Likely anyone who has lived in an old house has been tempted to say that the whole exercise is a giant waste of time and money. And it is. You don’t have to live in a historic home with hundreds of years of history to feel the burn of outdated housing. Any house can encounter faulty installation, malfunction, and natural disaster, but a home that’s been standing for a few decades harbors yesteryear’s cut corners, electrical wiring unsuited to our frenzied lifestyle, and plumbing that has been worked to the edge of its life.
The horrifying costs of home maintenance and astonishing complexity of even what may seem like the simplest update should be enough to scare anyone off. But what is the alternative? Buying land and building a new home seems to sidestep the whole mess. However, 15 years from now will land you in the same failed plumbing, roof crumbling, kitchen remodeling lava-scape as getting an old house upfront.
Additionally, one has to consider the warped perspective new construction gives kids. Raising your children in a brand-spanking-new home runs the risk of creating monstrous narcissistic ninnies like George of The Magnificent Ambersons. Having entered into a world of undefiled mansions, they will spend the rest of their lives evaluating the tarnished edifices of ordinary life with disdain. Why can’t people keep things up anyway?
All this to say, some of us are only suited to be lifelong renters. Yet, the allure of homeownership is all but irrepressible. As the ill-fated Gerald O’Hara proclaims, “Land: it’s the only thing that matters; it’s the only thing that lasts.” Some primal urge within us calls out for a permanent placement upon the Earth, a dwelling of some lasting import. That or economic forces beyond our comprehension propel us into it. Whatever it is, here we are. And here is way too deep.
In her book Raising Demons, Shirley Jackson recounts the purchase of a sprawling Vermont farmhouse: “When we bought the house, my husband and I both assumed, upon the candid statement of the real estate agent, that the only thing defective on the property was the left-hand gatepost leaning off at a rakish angle. The roof, the furnace, the wiring, the plumbing, the foundations—all of these, we believed innocently, were new, newly repaired, or so solid that not even an earthquake could shake them.”
Ah, but then: “We have no local firm of gatepost-straighteners, but every deadpan wit within the county limits had a stab at us. The man who came to repair the roof thought that we ought to get someone to hitch a team to the gatepost and pull it straight. The man who came to repair the furnace suggested that we dig out under the post on the uninclined side, and let the post settle down even-like. The electrician took a few minutes off from ripping out the dining room ceiling to say that what we had to do was dig out the roots of the tree under the gatepost. The plumber thought no; we better get a man to move the gatepost over two, three feet.”
Jackson remembers the year through the various children’s birthdays and the disruptive house projects variously taking place, a reckoning of time that any mother in a fixer-upper can relate to. The expense and inconvenience are maddening.
There is, however, something edifying about a house. In the physical structure exposed to the elements, crude shelters made sophisticated by extra layers and wires and pipes, we encounter rack and ruin, the reality of physical material in time. No matter how we Botox our brows, a rotting fence post does not lie.
In the house we also see the imperfection of all our remedies. One can understand in abstractions how mechanical things function but trying to implement them in a real house plagued by quirks and challenges is a very different exercise. Watching men tramp through the dainty rooms leaving a thick layer of dust reveals the ugly complexity beneath our so civilized lives. From installing a wall to mounting a fan, each project often brings unexpected difficulties, unyielding physical challenges that require adaptation. There is something electrifying about struggling with real problems, physical constraints that will not yield to our quaint ideas about our domiciles. It is the school of objective work.
We also see in our home an analogy for our flesh. Our constructions are never perfect; a house of only a year or two already shows signs of wear. Any illusions of purity are shattered when we consider the tainted genetic cocktail we inherit, the bacterial soup through which we swim into the world, the unclean food growing in polluted land. Whatever fixes we engineer for our bodies, as with our houses, can never renew the organism and can never fully return function beyond the reach of further decay.
Listening to people who are fixing houses, you often hear stoic pronouncements about the nature of reality. Faced with their own shortcomings of being uncomfortable living in disorder, their chagrin at having spent vastly more money than anticipated, people are invited to a form of purifying humility. Old houses are an arena of virtue exacting adherence to physical reality and the opportunity for virtue in the face of adversity. The technocrats want us to own nothing, but owning something big, hulking and physical provides reflection on what it is to own ourselves, to care for our bodies which will succumb to decay. Houses, with all their endless hassle, are an experience worth having.
