This old house

Each time I thought I'd hit a low point, I'd hit a lower one.

Here's one low point - I'm three rungs high on a ladder, swinging a hammer hard as I can to wedge the top of a two-by-four into a space that's just a little too small. If I can get the two-by-four in there, vertically, coming up from the sill, it will give me a solid spot to attach the framing for the laundry room window. Suddenly two snakes come out of the house wall at my eye level, with their eyes squinted, as if to say, Do you know how loud that is in here?

Last week I had to order a part for my outdoor wood burner, which the manufacturer told me I'd purchased in 2007. Had I really been working on this old house for eight years?

I realize now that the real estate agent who showed me the property was savvy. He had me meet him at a far corner of the property, where views of the house were blocked by a knot of trees. We walked the property, seeing turkeys and deer.

He knew it was the land that would sell the property. It certainly wouldn't be the house. My first view of it stopped me in my tracks. But I'd have to live in the house. There was no way I could afford the property if I couldn't - I didn't have enough money to buy the land plus build a new house.

For many years, I'd been buying "fixer-uppers" and reselling them, each time graduating to a better property. I always liked the "character" of old farmhouses; however, I'd seen that character only during sightseeing drives in the country. "Character" is different when you drop the top of the toothpaste in the bathroom and it rolls through three rooms.

The double-plank house, built in 1844, came with a myriad of problems. Some windows were sections of sliding glass doors, laid on their sides and nailed into place. Electric wires exited downstairs windows and entered upstairs windows. The front door with its concrete stoop had been revamped, with the upper half enclosed and the bottom half turned into a poorly bricked fireplace, with stove pipes crooked around the porch roof and strapped to the house.

The water would prove unsafe to drink due to high bacteria content. The roof leak spots were caked with successive layers of tar patching. The kitchen was no more than a sink, with appliances perched on bureaus, and a portion of the floor had rotted out down to the dirt. A front corner of the house and most of the front porch were covered with poison ivy. The house was heated by four electric heaters, one showing kick marks.

You'll never see me on a talk show, whining about my lousy childhood, because I had a really great childhood. In addition to raising us in the land of kickball games and sidewalks, our parents instilled an important quality: resourcefulness. One of my earliest memories is going with my dad on dirt roads in the mountains, where we'd fill the back of the station wagon with rocks. He was building a rock planter for shrubbery around the back porch.

On my eight-year anniversary, I sat on the deck of my old house for the sunset, my family of German shorthairs poking their heads through the railings to watch rabbits on the lawn. The house still isn't done; it may never be done.

But sometimes, I can see things differently. In the balm of a warm summer night, I can see the house as a work in progress. In fact, I can see my life the same way.