I haven't the Bloggiest

My first blog entry tells the story of how my family came to live at Mayday Farm.  I was happy with my first entry but it leaves me wondering, what next?  And that’s when I answer myself (not out loud, mind you), I haven’t the bloggiest.

There will be stories about how we have spent the last 7 years turning this wreck of an historic house into our home, bit by painful bit.   But there will be more! I am very crafty (you can take that how you want to) so look for craft projects.  I am a thoughtful parent of three children, two of whom have special needs.  I usually love to cook (although I am on a non-cooking jag right now), I love to throw great parties:  dinner parties, kid’s birthday parties, school event parties, I love photography and pursued it even before the advent of the digital era, I enjoy making fun-looking cakes but not at the cost of taste or texture, I am a spiritual person who is always trying to be a better person to mixed results, and I love parentheses and run-on sentences.

I guess today I will tell you a little more about the farmhouse.   We made our decision to go ahead and buy it partially based on the fact that there were not, to our knowledge, any homeless people or raccoons living in the house.  I ask you, is that how you make the choice to buy a house?

On our thirty page punch list of things to fix on our house, they did not list that the roof leaked.  We knew the roof was old, but thought that it could wait a little while, and that a 30 page list was pretty extensive and thorough, so surely if we needed a new roof they would have told us, right?  (And stop calling me Shirley!)  We thought our priorities were a new furnace and central air which is essential, since most of the windows in the house did not (actually, still do not) open.  Every time we heard it start to rain at night we would bolt out of bed and put buckets out in the hall, and in our daughter’s room.  That quickly put “roof” up at the top of the list!

I had read books by designers, notably Tracy Porter about the joys of living in an old house.  Somehow I missed the part in her book when after she had children she moved to a new house and gave it old house personality, because really old houses are not child friendly!  I wish I knew that then!  Or do I?  Today I read a list of 23 Adult Truths on my friend’s Facebook wall.  Number 10 is that Bad Decisions make good stories.  I think ultimately deciding to buy this house was a bad decision, but would I trade my good stories for a simple ranch house?  It depends on what day you ask.

The Origins of Mayday Farm

My husband Jeff and I have always been attracted to old houses.  Our first apartment was a lower flat in an old house.  No cookie cutter apartment for us.  There was no real bedroom, but it had a fireplace and a dining room for entertaining!

The first home we bought was 75 years old, which seemed quite old to us, and for our area in suburban Detroit, it really is!  But as our  lives seemed increasingly centered a half an hour north of our home, it seemed like the smart thing to maybe think about moving.

That’s kind of a lie.  We weren’t discussing moving.  A house two blocks away from our kid’s Waldorf School went up for sale.   We never looked at another house.  This house was a charming, carpenter gothic style home – from the outside.  We went to look at it for the first time on our anniversary, May 1, hence the Mayday. 

It was not charming inside.  It was listed as a five bedroom, but we couldn’t even tell which rooms they considered bedrooms!  There was no fireplace, in an old house that seemed crazy.  We had even had a fireplace in our apartment for Pete’s sake!  There was SO much work to do.  The basement was so spooky I didn’t even go in it!  So we didn’t buy it.  But I couldn’t let go of the idea.

We went back to visit over the summer.  The price was reduced.  We asked for more information about the house and we were given a thirty page report of what was wrong with it.  THIRTY PAGES!  There is no way we could do it.  So why were we thinking about it?  When the price got below the price of our current house we thought, maybe, MAYBE we could get enough from the sale of our house to do needed work on the new house to make it liveable.  And we wouldn’t be married to it!  If it was too much, we could sell the house, acre of land, (and did I mention the barn?), and move on, right?

If I had made a list of reasons to buy “the farm”, and reasons why not, the “not” list would have been longer.  So why did we get it?  All I can think now, is it had enough room for all of our dreams to reside.  They would all fit there, under that old roof with the ridiculous outdated solar panel on it.  And although I’m afraid of almost everything (really! storms, bees, deep water, flying, fast moving vehicles, calling people on the phone), I still felt brave enough, with my husband as my co-pilot to go ahead and do this.  Brave enough/crazy enough!