Day 1082

March 29, 2012

Day 1082
The Yucky House, the Beatrice house, Howl, my dream house...


You would think that since I am playing at being a writer, getting to 'The End' would not be as big of a deal as this feels to me. It has been nearly three years ago, since we first held the keys to our new house. As I write this now, I am looking at a picture of the house that we took the first time we went to look at it. Earlier this evening as I sat in the bath tub, with bubbles, candles, and music I was thinking of just what I would write. The words were easier when they were just in my head. But now as I see them on the screen, they are becoming even more real. And it is harder to do.

But I received a couple of email this past couple of weeks about my house from Jonathan. First there was some confusion about someone breaking in and stealing my bath tub. This just seemed totally absurd to me. I mean really, my claw foot bath tub up on second floor. I wondered who would do such a thing. When I finally was able to talk to the police officer, I found out that it wasn't quite what I had thought. Someone did take the bath tub. But not as much as breaking and entering as I had thought. The city had scheduled my house for demolition. They must have opened it up to anyone who might have wanted something in there. Still all of this gave me a feeling of numbness.

The second email from Jonathan was telling that the house was no longer there. Everything was gone. And this was even more of a feeling...much to hard to use a word or two of explanation. My blog here, has told what we did, what we planned on doing. But I do not think it truly shows what that house was to me. For me to now get to “The End” I need to write about it. I need to see those words. I need to know that they are safe in the box, there for me to pull out again if I need to.

March has been a month for me. Wow. I have been thinking about Howl a lot this month. The weather has been warm. It was time to make another trip to Beatrice to get the last of my things from the house. We were going to get the hard things, the big things. The wood burning stoves, the corn stove, the brand new water heater, and whatever else we thought I might be able to sell.

Not only this, I had dreams of the house still. I wished for something. I held it there in my mind as this thing that might still be if I could just work it out right. Though I knew that I never would be able to do that.

My Yucky House was not just a house to me. It had always been a symbol. It had in someways been my life. Before my Yucky House, Jonathan had 'left' me twice. But this second time, when he came home, I thought things were good. I believed that we were better. I knew that it was going to work. We made plans. We did not want to live in our 1970's split entry house... a house that is exactly like every other house on our block. We had never thought we would live there forever. We looked at other houses. We looked at what we could do to this house to make it better for us. We even decided to buy land and build a castle. Now you might think that I am exaggerating when I say CASTLE. But I am not. I have pins on my googlemaps, showing pieces of land that we thought would be good sites for our castle. We were going to watch for these pieces of land to go on sale. While we were waiting, we drew up several different castle plans/designs. One of the most important things was that we needed to be able to live in part of the castle as we worked to build the rest of it. We had to be able to do the work, or at least most of it ourselves. We did so much research on this. It was quite an exciting time.

As our search of land expanded, we found on craiglist a house in Beatrice. A three-story Victorian house in desperate need of love and attention. Here our castle...or plan for the future changed just a bit. We went to see this house. Now some of this might just be in my blog. But I have need to speak about it again. We took my camera. We took tons of pictures. We needed to see the good things, the bad things, and most of all the scary things. This house had been turned into 4 apartments. The people who owned it now had been trying to make it back into one house. The same thing that we would do.

The house was terrible. It was filled with crap. There was trash and junk in every room. The roof was leaking. Windows were broken and boarded up. Animals had clearly been living in the house. I loved it! When we drove home after looking at the house, I knew I wanted that house. I almost cried as we drove back to Hickman and our plain ordinary house.

Jonathan and I had a lot of things to talk about. We had a lot of things to research. We had a lot of things to plan. But this could be our castle. It would take nearly as much work as it would have to actually build our castle from scratch. But this house... this was something real. We could touch it, we could see it, and most importantly, we could do it now. We did not have to wait until we had money saved up to buy the land.

We borrowed the money against Jonathan's 401K. It was ours. When we looked at the house we could see two visions of the house. The yuck that was there and the beauty that would be there. I would sit in rooms and just feel them. I was learning things about my house. I found out secrets by doing this. I found doors that had been hidden and covered up years ago. I found fireplaces. There were secrets everywhere.

When I think about Howl, I also find that I miss Myrta. She believed in me. Part of me feels like I am letting her down because of all of this as well. And I hate that. When I showed Myrta around my Yucky House, we would walk into one room and she would stop. She would ask me, what do you see here. She did this because she knew that I didn't see the yucky tile on the floor or the leaky roof. She knew that when I looked at that room I saw what it was going to be. And Myrta saw that too, through my eyes. She believed that I could and would make it happen. When I lost her, that was hard. That whole year was hard... 6 funerals in 6 months. But I still had my family, and my dreams.

Now I have written a great deal about what we did with that house in the year and a half that we worked on it. I don't want to go into that here. But as we worked that house became a part of me. I could almost feel it. Once when the kids and I were sitting there, the wind was blowing outside. Inside this air movement was causing the plastic that we had covering the walls and insulation was moving. I saw this as Howl breathing. And I told my kids that. It was as if the house was alive to us. Every bucket of paster that we carried out, every yucky thing we removed, every thing we fixed, every thing we added... it was all making him wake up. He had been sad for so long. But now we were there and we loved him.

This is part of the reason that all of this hurts me so much. That Yucky House was more real to me than many things are. I said before that it was a symbol. And it is not just me that thought this. Jonathan saw this himself. We talked about it. Our house and the work that we were putting into it was like a symbol of our life. Of our marriage. It had been broken. It had been falling apart. But we had grabbed ahold of it. It was important to us and we were fixing it. We had these dreams and these plans for the future. Howl was going to be there helping us to get these things. So every thing we did in that house, it was like we were fixing ourselves. And it was good. That is why I could carry 10,000 buckets of plaster down three flights of stairs. It is why I could live with bats flying around my bedroom at night. It is why I could make it through the winter that reminded me of Laura homesteading on the prairie. (sleeping in gloves and stocking hats. Snow falling in the bathroom. Freezing.) All of that was worth what I was getting back.

But then in August 2010, when Jonathan and I sat there in our future dining room / current gym and fire wood storage room, everything changed. Everything fell apart, again. And this time it wasn't just my husband and my marriage that I was losing. I had believed. And still it was all crumbling away. And this time, more than anything I knew that I couldn't do that again. Never again.

We waited. We talked to each other. We talked to the kids. Then the kids and I packed up and moved into my parents house. They have not been back to our Beatrice House since. (And I have not told them what has happened to Howl. It would just make them sad. Every once in a while one of them will mention the house, want to go back there.) I have been back several times. It is hard. It gives me true physical pain to go there. But I had stuff there. I needed to go and get my things. I needed to be able to say goodbye. I needed to cry.

I guess I still need to do that. I am now getting to “The End.” The house is gone. All of it is completely gone. Nothing can change that now. Before Howl, my Yucky house, I don't think I really knew what I wanted. Now, that knowledge warps and twists everything. I was so close to having this thing that I wanted. I was climbing the top of that hill. And it was taken away. This is why I had thought that I wished that year and a half would just disappear. This pain, the loss I feel... I would never have known that if we had never held the keys to my dream house.

I have been writing a lot since coming to live at my parents' house. The first thing that I wrote here, it is also the first book that I finished. This book is to me so linked to how I was feeling. It is linked to my Howl and all that had happened. My book, “Uncle Drew and the Burnt Pancakes,” is in so many ways about all of this. Of course, Bella actually does get to live in her three-story Victorian dream house. But that is good. I wouldn't want it any other way. Even that was a stupid fantasy of mine... if I could get my books published and start making money that way... maybe I could fix my house. Maybe I could still live there. Or at least I could go and get all of the carefully removed woodwork and use it in a house here. I could then at least bring part of Howl here. But no. It won't be that way.

But this is truly The End. From here I have to start over. I need to figure out what I want and what I can do and try to make those come out to be as close as possible.

My beautiful, shimmering ice castle
Melting in the afternoon sun.

I am sorry I couldn't make it real.

Goodbye Howl...

Day 533

My beautiful, shimmering ice castle

Melting in the afternoon sun.

:(

Day 487

This is becoming my log of bats. About 2:00 a.m. I wasn't completely sleeping. Then Merlin jumped off of the bed loudly, which woke me up even more. So I got up to get a drink. When I came back to bed, Merlin was laying up by my pillow. As I laid down, he jumped down again. He stayed on the rug beside my bed in what I felt was an attack position. Now the cat and I have issues...Merlin has decided the best way to get us to do something or maybe just when he feels like it, he will attack us. Sometimes it is playful and sometimes he actually bites. So I rolled over a bit away from the edge of the bed to give him less of a target. (If he can see my hands, legs, ect. he is more likely to attack.) But even with my move it was just moments before he jumped back up on the bed. But instead of stopped there on me, he ran right across me and over Jonathan. Now I am laying on my back and fully awake. And what should I see above me, but a black shadow circling the room. Bat... Merlin hadn't been attacking me, but the bat. So up again. We closed the bat in our room. Got the girls out of bed and in the dining area. And closed off their room and the tower room. Jonathan feels it is easier to get the bats in the bigger room. (and he would know...he had gotten bats in all the rooms here on 2nd floor except the bathroom.) He was hoping to get it out of our bedroom and into the big room. But it didn't turn out that way, they stayed in our room. Jonathan says that Merlin was actually a big help in catching this bat. He knocked him out of the air a couple of times. One more dead bat, one hole in the plaster wall, two tired people.

Day 484

Bat,

Bat,

Oh, Bat

Where do you live?

Why do you fly over my bed at night?

Stay outdoors.

Hunt for bugs around my home.

And as I stand out on my porch,

I will be happy to see you.

We put the kids to bed, and went to our own room to watch a little TV. When we turned it off and were ready to sleep. Jonathan says, "Bat." I was almost asleep. But when I heard that word, I rolled over and saw the bat flying in circles above our bed. It then flew into the tower room. (which is open to the girls' room there is no door there right now.) So we closed our bedroom door and went to get the girls. I got them in our bed and there door closed. So now the bat was shut in those two rooms with Jonathan. He took care of the bat, and I got the girls back in bed. Ella (after walking to our room, getting lost and me having to go back to her room to get her) was really only awake for the last walk back to her bed. Melinda slept through the whole thing. She didn't know that I had carried her from her bed to mine and then back to hers again. We need the clock to stop and let us work for about 2 weeks. Then we would be able to seal up some of the bat entry points and get started on reconstructing the interior walls. The third floor is almost ready for us to wire and put in insulation. Once we get that done we would be able to put up the drywall. Then I don't think we would have these night-time visitors.

Day 482 - 483

We worked up on the third floor again this weekend. We got the rest of the studs down in between the girls' rooms and the bathroom. Then we started working on getting all of the nails out of the boards. Some of them we will be putting back up to form the wall. The rest of them will be cut up to use as fire wood this winter. We also removed the lathe nails from the ceiling and walls in the landing room and Zeb's room. We are planning on getting another dumpster this weekend so that we can get everything cleaned up and start the 'fun' work. When it got to hot Sunday afternoon/evening Jonathan and I went down the the first floor kitchen. We removed the nails from a large pile of lathe. Then we started to cut them into pieces that would fit into our wood stove. These pieces of old wood make starting the stove very easy. After the pieces were cut to the right size we tied them in bundles with twine. We still have a lot of them to do. But we will be very happy for all of these cut and bundled lathe firestarters once winter is here. Saturday afternoon (when it was hotter then we wanted to work) we took a trip into Lincoln. We found a couple of lanterns at Goodwill that we are going to use as the light fixtures in Zeb's room. And we checked out the attic fans at Home Depot. We will be putting one of those in very soon now.

Day 478

Bat, bat

Flying over sleepy girls.

We all headed off to bed tonight. But it wasn't long before Melinda comes running into our room. "There's a bat flying around our room." Soon, Ella was in bed with Melinda and I. And Jonathan was working on getting that bat out of there. Now we would really rather not kill them, if they would just stay out of our house. In the end Jonathan got the bat, but the light fixture got broken. There was glass everywhere. We had the girls sleep on the futon. I spent most of the next day picking glass out of their room, toy tubs, rugs, everywhere.

Looking forward to the day, that all of the wholes have been found and sealed, and our only visitors are ones who come through the door.

Day 474

Wow it has been a long time since I posted anything here.

Mostly it has been hot...

We have done a little bit of work up on the third floor. We are taking some of the studs out. Our plan is to move the bathroom back just a little bit. This will make it possible to make Zeb's room just a little bit bigger and have things in the bathroom set up a little bit more to our liking. As we take down this wall we have been removing the nails so that we will be able to reuse the 2x4's. There are also a few of these studs that have been so damaged by the water leaking in for years that we are going to have to replace them altogether.

We have also been working down in the basement a little. Wow, I like the basement on hot days. ;) It is much cooler down there. We need to get everything set up and usable down in the workshop. We are going to be needing access to all of Jonathan's tools very soon as we start to finish the third floor.

Just a side note:

Yesterday, Jonathan found a dead bat laying on the floor in the doorway to our bedroom. Funny thing is that I had walked passed it several times. I saw something there. It was near a piece of black electrical tape. I hadn't thought too hard about what it was, just thinking it was something to do with that tape. But wow when he told me it was a bat I was a little creeped out. I had been walking passed that barefooted. Ick.. And that brings up the next question... how and when did it die? Our cat likes to 'hunt' things. But as far as we know hasn't actually killed anything. But then did he kill it or did he just bring it down from somewhere? As far as we knew we haven't had any bats for quite a while now.

Day 448

Happy Fourth of July! We are at Mom and Dad's today celebrating with the my Dad's side of the family. We will be home and working again tomorrow. Can't wait to see what we get done. :D

Day 447

This morning, I worked on the tile up on the third floor. The only room left with tile was Zeb's room. In this room the tile was stuck to the floor with some kind of adhesive. This is good and bad news. The good news is that there was no nails and now no nail holes to worry about. But the bad news is the black sticky stuff that is all over the floor. We have not tried to clean any of this off yet. So I am hoping that comes off rather easily, but that will have to wait for another day. We do still need to haul all of the broken tile down to the trash. But without the wood underfloor this isn't all that much rubble. And the best news of all, is that there is only one more room in the entire house that has tile still on it. The Dining Room. I told Jonathan today, that I almost felt like moving all of the boxes and things out of that room, so I could rip up the tile. It would be a great feeling knowing that we had gotten it all out and were ready to start redoing all of the floors.

Day 440 - Day 441

Weekend again. :D

Mom and Dad came down for the weekend to help. The goal this weekend was to get the dumpster full so that we could send it back. We worked on the third floor knocking down more of the plaster, lathe, and insulation.

This picture is taken in the landing room. As you look through the wall you are seeing Zeb's bedroom.

This picture is taken from Zeb's room. Through the wall you are able to see into Ella's room. The door with the window on it is where we lower all of the plaster and rubble in buckets to the ground. It is much less work to lower the buckets than to carry them down three floors.

This picture is taken from Ella's room. On the left you are seeing what is left of the bathroom. Jonathan broke up the big tub. And he and Dad threw the tub and the sink out the door and then we carry all of it to the dumpster. The plaster you see on the bathroom wall is the only bit of plaster left on third floor. There is also still insulation in the ceiling above the bathroom. On the right side of the picture you can just see into Melinda's room. Right now her room is where all of our tools and supplies are kept.

We really wanted to get all of third floor cleaned out. But we just couldn't do it. We were all exhausted by the end of the weekend. So I guess that little bit will have to wait just a while longer. Dad wants to get on to the fun part, wiring, insulating, and putting up drywall.

I also have the tile floor to pry up in Zeb's room. But it is looking really good up there. We are so close to being done with the destruction (at least on third floor) and ready to start making things beautiful again. The goal is to have the third floor finished and ready for us to live in by winter.

Day 437

We were working in the basement. It is nice and cool down there. We are trying to get things clean and organized down in the workshop so that we will actually be able to use it to do some work. We are starting to get to a point where we will be doing some wood work and stuff. We have also been looking into what it will take to make all of the pieces for the porches. So we have been thinking about the shop again. I am looking forward to the time we can stop destroying start building. I also finally got the freeze cleaned out and plugged back in. Now I can start using it again.

Day 436

YAY! I want to thank Judy so much. After talking to us last week she went home and made copies of some of pictures of our house when she lived here back in the 50's. Looking at these pictures was so exciting to me. We actually got to see what our front porch looked like. We also got to see the stairway in the front room. It amazingly looks very much like it did then. Only the wallpaper and the lack of woodwork around the archway (this archway has been walled up). Then she also had pictures of the house after her mother had put on the green shingle/siding and the fire escape stairs. I call the green stuff yucky (now) but back in 1950 something it looked pretty darn good. I guess after 60 years most anything would look yucky

Here is a picture of my beautiful house when Judy's family purchased it. I love all of the details on the porch... and look at the corbels. :D This is another thing that we knew should be there and wondered what they had looked like.

.

Day 434

Happy Father's Day!

Today we spent sometime up on third floor again. Jonathan got the last of the ceiling knocked down. That is always a dirty, messy and tiring job. The worst is being covered in insulation. So we have to wear our blue coveralls. Thankfully it wasn't that warm. After all of the destruction was finished we got a lot of it carried out to the dumpster before we had to stop for the day.

Here is what Zeb's room looked like after we had finished working for the day. Doesn't that fluffy insulation look fun to roll around in? ;)

And this is the 3rd floor landing room. We are getting most everything out of there.

We do still have a few lathe boards on the walls near the ceiling in both the landing room and Zeb's bedroom. But now that most of the insulation is out this won't take too long.

Day 431

Jonathan took the day off of work today so that we could work on the house. The temperature got up to 93 degrees today. So it was a bit on the hot side. Lucky for us that Nebraska is the land of constant wind. With the breeze blowing it didn't feel too bad.

Jonathan lowered many buckets of plaster out the 3rd floor door down to the ground. I took them from there to the dumpster. We got most all of the plaster out of Zeb's future bedroom. :) Now we are ready to knock the plaster off of the ceiling in there and get the insulation out.

But while working today we had an exciting visit. I was down on the ground hauling buckets and a lady walking by our house asked what we were doing. We told her. And she told us that she had moved into our house when she was 5 years old, back in the 1950's. Her mother had owned the building and ran a nursing home in it. When they first started, her family lived on the first floor, but as they got more residents, her mom had turned the third floor into an apartment for their family. When they had lived in the house, the front porch had wrapped around the tower (the east and part of the south side - like we had thought it should). The back (or kitchen porch) had been a screened in porch. She told us about the stairs in the front room and how she had slid down the railing. She also told us that there had been an arched opening from the front room to the dining room. It was her mom who had put on the green asphalt shingle/siding on. The old garage was put there by her mother. There had been one there before. The original one also had a flat roof. She say that as a small child she had walked around on the gutters up on third floor, something that her mother had hated. When they had lived here, the old wood fire escape that we had only seen in pictures was there. And her family had mostly used that as an entrance to their apartment up on 3rd floor. We asked if she had pictures of the house. And she said that she did. She now lives in Lincoln. But she was going to go through her pictures and bring them down next time or make some copies and mail them to us. WOW! What an exciting day. We can't wait to see her pictures and talk to her some more.

Day 427

Another day of destruction...

We went up to third floor and started to knock some more stuff down. We are coming to a place that is really messy, the stairs. Where exactly do you stop? We aren't exactly ready to knock the plaster down in this area on 2nd floor as we are living in these rooms. So I guess we have decided just stop at the edge of the floor (3rd floor). The mess falls down the stairs and piles up by the door. We use some boards to try to keep as much of it out of 2nd floor as possible. The only good thing about this is that once we get everything knocked down there won't be as much mess ever again. :D

This picture was taken from the 3rd floor landing room. From here you can now see through to Zeb's room. We have that wall knocked down. Near the bottom of the picture you can see the railing around the stairs. Much of the plaster and lathe from that wall fell down there. We had to scoop it up into buckets just to clear the path for us to get back downstairs. But the plaster was much better than the insulation from the ceiling above that also fell down into there. Hopefully there won't be too much more falling down there until we get to the stairwell walls.

So here is the update. We have three rooms mostly cleared out. (No insulation in the ceiling, no plaster and lathe on the walls and ceilings) Zeb's room still has insulation and plaster and lathe on the ceiling. We have most of the plaster and lathe off of the walls in there. The other room that we have not yet worked on much is the little bathroom. A couple of the walls are knocked down, but other than that we have not yet started on it. If things go well, we should have all of third floor gutted and cleaned out by the end of June. :D Then on to the fun stuff....making things work...making things better

Day 426

We checked out some more books from the library today. We have been trying to work out the details of what we are going to do with the garden and lawn. Right now we can't do a lot as it might interfere with the work that we are trying to do. But we do want to get a start on it. So we are trying to do a lot of planning.

Day 420 - 425

Jonathan's back is doing much better. It has been getting hot a few of the days this week. We will have to see how this summer goes without a/c. So far there have only been a couple of really uncomfortable days. Since the kids got home we haven't done a lot of work. We have been busy with swimming lessons and gymnastics classes. But hoping to get back into the work again this weekend.

Day 415 - 419

The kids are at Grandpa and Grandma's house. We ended up going home for my Great Aunt's funeral on Monday and we were going to be going back home again on Saturday for a family reunion. So we thought we would give the kids a fun break with Grandpa, Grandma and their cousins. While they were gone, I spent my time carrying down buckets of plaster in between scanning in the rest of my Grandma's photos to get ready for the reunion. I actually got quite a bit done. Jonathan's back got a rest and the kids had a great time. And the family reunion was fun for all of us.

Day 412

Weekend again. We were planning on getting all sorts of things done. But that is not exactly how it turned out. Jonathan got Zeb set up on mowing the lawn. Then we went to get our work clothes on. Jonathan hurt his back putting his shoes on. So bummer, we weren't able to get as much done as we had planned. I did go upstairs and knock down some of the plaster and lathe.

Bee Attack Update

The last two nights Jonathan has donned his bee fighting outfit, climbed out on the roof and attempted to kill as many bees as possible. I stand on the ground outside watching just to make sure that things are going okay. The first night, just after his attack, several disoriented bees found their way into various rooms of the house. We then sprayed them and waited for them to die. Listening from the girls' room (without even having my head against the wall) I could hear swarms of angry bees buzzing loudly in the wall. This was quite disturbing.

Last night Jonathan again prepared for an attack on the bees, I was again watching from the ground. After spraying them some, he used the saw and a crowbar to make a bigger hole in the wall, just a bit lower than the small hole that they are using to get in and out of the house. He then sprayed all around through that hole. Again after his attack there were bees inside the house. This time quite a few more than there was before. I could once again hear the bees buzzing in the wall. We blocked ourselves off in the other part of the house. Over an hour later we were still killing bees in the kitchen, bathroom and landing room. When looking out the bathroom window, we should see hundreds maybe even thousands of bees walking/crawling around on the back porch roof. After seeing this I was sure that I would have nightmares. I was hoping to see how many bees had actually died during the night. But just before we got up this morning it started to rain. I am sure that many of the bees got washed off of the roof. There were quite a few of them still there. All day long Jonathan and I have been hearing bees. Mostly it is in our imagination. There were still bees flying around outside today. I am sure that many of them have died. After another attack or two we might be able to see if we can start getting honey and the hive out of the wall.