The House That Jack Built--The Never Ending Story

And so began the twelve-year renovation. (Actually, thus began the life-long process of renovating houses--and building them).

The original house was six hundred square feet, all on one meager story. By the time Jack was done, it had expanded to twenty-four hundred square feet on two floors, and we from one boy to four. The growth of the house was intimately connected with that of our family--as each child came along, Jack would slap on a room, wing or story. Segundo came between the front entry and the greenhouse (which had started as a modest bay window in the dining room but grew to become a large sunspace). Tercero showed up just after completion of the "big addition's" main floor. By the time the addition's second floor was finished, Cuarto had arrived. Of course, I use the term "finished" loosely--finished means there were walls, doors, windows and usually something on the floor. Trim, baseboards, taped drywall joints, paint and electrical switch/outlet covers were optional.

Family photos show untaped drywall, untrimmed windows and door/drawer-less kitchen cupboards. Segundo had callouses on his fat knees from crawling on the plywood subfloors--by the time we could afford carpet, he was walking--it was likely incentive.

Those twelve years of renovating and child-rearing/bearing are a collage of visual memories. It is strange what sticks out--a strip of pink insulation at a ceiling's peak sprinkled with dead wasps behind the plastic--the final trim strip didn't show up for years. I remember the day the plastic went up on the newly-configured ceiling, trapping the angry wasps--opportunists who'd built a hasty nest in the new roof-line. For years I would look at their dead little bodies, a moment of irritation at Jack's inability to finish at least ONE room. A moment of irritation for me, the end for the wasps. Time has given me some perspective on these matters.

I remember being pregnant with Segundo on a hot summer day, watching Rollie and Jack dig the foundation for the sunroom's under-floor pond. Jack, an early proponent of energy efficiency, had a scheme to heat the sunroom with passive solar and with heat from the livingroom's woodstove--the pool under the floor would provide something called thermal gain. An ungodly amount of dirt needed to be excavated to accommodate what we came to call the "see-ment pond". Because we had no money for a bobcat excavator, Jack dug it by hand with Rollie's help. Over the years, Rollie and Jack dug, pounded, sanded, nailed, demolished and moved tons of stuff in each other's houses. When you are young and broke, it's helpful to have good friends and lots of energy.

The summer of the big addition, a huge project for which we revisited the Credit Union for more money, I was pregnant with Tercero--it seems I was always pregnant with someone, or nursing someone, or diapering someone's rear end--I fantasized about the day when there would be no more diapers and each kid could get in and out of his own snowsuit without my help. One evening, the ceiling caved in on Primero and Segundo, who shared the room with the window (by then it had been fixed). Part of the addition was being built above this room. A thundery and rainy summer was prodding Jack into a frenzy to get the roof on and everything closed in. He'd enlisted the help of more friends. That night I'd just put the boys to bed. We said our prayers and had a cuddle, listening to the tromping and banging overhead. (One thing living in perpetual construction did for my boys--they could and can sleep through anything). Then the roof caved in--literally. A section of ceiling drywall tilted, spilling its load of dust, wood shavings and God-knows-what kind of critter droppings all over Primero. "Oops!" said Harry, Jack's friend from work who'd kindly offered to help, peering down from the gaping hole in the ceiling. He took one look at my face and said quickly, "I'll clean it up!"

"That's it!" I shrieked. (I did a lot of shrieking, hollering and screeching in those days.) "I am out of here!" And I was--I cleaned off Primero. (I can still see Harry, a big bear of a guy, carefully vacuuming off the boys' teddy bears, not daring to make eye-contact as I raged around the room, packing up toys and gear.) I went into the city and stayed at my parents until the roof was on and it was safe (relatively speaking) for me to come home.

The house was mostly done by the time Cuarto came along--of course, windows and doors still needed trimming. The house incorporated parts of the old Herbert school, demolished shortly after we arrived in town. A lovely old building with a bell tower, it was smashed to bits to make room for a staff parking lot. We'd signed a petition to keep it, but to no avail. Feeling conflicted, Jack, Rollie and our friend Duane--all of whom were fixing up their houses--bid on the salvageable materials. They spent weeks deconstructing the old school for its beams, joists, flooring and shiplap.

The flooring Jack had scrounged from the school still needed refinishing, but the house was complete enough to be comfortable and handsome. Jack by now no longer worked as a carpenter--he had finally found a job in his technical field. But his sojourn with "Close Enough Construction" (as he liked to call the company) taught him a great deal about building sustainable, efficient and elegant structures. He'd earned the sobriquet "Mr. Seal" for his fanaticism about the integrity of the vapour barrier.

The house transformed from an ugly box built on the cheap into a generous house with foot-thick walls, an attached greenhouse (alas, the seement pond scheme never worked--by now the water has likely evaporated from under the greenhouse floor--at least, I hope it has), four heat sources (gas furnace, wood and coal stoves, electric baseboards), large rooms, big windows, designer kitchen, "movie star" bathroom (as our friend Treena liked to call it--the double-sized tub was a hit with the kids), and too many other nifty features to list. It was a practical house--if the power went off in a sub-zero Saskatchewan winter, we wouldn't freeze. We could grow stuff inside the greenhouse. We had space and light. The boys had nice big rooms to mess up with sturdy doors to close upon the mess.

While there were some close calls accident-wise, during the interminable construction phases, everyone survived more or less intact (there were, however, a few memorable trips to the emergency room--Primero was continuing his run for the title). Our boys learned how to use tools, and which ones to stay away from (eventually). Baby Segundo was happiest left to hammer nails into the plywood subfloor. he may have been punishing it for all those splinters in his knees. The boys grew up knowing that people, given the right tools, can make just about anything. They learned not to shy away from big projects. They learned that they can do for themselves.

Building a house was, as I look back on it, a luxury grounded in time. It seems there was always time to work on the house, read to the kids, putter in the garden, help out the friends, have coffee, walk to the store (always accompanied by a flotilla of kids), go camping in the summer, cross-country skiing in the winter (we were in Saskatchewan, after all), pump out the yard in the spring, make pickles and lay in the wood supply in the fall. The rhythms of living close to the economic bone--have to do for oneself, grow and gather food and fuel, build family's shelter --these are skills that we still use today, and cherish.

I remember the work bees--our friends in Herbert were all of an age--we had our kids, bought our first houses, fixed them up, worked in our gardens and on our cars all at the same time. We shared our time, energy, expertise and enthusiasm. While the men worked on various roofs, sheds, vehicles, foundations, the women made coffee, ran after the kids and offered running commentaries--usually hilarious--on the particular activity underway. We had an ironic understanding of the conventional gender roles thus perpetrated--while we understood that we were being oppressed by these roles, we didn't worry too much about it because the kids took most of our energy. Later on we'd flex our feminist muscles. For now, the shingles needed to be put on, the car fixed, the garden dug, the foundation poured, the wall built. We made the coffee and the lunches and the dinners. We herded the kids out of the way--we fed, watched, changed, bandaged, cleaned, refereed--that was a full time job in itself. We did it collectively--it was easier and more fun. Four or five pairs of eyes could spot an escaping toddler far better than one.

And so, we lived for twelve years in the house that Jack (assisted by a host of friends and family) built. It started as a tiny shack and grew into something more--a home. As we grew, so did the house. Child by child, floor by floor, board by board. I think of Emily Dickinson's poem:

The props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, erect,
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter--
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life--
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness--then the Scaffolds drip
Affirming it a Soul

Our collective family life, perfected or not, is grounded in a past of Plank and Nail. Slowness--when the children were small and demanded a different rhythm--meant there was always time for small things. Often it didn't feel like slowness--it felt like fatigue. But, for whatever reason, life had a different pulse then.

We've dropped some of the old scaffolding--no more house full of kids. The little community of friends has dispersed, although we are still in contact--some friendships are for a lifetime. Jack still builds beautiful structures--it is, once again, how he makes his living. Strange how some things come full circle. Or perhaps it is a spiral, because we never return exactly to where we were.

Our house has no small children living in it, although a small grandchild comes to visit from time to time. It seems we've redesigned our scaffolding, or perhaps are in the process of building one that will safely see us through the next stage, whatever that may be. If Emily is right, however, we are still left with our souls. On that structure, work never ends.