Getting On With It
That's what he's always doing, getting on with it. You'd think his time wasn't his own. Which it is. We are, after all, retired. And happily so. All I ever wanted, really, was to spend time with him, the more the better. Now we've got more and it's better, much better. We've never got in one another's way. For one thing we're usually engaged in doing things particular to each one of us, so if he's busy with something I'm generally going on with something completely different.
This home we share has become his major hobby. Likely the reason he wanted it. Each of our homes, from our first to this our fourth home, has boasted his personal signature. No one ever could claim that their house in any way resembled ours, none of ours. He used each of our four houses to express his personal aesthetic. Yet each of the houses came out differently, had their own emphasis, declared themselves to be authentically his, yet different from their predecessors.
When we were 20ish, we had bought a semi-detached bungalow in Richmond Hill, Ontario. It was grey brick, had good-sized rooms, hardwood floors, and was the most uninspiring, plain looking house imaginable. As our children began to arrive he began doing things to the appearance of the house, replacing floor coverings, painting a large mural on the end wall of the combined living/dining room, installing a rough wainscotting in the kitchen and dining room. Half the basement was finished, a small wood-burning stove installed, and we had a combined family room and playroom which served us very well.
In our mid-30s we bought a house in North York, moving closer to the city, and this too was a half-brick semi-detached, two-story, but at the time we thought it was quite wonderful. The half-brick was the bottom half of the house, the top half being quasi-Elizabethan-beamed and stuccoed. We had a very large front entry, a sweeping staircase open from the second floor, and, wonder of wonders, a 'powder room' next to the kitchen on the first floor, a full, large bathroom on the second floor which opened directly from either the central upstairs hall, or our bedroom, with the children's bedrooms radiating out from ours. We had patio doors leading out from the living room to a patio, and a large floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace. We loved that house, but discovered all too soon how poorly built it had been. In the short while we lived in it, he built out of the basement two large rooms, one of which had a 'stage' where our three children acted out plays with their friends. He built a lovely rock garden at the side of this house, using colourful old bricks washed onto the shore of Lake Ontario where we plucked them out of the sand and set them carefully into the rock garden. We were there only two years.
Our third house was a two-story detached house on a very nice lot full of mature trees, in Blackburn Hamlet, a little bedroom community built within the greenbelt just outside Ottawa. We had arrived: we owned a fully detached house, a four bedroom with generous-sized rooms and oak flooring throughout. There too he finished the basement to give us additional living space, and installed a wood-burning stove there as well. In this house he began to experiment with stained glass and he built and installed two stained glass French doors of his own design to separate the foyer from the front hall. Another set between the living room and dining room. Wainscotting throughout the large living room. He replaced the wrought-iron banister and rail with a wood one he fashioned himself. He used wallpaper extensively throughout the house, and it was a lovely house.
He always talked of having a larger house, and I always laughed, never thinking him to be that serious. But he was. His interest in paintings, in wall art and antiques left him insufficient display room in the houses we had, so this, our fourth home made up for the wall deficit, with 18-foot walls in family room, living room and foyer. In this house he has outdone himself; his previous embellishment of our former homes being but a precursor to the main event. He installed French-type glass doors between the kitchen and dining room; the dining room and foyer; the foyer and living room; the family room and foyer; the foyer and kitchen; the breakfast room and family. Some of the doors were of his own making, and entirely of stained glass, framed in wood. The large windows in our bedroom are filled in stained glass 'paintings', as are those in the family room, the library, the bathrooms and the foyer. The library is entirely lined with lodge-pole pine, and bookshelves cover three of its walls, while a fourth is open to the foyer below.
He has ripped up and re-built the kitchen counters, bathroom counters, laid ceramic tile and/or marble tile in the laundry room, kitchen, powder room, breakfast room (including walls); master bathroom. He has installed wood flooring in the master bedroom, library, dining room, upstairs hallway (we'd had the builder install parquet flooring elsewhere). He excavated several large areas at the front of the house and installed 'stone' retaining walls, and brick courtyards and walkways.
He ripped out the staircase from the main floor to the basement and replaced it with an oak staircase, balluster and railing which he made. He roughed out a large room, a smaller one, and a washroom in the basement, and installed dry-walling throughout. The washroom is divided with the throne room set apart, and where the vanity and sink sit are also wall-to-wall shelving which contain most of my collection of antique Japanese dolls. The smaller room also boasts bookshelves and we call it our study; its floors are oak parquet, the walls half-panelled, the upper portion wall-papered. The large, long room is also his studio set up with a large easel and a cupboard with his painting supplies. We have Canadiana furniture there, a number of bookshelves (groaning with books and magazines) and a loveseat. Beyond these rooms sit a) the furnace room, b) his workshop room.
There is much else he has done in this house, too numerous to mention, all of which give this home of ours a truly unique stamp of character. He ripped up the carpeting on the winding staircase leading to the second floor and replaced the pine stair treads and backs with oak. After which he began installing wainscotting with various motifs reminiscent of chinoiserie. A year earlier he had transformed our bedroom with incredible woodwork on the walls. Each of the rooms of this home of ours expresses its own unique character reflecting its function and his aesthetic, a bonny combination. Now he is in the final process of completing his work in the foyer and upstairs hallway.
He has no fewer than four aluminum ladders sitting in the foyer, all of them varying heights and purposes, and he is using them all in turn, when utility indicates. Reaching to the top of an 18-foot wall is not for the faint of heart, and he certainly is not faint of heart or purpose. Ask me: will I be glad when he is finished? Oh, heart's content!
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 04, 2005
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