restoration – Susan J Tweit

Renovation Reckoning: Before and After

Posted on July 15, 2018 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

I was planting native perennial flowers from a local nursery's July sale this afternoon; the sun was hot, and I was sweaty and tired. "Why am I working so hard? Is it worth it?" Rescuing this dilapidated house and yard felt overwhelming and never-ending.

So when I came inside to clean up and cool off, I took a moment for a project-reckoning and scrolled through the hundreds of photos on my computer documenting the work. Looking at before and after shots, I immediately felt better. Here's a quick tour photos, so you can see the transformation too.

The photo above is the house when I first saw it in October, 2016; the photo at the top of the post is the front view now. Among the changes: a new roof replacing the crumbling old one, new gutters and eaves, ugly and leaking carport removed, new windows (including in the garage door), trees removed, trimmed, and relocated; gravel paths and sitting patio added, along with pollinator plantings, including a native-plant rock garden.

Here's the back view as I first saw the house and yard through a screen of sickly Rocky Mountain juniper trees planted too close together and never thinned. Not so appealing, is it?

And the backyard now, after much tree-thinning and trimming, plus new windows, roof, gutters, and that fabulous new deck. Oh, and paths and sitting patios in progress (I need a load of gravel to finish that project).

Oh, yeah, much better!

Let's go inside. I fell in love with the house for its classic mid-Century Modern details, including the big windows sited at the corners of the rooms, letting in lots of light and bringing the outdoors inside; the wood floors; and the fabulous original and very retro kitchen. All of which were in very bad shape then. I can admit now that the house was "scary," in the words of my friend Connie, who toured it with me when I first saw it. (But I knew I could rescue the place.)

Below is a photo of the living/dining room, which in real estate parlance "had potential." (Meaning it needed a lot of work: the windows leaked and were fogged with age, the floors were scarred and filthy, the chimney lining cracked, the paint and light fixtures cheap and ugly, and so on.)

Today, the room shines, with the floors refinished, new windows gleaming, energy-efficient light fixtures that pay homage to the 50s, and paint in mid-Century Modern hues. The original fireplace with its massive horizontal brick surround and mahogany mantel works again, with a new gas fireplace insert.

I love this room!

Through the doorway is the retro kitchen (photo below) that totally charmed me when I first saw the house, despite cheesy appliances and light fixtures, dirt, and a terrible paint and tile job.

Who could resist the sunshine yellow color of those metal cabinets (top of the line in 1956, when the house was built), and the original beach blue stove? Not me.

After some hard work, a little creative vision, and a chunk of money for new windows, light fixtures, paint, floor coverings, and appliances, that kitchen gleams again. (By the way, it's bigger than it looks: I've had a dozen people in there hanging out with me while I was cooking dinner.)

Turn around (photo above), and you see the kitchen even has its own breakfast nook, with attached powder room. Very '50s! It too, has come a long way since I moved in, when it was so NOT charming.

At the other end of the house in the bedroom wing, what is now the master suite was a sad and cold place when I arrived the winter before last.

I lay in my sleeping bag on my camping mattress one evening before my furniture arrived and contemplated what to do with a floor that was so scarred it couldn't be saved, and a room where one end was basically a storage area-cum-hallway leading to the attached office. (photo below)

The other half of my bedroom, with the steps down to the office on the right-hand side of the photo.

Gradually I saw the possibilities: an en-suite bathroom in one corner, a laundry center and linen shelves in the other. So it became, with some seriously creative design and a lot of Jeff's skilled and meticulous work. (The linen shelves and stacked washer-dryer live behind the screen.)

The rest of the bedroom looks pretty great now too, as you can see below. (For before and after photos of my office, part of that master suite, click here, and scroll down.)

Sleeping here is a pleasure now…

There's more. The downstairs, which was not only dark and dingy when I first saw it, but had this weird smell (Connie refused to even go down the stairs!), is now a light and bright family suite, with its own bathroom that has a cool sliding barn door with a full-light clouded pane. (photo below)

There's a laundry room down there too with an water-efficient front-loading washer and efficient dryer, plus Pancho and Lefty, the brand-new gas boiler powering the baseboard hot-water heat and inline water heater. And a new master electric panel replacing the two dodgy old ones. Overhead the attic is now insulated so the house stays warm in the winter and cool in the summers.

It's been a big project, and an intense one. But I've been fortunate to have a great contractor to work with–we enjoy collaborating–and other skilled and talented tradespeople who have come to respect my vision (even if they did think I was crazy at first!).

Looking at these photos, I'm proud of what we've accomplished in the past twenty months. Finishing doesn't seem so daunting now that I see how far we've come. (There's one more bathroom to renovate, the yard to finish, and I've got a punch-list of smaller details in the house.) But we're getting close. And Oh! does this place shine now…

The only thing I regret is that Richard, the love of my life, designer and builder and sculptor extraordinaire, isn't alive to see it. He would be proud of me for discovering my inner Tool Girl.

Tomorrow is his 68th birthday. I think I'll sit on the back deck after work, and raise a glass to celebrate his life and spirit. He'd like that.

Richard Cabe (1950-2011), always beloved…

Fall Reckoning

Posted on October 1, 2017 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

The verb reckon, says my dictionary, means to calculate, be of the opinion of, or be sure of. It comes from the Old English (ge)recenian, meaning "to count up."

At this time of year, when summer has given way to autumn, I like to spend a little time reckoning with where I am in life. In that, I am using reckon in the old sense: to count up. As in, count up what I have achieved in the year as fall slides toward winter, toward shorter days and longer nights, my time to be more contemplative.

I am in a reckoning mood because I have spent the day preparing my yard for the end of gardening season. Cody's municipal irrigation water ceases running tomorrow, so I did the last watering today. And then emptied, rolled up, and stored my hoses for the winter.

I also cut down my tomato "jungle," the heritage tomato plants I grew from six varieties of seeds from Renee's Garden Seeds, and took the last tomatoes still clinging to those exuberant vines into the kitchen to ripen in bowls.

That's only part of the harvest! I grew Tangerine, Stupice, Pompeii Roma, Pandorino Grape, and Black Cherry tomatoes. All delicious and heavy-producers, despite the deer, who persist in "trimming" the vines.

Now it's time to stop and take stock the year so far, to reckon what I've accomplished.

The biggest thing is that with a lot of help from friends and family, I moved back to Cody, Wyoming, the home of my heart. In January. In the midst of the snowiest, most blizzardy winter in decades.

January 18th: Almost home!

Next biggest is that I've run a full-scale renovation project to bring this house back to life since then, starting with replacing house guts, those essentials that no one sees but which we depend on (boiler, hot water heater, wiring, plumbing, insulation).

Pancho (in blue) and Lefty (the round online hot-water heater tank) moving in to replace Igor, the antique and failing boiler.

I sometimes forget how much we (my trades-folk and I) have gotten done in nine months. Here are a few before and after photos show the scope of the project.

The living/dining room in January, looking less awful after I finished hand-scraping and refinishing floors that had suffered thirty years of neglect.

The living/dining room now, with new windows, new light fixtures and ceiling fan, paint, new blinds, furniture, and so on…

My bedroom the first night (a week before the moving van arrived)…

My bedroom now, after new windows, new floor, paint, new light fixtures, etc…

And looking in the other direction, at what was empty space, the new en-suite bathroom with soaking tub, and the new laundry center

I have hundreds of photos documenting the restoration, peeling away layers of neglect and unfortunate changes to bring this lovely mid-century modern ranch house back to life. When I look at them, I am amazed to realize the transformation we've effected.

There's more to do. There are more windows to replace, and there's one more bathroom to restore, a deck to build out back, and a new roof, along with repairing damaged soffits and fascia.

But wow! The house and I have come along way since January.

A detail of my restored kitchen, including the original beach blue oven and copper range hood, both brought back to their original look, still working after 61 years.

Next biggest thing in this reckoning is Bless the Birds, my memoir-in-progress. I started over in March, writing the story anew from the beginning. I thought I'd be finished by now. I'm not (surprise, surprise!), mostly because I keep having to put it aside to earn a living. But I am more than halfway through and eager to pick it up when I get back from a work trip to Colorado next weekend.

The other thing that's surprised me about Bless the Birds is that this experiment in telling the story in a radical new way actually seems to be working. Stay tuned…

Another huge thing in this reckoning is personal. I am happier than I've been since Richard, the love of my life and my husband for nearly 29 years, saw the birds that were the only major symptom of the brain tumor that eventually killed him.

That happiness comes in part from being home in a place that has always lifted my spirits and made my heart sing, and in part from the community of friends here who have welcomed me so warmly. It also stems from being able to spend almost four weeks this summer in Yellowstone doing my "radical weeding" work to restore a small part of our planet, as well as from the project to restore this house and its equally neglected yard, and from my writing.

My happiness comes despite the turmoil in the world, the hatred and division that dominate our nation's politics and public discourse.

I am determined to shine the re-kindled light in my heart and spirit beyond my own skin. My mission in life is to restore this beautiful blue planet and nurture all who share it. Every one of us.

That means restoring kindness and generosity of spirit. Day by day, word by word, action by action, person by person, species by species.

We all carry our own light inside. Like love, that light increases when shared. Together, our ocean of light and love will spread. Together, we can turn the tide.

I send the light and warmth of the flames in my restored hearth to you all. Blessings!

Renovation Progress: Floors and Kitchen Garden

Posted on April 30, 2017 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

For the past week, I've been caretaking a retreat center and its resident cat, which means I drive out to the center twice a day, first thing in the morning to feed and play with Talks-A-Lot, the cat (she does talk–a lot!), and to check on the buildings. I drive back out again at the end of the work day to either let Talks in and feed her if it's been nice enough for her to be outside all day, or to hear her meow! meow! meow! lecture if the weather hasn't been nice and she's been stuck inside.

As you can see from the photo at the top of the post, the view of Heart Mountain from the center is glorious, a definite bonus. Talks is quite a character, and the friends who I am caretaking for really needed a vacation, so I'm glad to be able to help out. But the twice-daily commute takes a big chunk out of my energy budget. Plus I have a respiratory allergy triggered by cats, so I'm wheezing and coughing more than normal, and that's tiring too.

All of which is why I didn't get a blog post up last week. And also why I resolved to save energy and make time for one this weekend.

Today was bedroom-flooring day. (The floor in my bedroom was the one wood floor in the house that was too badly damaged to save.) The photo above is what it looked like when Jeff Durham, my contractor, laid the first few strips this morning. They're in the middle of the floor because he was working from the the new flooring he laid last week in my en-suite-bathroom-to-be (photo below).

Looking in the opposite direction from the first photo, toward the en-suite-bathroom, which is now ready for plumbing rough-in

While Jeff laid flooring planks, I worked on my edible garden. First I made soil in my new mini-stock tanks, using a mixture of coir bricks (shredded and compressed coconut husks, an sustainable alternative to peat moss). Once I re-hydrated the coir, I added bags of local compost made by a farmer in Greybull, on the other side of the Bighorn Basin. (Thanks to my friend Joan Donnelly, who enticed me out to the Park County Home Show last Saturday, where Chad Yost and his wife had their local compost for sale.)

Starting soil preparation for the stock-tank edible garden (the hunks of earth in the bottom of each tank are turf cut from my front lawn where I cut out a bed to plant peonies yesterday).

I added a bale of organic soil amendments to the coir-compost mix, and then stirred it in with a spade to made sure the soil was well blended. (My back and shoulders definitely feel the work of hefting bags and bales, schlepping garden trugs full of water to rehydrate the coir bricks, and that stirring. Let no one tell you that gardening isn't good exercise!)

Sheet mulch in place, teepees ready to unfold and fill, tomato plants in the yellow garden trug.

Then I laid out red, breathable sheet mulch to keep the moisture in the soil and warm the little tomato plants' roots, and chose four plants, one each of black cherry, Pompeii Roma, stupice, and tangerine, from the forest of tomato seedlings in my living room.

As I planted each seedling, I unfolded one of the tomato teepees, stood the plastic teepee upright around the floppy plant, and, using a watering wand in one hand, carefully filled each chamber of the teepee with water so it would stand upright and provide thermal insulation and shelter from wind and high-elevation sun for the young plant.

When Richard was alive, we used to fill the teepees together–it goes much more easily with two people. Unless of course, one of them has a brain tumor that impairs his ability to focus and control the hose, in which case both people get very wet. But they have fun anyway.

Filling tomato teepees by myself involves balancing the floppy plastic structure with one hand, while aiming the water into each successive tube with the other. It's quite a dance, but it works.

By the end of the day, I had four tomato plants in the ground, each protected in their thermal shelter. Alongside them, I planted chervil, a French herb that tastes something like tarragon, but with sweet licorice overtones.

While I was in gardening-mode, I also thinned the spinach and baby turnip sprouts in the old wheelbarrow that is part of my front-entry garden, planted some spearmint in a pot there, and watered the sugar snap peas and garlic chives. (All grown from seeds selected by Renee Shepherd and her staff at Renee's Garden, my favorite seed company for their unique, delicious, thoughtfully produced, and easy-to-grow varieties. Thank you, Renee!)

And by the end of the day, Jeff had finished my bedroom floor. (The floor still needs trim, and the walls need paint, but those will wait until after the window-replacement happens sometime in June.)

My beautiful and smooth new bedroom floor! (I won't miss the splinters and protruding nails at all…)

If all goes well, by summer, I'll have a garden bursting with healthy, beautiful food. And my house will be… okay, not finished. I can't afford all it needs. But it'll be in much better shape than I found it.

In fact, it already is: even partly-finished, the house's inner beauty shines, and it feels like a happy place. That makes me smile, and my heart proud. And it's part of my mission to leave my patch of earth–both the built environment and the natural one–in better shape than it came to me.

The living room in this evening's lovely late light, viewed from the dining table, where I sit finishing this post…

Restoration as a Calling

Posted on February 19, 2017 | by Susan Tweit | Leave a Comment

I've been home a month as of yesterday, a span of time that seems both impossibly short and un-countably long. Short when I think about everything we've gotten done on this house-project, and forever when I realize how familiar it is to be back.

(Yesterday was also Molly's birthday. Happy Birthday, Sweetie!)

I walk almost the same route to the Post Office every afternoon that I took daily when I lived in Cody thirty-plus years ago, climbing the steep sidewalk up the sagebrush-clothed hillside above my neighborhood, and passing houses whose occupants I can name. (The photo at the top of the post is the view from the top of the hill.) In fact, I live in the same neighborhood I did back then.

Of course, much has changed in my life and in the town. I am sixty, now, widowed with a "kid" who is an adult; when I left Cody for Laramie and grad school, I was newly divorced and hadn't met either Richard or Molly. Much less moved with them to West Virginia, Washington State, Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico, and then back to Colorado.

I've lived a whole life away from this place: I step-mothered Molly, wrote twelve books and hundreds of articles, essays and stories for magazines and newspapers around the country; I nursed my mother and the love of my life through their deaths in the same year. I finished and sold the house Richard built for us and his studio too, and built a snug house and guest studio of my own.

All of that away from the place that has called me home for as long as I remember. Which may explain why I am so happy here in the midst of a house-project I never imagined taking on, with a yard that needs even more work than the house.

My bedroom, still in progress… That green spot on the wall is a sample of the color it will be eventually; the floors are in such bad shape they can't be refinished, so they'll be covered with reproduction plank flooring.

I wake every morning in my bedroom with the unfinished floors and walls that need painting, and am ridiculously happy. I am home, I think. I have found my refuge, one I needed more than I realized. I also have found my calling.

I need the place itself, the landscape that smells like sagebrush, the views bounded by mountains I know intimately because I have walked their slopes and ridges in the days I did fieldwork here.

And I need this house, both because its beautiful bones speak to me of care, craftsmanship, and comfort; and because it has been so neglected. The house needs me and my vision (and savings!). The restoration project it represents is something positive I can do when the world is so full of negativity, a way to work forward in a time seemingly stalled by divisiveness and fear.

Restoration as I am practicing it here is both hard physical work and metaphor. It is also my calling in life, especially now.

Ripping the horrible and filthy carpet off the basement stairs yesterday morning, for instance, not only satisfied my inner Tool Girl–using that little pry bar to remove that which I cannot restore is amazingly satisfying!–it also gave me the kind of workout that makes my muscles sing and sends me to bed early, to sleep well and long.

Having my hands on tools and the work of bringing this beautiful but badly treated house back to life satisfies my need to heal, to reweave the fabric of the human community, if just in this small way, in a time when we have split along bitter political/religious/tribal lines.

The work I am doing along with my contractor and his trades-colleagues isn't about red or blue or who voted which way (or didn't vote at all); it's not some kind of litmus test for who is good or who is evil.

It is simply positive work. We find common ground in tools and design, and in working hard and smart, in teasing each other, in sympathizing about kids making bad choices or aging parents slipping away. We ask each other's advice, appreciate the craft we practice, and the drive to do it well.

We talk about mundane stuff and also about more esoteric things, like what it means to be a good, caring person, and how "community" comes from "common" and means remembering that we share our humanity, that we are stronger together.

I am reminded of the deeper meanings of restoration each time we make the decision about whether some aspect of the house is in good enough shape that it can be fixed up, or it is too far gone and must go, like that truly nasty carpet on the basement stairs.

When I finished removing that carpet and its accumulated grime. I set to pulling out the staples, tacks, and even three-penny nails (who nails down carpet?) that had held it and at least one previous iteration in place.

My trusty nail-pulling pliers, which in a previous life trimmed the hooves on my horses, and served to pry out loose horseshoe nails too…

What I found underneath was a set of well-built if battered wood stairs, which when patched and re-painted, will look inviting (instead of scary) and be sturdy and comfortable underfoot. Not art, but good workmanship.

Imagine these stairs with the holes filled and a fresh coat of paint that brightens up the space.

To restore is to rebuild (literally as well as figuratively: restore comes from the Latin word that means "to rebuild"); in that rebuilding, we evaluate what we have, save what we can, and start over on what we can't. We work with the now, knowing it's not perfect.

Sometimes restoration brings welcome surprises, uncovering beauty hidden beneath the surface. As with the handles on the original sunshine-yellow metal cabinets in my vintage kitchen. They are gray, and I assumed until I recently took a closer look that they were metal dulled by 60 years of use.

Not so: The gray chipped off under my fingernail, revealing bright copper beneath. Oh my!

Last night I surfed the internet, looking for non-toxic ways to remove paint from metal door hardware. On This Old House, I found this one: "Simmer" the hardware overnight in hot, not boiling water, with a tablespoon or two of dish soap.

A handle in the process of simmering away the gray paint…

Then simply scrape off the paint with a stiff plastic bristle brush (I didn't have a brush, so I used my fingernails), and polish. It worked!

Two handles cleaned, polished, and reattached. Forty-one more to go…

It seems to me that what we need right now is a lot more energy aimed at restoration–restoring our lives and communities, and a lot less polarization, anger and fear. What we have is what we have. We can't go back.

But we can go forward with an aim to restore, to thoughtfully evaluate what we find, and then work hard and smart–together–to save and shine up what we can, and rebuild what we can't.

We may find beauty we didn't imagine in the doing. We'll surely rediscover our commonality, what unites us as caring human beings, and that is a gift we truly need.

Tag: restoration