can of problems

I expect to be out of the condo and in the old farmhouse soon enough. Today, as I inched closer to selling the condo (inched, not leapt), I had a meeting with my favorite contractor (Andy Anderson, who has guided me through at least two major home renovations in the past) at the farmhouse to discuss what might be done there.

It would be nice if the gloom I felt coming on after our very long walk-through could be entirely attributed to the weather. Because, of course, it was a miserably cold and gray day. Like the type you usually ascribe to late November in the northern states. No redeeming value to it at all. Unless you like the color brown. Coupled with gray.





But no.

The gloom comes from realizing how much of a decaying rotting problem child the farmhouse is (no one has lived in it for years) and how much reworking its insides need merely to make it habitable.

Andy, of course, is unperturbed and he takes measurements as if it were entirely sensible to contemplate making a nice little bedroom out of a space with peeling layers of wallpaper, revealing a damp wall and crumbling chimney. With two windows in rotting frames. And a missing floorboard. And a closet that’s so narrow that you can’t hang a thing in it because the hangers would be too wide. I mean, how many things can be wrong with one square room?

And that’s before you consider the bathroom. Or the kitchen.

Moving to the farmhouse had been an option three and a half years ago. I was terrified of the prospect then. These days I see it as a simple solution to many complicated problems, at the same time that it opens an entirely different can of problems.

Life is complicated.