Have you ever wondered where the children are when PBS` ”This Old House” is filming? Shipped off to Grandmother`s, I suspect, or summer camp or seminars with names like ”Negotiating Naptimes with Your Nanny.”
How is it that the pitter-patter of little feet never competes with the hum of power tools?
Our Victorian renovation started out the same way. We zealously dedicated four years of evenings and weekends to double-dates with crow-bars, screw-guns, wire connectors, and drywall. We lived with plaster dust in our hair, a refrigerator in the hall, and planks where there should have been stairs.
But, then came daughter No. 1, and we learned there can be some complications.
Our first clue came before baby when friends with two children visited. Five minutes before their arrival, we realized the house was ripe for disaster. A power saw perched on a makeshift table, a propane torch held open the warped bathroom door and the stairway looked like a branch of the local hardware store.
Brave renovators that we were, we corralled everyone into the singularly undemolished dining-room, locked the pocket doors and plied the toddlers with snacks.
This method actually worked, as long as we blocked off the door to the adjoining butler`s pantry. At the time it had no floor, and although the children might have enjoyed using the joists as balance beams, we doubted the parents would.
Our second clue in the Renovation vs. Baby scenario surfaced four weeks before I delivered, when we moved the contents of our bedroom and my study down to the living room (it was time to wire the second floor).
We showered in a tub with no curtain (or rod), the temperature was 95 degrees and the whole house smelled of wet joint compound.
For the first month After Baby, my mother hosted us in her air-conditioned apartment while my husband valiantly went into overtime renovation. These were the days when we wished we had bought a condo. But, by mid-summer, we had ceilings, lights and even a few wallpapered rooms.
Great progress, right? Only a few more months and we`re done, right? Not according to our never-say-sleep baby. No, she had a different agenda. Suddenly the renovating schedule shifted back by about four hours, and the remaining work took four times as long. At 11 p.m. (not 7 p.m.), we would put on jeans and T-shirts.
People wondered how I my post-pregnancy weight so quickly; it`s easy when your kitchen is downstairs, your dining room is upstairs, and your child eats around the clock. It took another six months before we were able to clean up, shift furniture and outfit a proper nursery.
Of course, by then we had a crawling baby, meaning all projects had to be cleaned up every night, usually at 3 a.m., to be safe for the following morn. We never watched TV, and finding a babysitter did not mean a dinner out but rather the luxury of uninterrupted work.
Relatives asked, ”Isn`t she on table food yet?” and we replied, ”If she were, she`d be eating ground-up subs and cold pizza at ten o`clock.” We wonder if psychologists have studied the renovator`s child syndrome.
Somehow we survived. Today our house is not only finished but even partially decorated. Our second daughter made her debut recently, and we are in the process of moving to Oklahoma (”What, you spent eight years fixing it up and now you`re MOVING?!!?” Well, life goes on.)
Will we renovate another Victorian? Well, our older daughter loves her plastic tool kit with hammer, pliers and ”scydroover.” Maybe renovating is in the blood.
But seriously, where does ”This Old House” stash the kids? …
