A New Old House

For some reason, having a sign makes it official.

  

I'm not sure how to describe what we're doing--we're renovating, expanding, re-doing our house.  I think the way my little boy puts it really makes the most sense:  we're going to have a new old house.

Our house as it is right now IS old, that's for sure.  The city dates it to 1940 (does the City of Houston ever have the best info?  I think not.), but census records date it to before 1920, which goes along with what the previous owner told us when we bought it.  She set our house's birthdate to 1915, and I have no reason to believe that's incorrect.  The siding on the house is old wood and hard as rock, there's (still functioning!) knob-and-tube wiring in the attic, plaster walls, cast iron water pipes, and hardwood pine floors through whose cracks you can see the dirt floor of the crawlspace on a cold sunny day.

We've lived in and loved this house for eight years, which, by three years ago, was the longest I've ever lived in one place in my life.  We knew when we bought it that we'd want to update it and perhaps expand it one day, but we also want, above all, to keep the house essentially itself.  Shortly after we moved in, the previous owner came by to pick up her mail and told me, looking fondly around the room, "This house has great karma."  And it does.  This is our home, and despite the problems that living in an old house has, we love it and don't want to change what it essentially is, if that makes sense.  We're hoping that we can make our old house new so that it can continue to be our home until I'm an old, old lady and beyond.

Valentines the kids made for the house because they love it and didn't want it to feel lonely when we moved out. AW!