Dining Room Table Saw, Part 2

Fairly often when writing my novels I think I'm going to write about one thing and when it's done, I've actually written about something entirely different.
That's apparently what happened with my original Dining Room Table Saw post. I was going to write about my house, but instead wrote about my parent's house.
So I want to tell you now, what I thought I was going to tell you then.
As I've stated dozens of times in this blog, I live in an arts & crafts bungalow that we're fixing up. I love this house so much. It just suits me to a T. It's a near perfect floor plan. Three bedrooms and an office. It has dark hardwood floors, oak in the living room and dining room, long-leaf pine in the kitchen. We painted the exterior pink with white trim and plum accents to match the 20 foot high crepe myrtles that line the street in our front yard.
Locally it is know as "The Jewel House".
But not because it's the jewel that it is.
Like most houses in town, it's named for its original resident, Dr. Jewel.
What we know about it's history is gleaned from public records and the long memories of some of our older neighbors. Dr. Jewel contracted with the Steves Construction Company to build the house in 1921. He moved in here with his first wife. They divorced early in the depression era.
About the same time, he added the office (where I write) in space that had been part of a wrap-around porch. The office was designed to be an office with vintage knotty pine and built-in filing cabinets. Separated from the front bedroom by a pocket door, I speculate that he utilized both rooms and made this the site of his medical practice.
He remarried shortly thereafter. The second wife was a nurse and younger than the doctor. He built a smaller house next door and deeded it to his mother-in-law. That all seems very nice. A really close knit family.
However, when the good doctor died, things got a little curious. The first wife, the second wife and the mother-in-law all sued each other for a share of this house.
I guess that was how it ended up with the Harrises who lived in it from the WWII era until the early 1960s.
When they passed on, it became the property of a young single mom with a child. Her father was a contractor and added the family room and another bedroom and bathroom onto the back.
The young mom lived here a while. After that it was rented for many years to the Sisters of the Incarnate Word as an overflow residence for the Mother House of their order located only a few blocks away.
By the time I first saw it in 1994, it had been a frequent-turnover-rent-house for a couple of decades. It was beige inside and out. The carpeting in the bedrooms was officially called "chocolate". For me, it was the exact color of cockroaches.
But something about the place really drew me to it. I remember sitting out in the car parked next to the curb, looking at the place and saying aloud to my husband. "I think I could be happy here."
And I have been. Sad too. And angry. And joyous. That's what homes are about, I guess. They house all of our emotions, our triumphs, our failures, sometimes for generations.
I know a lot of people like new houses. They want to build something that is exactly like they want it and that has never been touched by anybody but them.
That has never even been a temptation for me. I like being a part of the history of this house. If I manage to live into old age, I'll probably be the person that's resided here the longest. That would be nice. Maybe then my descendents will put up a plaque calling it The Pamela Morsi House. Cool.

Dining Room Table Saw

When it comes to home renovation I used to joke that I was in college before I knew that every family didn't have a table saw in the dining room. My grandfather, as the story goes, owned one very long narrow building on the corner of Main & D Street in Oilton. It was reputed to have been a house of ill fame. I don't know that for sure, but was "across the tracks" as they say and apparently in the right neighborhood.
My grandfather had the building cut in half. He moved one half to the corner of Main & C and donated it to the congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I remember going to services there a few times.
The other half he left on the corner of Main & D and gave it to my parents. They were newly married, my dad just home from WWII and there was a tremendous housing shortage. They were so thrilled to have their own place...such as it was.
They were young and strong and hardworking and they lived and worked on that crumby little sad excuse for a house through three children and thirty-five years. Every time they'd get a few bucks ahead, they'd buy some paint or sheet rock, shingles or knotty pine paneling. The entire foundation was constructed from rocks my dad picked on the the side of the road and threw into the back of his truck.
Ultimately, it was a pretty nice house. Certainly as good or better than most of our neighbors. Dad said there was probably enough lumber in it to build three houses. And the plumbing and wiring, done completely by Dad and his best friend Lyle was added onto so many times it looked like a giant spider web in the attic. And the hot water had to run around the house full circle before making it to the front bathroom.
So with this history, I guess it's not surprising that Bill and I would buy a 1921 arts & crafts bungalow that "needed some work". Fortunately Bill is pretty handy. He's not afraid to try anything and he's managed to become a pretty dad-gummed good carpenter.
We've done most of the work ourselves. Or rather he has, with me offering helpful suggestions like "is that level?" But mostly he does such fabulous work and I am amazed at what he gets done.
We're currently in year six of what we jokingly call our twenty year restoration schedule.
However, the bathrooms in this house are really, really sad. Some very helpful person in the mid-sixties decorated one all green and the other all brown. Those are not my favorite bathroom colors, especially the brown. I always think maybe it's not really clean.
With all the time Bill has donated to the city the last few years, our progress has come to a near standstill.
So we bit the bullet, so to speak and hired a contractor.
As I write this. The formerly brown room is now all hardy board and drywall gray. Two guys are doing something in there pretty much all day long. Maybe they are just listening to the radio. Country music at 20,000 decibels.
Bill says that everything that happens to me, to us in our lives, ends up in a book. He warns people not to say anything to me that they wouldn't want to see in print.
I am not that bad. I want you to know that.
Still, if my next novel feels coated in chalky dust and screams of George Strait, well you know what happened.