It Has Potential

When my husband and I bought our new (to us) house one of our criteria was “It should need almost no work.” Not needing any work wasn’t in our price range.  We had just finished three years of fixing up a hundred year old log home that we bought because it “could be amazing.” We were done with sanding, scraping, sealing, plumbing, wiring, trimming, flooring, and replacing pretty much every structural and non-structural part of a house. We wanted a place that, when people walked in, their first comment wasn’t “Well….. it has potential, I guess.” Our new house should have completely recognized its potential and settled comfortably into its mediocrity.

We found the perfect house. Only 20 years old, it had a new roof, new septic, nice kitchen, great floors, and all the key systems seemed to be in working order. I mean, some of the rooms needed painting – but you’re going to have that with any house, right? Overall, we could just settle in and enjoy.

So, it’s probably not a surprise that within a month I realized that we needed to rebuild the front porch. Not just replace some boards, but rebuild the whole thing. Actually, NEED is probably a strong word. The existing system of getting from the ground to the door worked fine, it just didn’t make any sense. There was a whole lot of wasted space that wasn’t used for much of anything except keeping weeds dry. 

The front porch as we bought it

My husband was…less than thrilled to hear this. Apparently, to him, buying a house because it needed very little work meant that we wouldn’t actually be working on it.  What it really ended up meaning was that he wouldn’t be working on it. We came to this conclusion based on one of the key principles of our marriage, “Who Cares More”.  Any time there’s a strong difference of opinion about something, we determine who cares more about the outcome and it becomes that person’s problem or project. This was obviously going to be my project.

I did manage to talk my husband into helping me hang the ledger boards, but after that point he fled the property for the rest of the day. By the time he and some friends showed up that evening, I had almost all the decking installed. I probably would have had it all in place but, it turns out that 2x8’s that were salvaged from another deck and stored outside in a pile for 10 years may have warped a little. It took all four of us, and several pry bars, to wedge the last of the boards into place.  
But, once we were sitting on the new porch enjoying a well earned refreshing beverage, even my husband agreed that this design made way more sense, and that these “done in a day” projects weren’t so bad. But we weren’t doing any major projects – right?

Ummmmm….yeah…..right.