This Old House

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you're a person of (ahem) a certain age, you'll know there was a moment, or two, or three, when you woke up and discovered things were not as they once were. The "sleep wrinkles" on your face didn't disappear after breakfast. Your joints began to snap, crackle and pop like your bowl of cereal. Eating a danish resulted in a one pound weight gain that wouldn't go away. Like, ever.

My house is hitting that period. To be fair, she has a lot of years under her belt. Two hundred, give or take a decade. And, just like an old person, the hot and humid weather isn't helping. The front door is swollen with so much moisture we sometimes have to go through the barn and open it from the outside by crashing into it like an offensive lineman through the Crimson Tide defense. The front stair banisters, which were finished in marine varnish a couple centuries ago, get uncomfortably sticky, so that going up to bed feels like holding hands with a really bad first date. The master bath's toilet, which dates from the Eisenhower administration, responds to the heat with a steady drip-drip-drip of condensation which runs across the bathroom floor in a gentle stream. Why does it do this? Because that floor, and every floor, slants. There's not a level vertical or horizontal surface to be found anywhere in my house.

But these seasonal annoyances are as nothing compared to the Large Systems Death Spiral I have entered. When Ross and I purchased  our farmhouse in 1994, we were the beneficiaries of the previous owners good maintenance and bad timing. In preparation for living in their country home full time in retirement, they prudently invested in the best furnace, water heater, etc. etc. available. Unfortunately for them, the husband died less than a year after he stopped working. (I'd wonder if the place was bad luck for husbands, but two deaths in sixty years isn't that much of a statistical anomaly.)

Over the years, Ross and I replaced and upgraded here and there. The eternally freezing-and-bursting copper pipes became impervious PVC. The WWII-era downstairs bath eventually went to the way of all flesh (and ceramic, and moving metal bits.) We painted (and by we, I mean Ross and the Sailor), we had the roof replaced, we had the septic tank pumped out.

Now, however, the bill is (literally) coming due. Last spring, the water pump, which had steadily supplied us from our well since before we were owners of the place, died. We didn't even know where the well was buried after all those years. Fortunately, my plumber had a good eye, and the backhoe guy found it without having to dig up more than a 3x5 trench in our yard. 

Both the front and back storm doors gave up the ghost (with a little help from the Sailor, who managed to break the glass in both doors within a two month span.) I have two dear cousins who are super-good at carpentry and all that jazz, and they volunteered to come over and do a quick change for me. It wound up taking them nine hours to install one storm because the back door wasn't standard size. None of my doors are. I have three in the parlor/office in which I'm writing this, and every one is a half to three-quarters of an inch off from the rest.

My cousins called one door good for the year. They'll be back in September to install the front storm door. I'm planning to have them stay overnight.

This summer, I was hit with a plumbing/bathroom trifecta. The oil-fired water heater, which again, had been there when we moved in, died. Over thirty years, who could blame it. Thank God, it was the hottest part of the summer, when taking camp showers were, at the very least, bearable. I had a new, fancy-dan green hybrid heat pump heater installed to replace it, for only about as much as I paid for our trip to Hawaii. Sorry, kids. This year, you get hot water for Christmas.

When the hot water came back on after three weeks of being shut off, the accumulated mineral deposits blasted into the dripping-for-some-time kitchen and shower faucets and kludged them. (Yes, a filtration system is on the list. But it's a long list.) The kitchen was so bad we had to turn the water off to the sink. Again. The plumber (who likes me very, very much, since I am financing his new car) will be over this Thursday to finally put the new faucets in. They are transitional in style, and it took me more time to pick them out at the plumbing supply design center than it did ti find my wedding gown.

But wait, there's more! While all this was going on, the electricity went off in the master bath - which is also the laundry room. It's not the circuits - I checked. And rechecked. So while the water has been off, and on, and off, and on, the lights and the washer haven't been working. I've been performing my nighttime ablutions by candlelight, which is very flattering. I may keep that. Sadly, having to lug my dirty clothes and sheets to the laundromat (or to kindly friends houses) is much less gracious and romantic. So as soon as Jeff the Plumber is finished with his part, I have to call Joe the Electrician.

Is it any wonder I religiously go to the DIY Network and HGTV sites every day and enter their Ultimate Retreat Giveaway? I linger over pictures of the brand-new, perfectly plumb construction, the cunningly designed laundry room, the kitchen with the full-sized refrigerator that doesn't have to fit in the hallway around the corner from the stove because there's literally no space for it on walls pierced with four doors, three windows and a wood stove.

Do I sound a little on edge? I read that most of the winners of the Dream Home and Ultimate Getaway houses wind up taking the cash option - it's too far from home, and they don't want to pay the taxes. Not me. When I win, I'm putting this old house on the market and moving. North Carolina, Washington State - it doesn't matter to me. Sure, I'll miss the friends I see so often now. But I can always Skype with Jeff if I get lonely.