That means, ironically, peeling back all the layers people have inflicted upon it over the years. Like the shaggy orange carpet, the vinyl siding encasing the original wooden siding and original windows in a false, plastic cage, the decades of wallpaper layering the walls, and the crooked cabinets bearing flat, lackluster fronts. I find it interesting that my idea of restoring an old house involves peeling back the layers while other's ideas of restoring involve applying layers. So which is the right way, you ask? Which do people prefer? Well, if the old house listings I receive from my favorite website, oldhouses.com have anything to say, it would seem the answer to that question is the latter.

Too many times I'm come across old houses that have been modernized. In the name of...what? Efficiency? Cost effectiveness? Practicality? A better resale value? I don't understand it. To today's old house buyers, what is so repelling about wavy-paned, original wood windows? Rich, dark cherry woodwork? Scarred and pockmarked wide plank wooden floors and gasp! a mildly outdated kitchen? Now maybe I ask all of these questions because - obviously given my age - I have yet to own my first home, and therefore don't know the challenges presented to me by an outdated kitchen. But really, I don't think that's fully the case. I'll use my great aunt as an example. She lives in rural Upper Michigan in a late 1800's farmhouse that was originally a log cabin. Her kitchen takes me back to the farm's hay day when cows were plentiful, chickens provided food for the table, and my aunt's brothers were busy from dawn to dusk tending to different things. Through it all my aunt had the same spacious, yet albeit dated and simple kitchen, and as far as I can garner from conversations both with her and my family, it's suited her fine.

And another thing, it blends with the rest of the house! So what, you might ask, is the point I'm trying to make? What I'm trying to say is, my great aunt made her kitchen work without completely dislodging it - and the rest of the house for that matter - from its well-seated roots and updating her kitchen. Granted, she wouldn't have the money to embark on such an endeavor, but she's kept her house the same throughout many generations, and I couldn't imagine it any other way. In fact, I feel such a palpable connection to the house because of that fact. I can feel the house's history soaking in around me with the distinct smells and sounds of the house. The hills and valleys in the floors seem to me as if the house has expelled a century's long sigh and sunken its supple and pockmarked skin into the land which it was built upon. It can shameless bare its aged facade, and not be mocked for it. In fact, it takes pride in its flaws, for it knows it has earned them well over the course of the centuries. Like an experience war veteran hobbling along in life, both in the present and in the past which has so wrought his body yet wears his many badges with rigid honor that belies the tremor in his hands, my great aunt's house stands proud amongst its dwindling, idle farmstead.

Perhaps I take such a strong stand against the modernizing of old homes is because I am somewhat inexplicably drawn to the dilapidated and even abandoned type. A reason quote on Facebook from one my cousins sums up the type of house I dream of one day owning and meticulously restoring. "You know that type of place where you remove a doorknob and replace everything else." Not only does that lend one's mind a spectacular mental image, but it also gives me a platform on which to build my explanation of my somewhat absurd and dare I say, impractical? Dream house.

Why do I say "somewhat absurd" and "impractical" you say? Well, I say the first because I'm sure - or perhaps I'm just assuming here - that not everyone dreams of their first house needing a terrible amount of work and looks as if a soul hasn't even looked upon in a decade or so. But that, consequently, is my dream house, folks. I want that type of old house where so little paint is left on the sagging, wooden siding you have to make like you're solving a mystery in trying to find the original color. I want that type of house that smells of centuries of neglect, of stories piling up against the walls and ceiling until they bow, where every owner and family has left their mark, welcome or unsightly. I want that type of house where every floorboard creaks, every window sticks in humidity and offers a wonderfully distorted view of the world through the foggy cataracts of its panes. I want that type of house that has faded, antique flower wallpaper on the walls, the type of pattern that screams at you in the quietest voice, that pattern that makes you recoil, yet tilt your head, imaging furniture in the room, imaging it somehow working. I want that type of house that has the dark-finished cabinets, a charmingly scarred linoleum floor with all the grotesque colors of the 70's living in harmony like all those flower-clad people joining hands in the sixties. I want that type of house where a small pantry sits in the back, with original built-in cabinets and seemingly endless nooks and crannies behind glass-fronted cabinets where you can store up for a long winter, or cram full with summer's plenty. I want that type of house where spiderwebs live amongst the intricacies of the millwork and fretwork carved so delicately from richly-hued wood. I want that type of house where pocket doors squeak in their frames, perhaps speaking to the rest of the house in an indistinguishable voice, whispering of the newcomer amongst them, whispering about the way her eyes travel ever so slowly over their surfaces, penetrating deep, yet finding no fault, a faint smile nudging tentatively at her mouth, threatening to burst into a laugh, or perhaps morph into something more fluid and erupt into her veins, causing to dance gleefully down the musty, shadow-laden halls with pure excitement at the sheer disrepair of it all, the utter neglect and overwhelming need for attention, for updating, for anything but the constant, crude ignorance of time always watching yet never looking.

Before I propel myself into a vivid imagery of every little detail of what i want my house to look like...I shall stop myself. For I could go on forever, listing everything I desire, and every reason why I should have it. Now I'm not claiming ignorance here, I know what the cost - money wise -of owning a house such as the one I've described above, will ultimately be. Not to mention I lack any true restoration skills other than a fierce longing and desire to own such a house. But such things can be learned, and this has been one of my greatest dreams since early high school, so there's no way the sheer cost of said dream is going to turn me away now. I have mentioned this to my parents many times, and each time they look upon me with a little more of a raised brow, with a little more of a crooked grin, you get the idea. My mom keeps pressing the idea of an already restored old house upon me, one that has stayed true to its history of course! But I'll have none of it. Let someone else live in a restored old house, after I have restored it. To me, an already restored old house is no fun to live in. Well, I shouldn't say that. It would be amazing to live in an old house, but for me, part of that enjoyment involves returning said house its original state, instead of just moving in and soaking up the fruits of someone elses labor.

This may also come from the fact that I'm constantly spotting new abandoned or simply dilapidated old houses in need of repair. If I settle down in an old house which has already been restored, who is going to rescue all of the other old houses out there in need of repair? Now granted, just like every stray cat I spot, I can't save 'em all. Not unless I want to become both an old house hoarder and a stray cat hoarder! But part of my dream of owning an old house involves in fact...many old houses! You see, once I've restored one, I want to start on another, and another. The only problem with that is - and perhaps it's a good thing that I've identified such a major problem right away? - I know for a fact I will get extremely attached to the first house I restore, and therefore it will be hard to part with it once I've completely restored it. Now perhaps that's natural, because after all, you're not only living in the house, but getting to know it intimately, and see it transform right before you like one of the literary classics being written before you, all while you haven't the slightest idea of its true brilliancy, but will find out fully later. Even if I don't restore one house after another, I will continue to search out and pine for all the abandoned/dilapidated old houses I see, because I feel a kinship with them. My heart yearns to fill them with something, to see their rooms one by one, to feel the house breathe around me, or stand silent and watch me somberly from the road as I pass by, my eyes lingering longer than most, my hungry gaze catching it off guard, perhaps sending a jolt of a foreign emotion through it, an emotion it hasn't feel in years, perhaps decades, that emotion that it feels coursing through it with the opening of a door, the rush of wind through its windows, the tinny drifting of voices floating up its soaring ceilings, nudging the dust there, demanding it to move on, because life has once again crossed the threshold, and time must find another structure to sink its talons into.

Writing this, I realize that my ideal old house is, in fact, quite complex. But it is my dream nevertheless, and one that I feel takes up a considerable portion of who I am, and in fact may even be on the same level with my dream of becoming an author. After all, my greatest inspiration for any story, are the many fictional, and real, dilapidated/abandoned old houses I have encountered both in my mind, and in real life.