Sweet Sabotage

Normally on Fridays, Shana and I meet with our intern, Calvin, at the studio. We set up this internship when we had planned to do a major hanging sculpture for the Overture Center in Madison. But scheduling conflicts meant that the sculpture would have had to be installed right around the time when we would be moving in to the house. And the approval process took longer than expected, pushing back our start date to the point where the window of time for fabrication was getting frighteningly narrow. Renovating the house and building this sculpture simultaneously would have been a recipe for a complete nervous breakdown. Something had to go, and the paperwork on the house was already signed, so we postponed the Overture project for a later date. But we kept the internship anyway, figuring that it would keep us from being completely absorbed in the house project and neglecting our art career. As I am seeing the renovation partially as research for our artwork, the internship allows us to maintain a running thread of continuity with our previous work and keep the renovation relevant to our art practice. The installation for the Overture Center, incidentally, depicted an old farmhouse with its bottom falling out. The sculpture we are currently building with our intern is the same house presented as a sculpture being flooded by its pedestal. I promise to get further into the content of these works and their relationship to the renovation in future posts.

After reading my last, somewhat pathetic blog post, Shana in her infinite wisdom decided that a bit of triage was in order and she hatched a plan to kidnap me and force me to take a break. Unbeknownst to me, she called up the intern and cancelled our Friday meeting. She decided that she would put the bikes in the van and on our way to the studio she'd just keep driving and we'd head up to the northern Kettle Moraine for a day of biking, swimming and hiking. But when I threatened to go to the house early to get some mudding done before we met with Calvin, she was forced to spill the beans. Fortunately, I did not protest and despite a hiccup with a broken inner tube valve which put an end to the biking plans, we spent a much needed leisurely day swimming and hiking at Mauthe Lake.

On returning to Milwaukee, we paid a visit to Maurice Grimes, one of the sage woodworkers in my life. He treated us to Shrimp and Asparagus pasta and made sure our glass was always full. Seeing the lush gardens, collections and endless woodworking projects that engulf his 1872 brick house brings his character together. This is a man who has truly made his home an extension of himself.

Today I go back to work, and despite a bit of a sunburn, I'm not feeling the burnout... I'm ready to get back into it. It helps also that we've reached a turning point in the project. All of the internal stuff is done... the plumbing, the electric and the insulation... which means we are hanging drywall. The destruction phase is over. Its time to begin putting this house back together again. And this feels good.

The Anatomy of the Wall

To ask somebody to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with breaks only for meals and sleep, brings to mind words like cruel and inhumane. I would never ask anyone to do this for me, and yet here I am working this schedule voluntarily. I suppose the difference is that I am working for myself, rather than toiling away for someone else's profit with no direct, tangible rewards other than the abstract notion of a paycheck. I will live with the results of my labor and eventually, the hope is that it will all be worth it. But there is no escaping the inevitable physical and psychological effects of working such a schedule. Eventually it catches up to you. I was at a family reunion this weekend, one of the first Sundays this summer that I have not spent working on the house. My aunt Lynn was recalling her experience of building a house and she described an image she had of the house going up while she crumbled to the ground. More than I'm happy to admit, I can relate.

When I set out to make this blog, I decided that I didn't want to treat it as a diary. I didn't want it to be a blog that put my heart on my sleeve for everyone and their mother (and mine) to hear about. I had read a few blogs that seemed like calls for attention, cries for help, and this is exactly what I wanted to try to avoid. I guess I envisioned this sort of romanticized notion of renovation as an intellectual exercise and I would use the blog to report all of the insights and inspiration I had gained through the process. You may have noticed that I have not posted in quite some time. This is because I hit a wall. There were too many posts, to many things that I wanted to write about and not enough time. Meanwhile the romance of the project was fading and being overshadowed by the immensity of the workload. And this wall is reinforced with events that don't fit my romantic notion of what the renovation should be; events like when I was pruning the neighbor's maple tree that was crowding out our cedars. It was shaping up to be a great blog post as I was climbing on top of the garage roof and it just happened to be the day of the air show and the Blue Angels were flying overhead. But when I cut the wrong branch and it came crashing down, taking out all of the limbs on one side of the cedar, it took the wind out of my sails. I loved that cedar. It had such a nice shape. It was one of the reasons why I wanted this house. Now it's lopsided and awkward and the pruner is retired to the garage. Meanwhile, streams of water continuously seep into the basement all along one side of the house. It's proving to be a much worse problem than the seller had made it out to be. All the while the move in date creeps closer and closer and I'm not sure that I can outrun it.

Once a week or so I try to take a little break. Going to Iola for the family reunion felt like my first true taste of summer... what people are supposed to do in summer; hang out, drink a few beers, enjoy the weather. Two weeks ago Shana and I went for a morning hike. This morning we went swimming and I stopped at the house and picked the black raspberries growing behind the garage. I keep waiting for these little breaks to fill me up and reenergize me, so that I can go back to work with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. But mostly, I'm just tired and anxious. What I really need is a week off, but I know I can't have it... not yet. Shana and I have scheduled a trip up to Madaline Island on Lake Superior for the week after we are supposed to move in. It will be a well deserved vacation, but depending on our progress, we may or may not be able to go. It's good incentive to keep pushing forward, but theres a limit to how much we can accomplish in a given period of time. We'll see.

Maybe what I am going through is something akin to the renovation itself. Something that necessarily begins with destruction, with violence, but clears the way for something improved, something stronger - a phoenix. But this phoenix has an attraction to the fire, and I wonder how many times it can be reborn. Sometimes I think that what we are doing here is absurd. All of our decisions about the house are these attempts to make a place that is comfortable, relaxing, a place of leisure. When the renovation is done, I tell myself, then I can relax and enjoy the fruits of my labor. But the reality is that when the renovation is done, I will dive headlong into the next big project. I can sit in my Morris chair, on my oriental rug, in front of my fireplace in the restored bungalow that I've always wanted, but will I really be able to appreciate it or will I be too deep in the anxiety of the next deadline? Dear reader, my heart is on my sleeve now, and I'm sorry you have to hear all of this, but the the fact is that the blog has stagnated because I have been dishonest... I've been holding back, and a true look at this project must acknowledge the fact that pain and suffering are two of its componets, and they are perhaps the price that must be paid for the fulfillment that will come with its completion.

Tapping the Reserves

As we get deep into the work of the house, the days are long and we're maxing out our energy reserves, getting up early and working until we can't work anymore. The blog becomes another item on the to do list, buried under rows of more urgent tasks. Coming back from L.A. I had hoped to spend a day or two decompressing and reflecting on our trip before diving back into the construction zone, but a call from Evan said that he and Hyo Jung were ready to come up and help finish the electric work, so we were right back in the thick of it. Now, on this Memorial Day, while the rest of the world is out camping, I've decided to go out for breakfast and start on the house a bit later. I'm peering across the street at the lumberyard trying to figure out whether or not they intend to take the day off. Somewhere there's a holiday bucket of drywall mud for me, even if it means going to the Dumb Hippo (that's code for Home Depot). I have a long post I want to write about L.A., and maybe I'll still get to it. But for now, here's a few pictures:

Shana with Cousin Jeff, who was our Pasadena host, on the back porch of the Gamble House

This picture basically sums up Mark and Shana's friendship

Hiding in the bougainvillea at the Schindler House

Mark in his Hollywood apartment giving his best bad guy look

A rare look at the bones of a perfect house surrounded by other perfect houses in a perfect neighborhood.

My dust mask awaits.

Pepperoni and Other Building Materials

The old house. The house that I grew up in - from age 5 to 14 - grade school to Jr. High. Everyone said that when I visited Canyon Country I would be astonished by how much it has been developed, but to me it didn't really seem like it had changed much. Sure there were some new houses, but the place was under development when I was living there and what I saw just seemed like a logical continuation of that process. There is a limit to the development possibilities in our old neighborhood because eventually you run into steep canyon walls that are essentially unbuildable. And over the hill in Crystal Springs, the roads had expanded to reach these natural limits. But in my immediate neighborhood, on my street, there were the same number of houses that were there when I lived there. Most had changed little. Our house, so I heard, had undergone a million dollar renovation. I was expecting to see an unrecognizable monstrosity, but really they had only added a small addition over the concrete patio where we used to hang the laundry. Other than that, the footprint was essentially the same. She had however undergone a major facelift. The pergola had been removed, it was painted white, and there was an apron of brick up to about waist height that ran around the perimeter of the house. Even with all of these changes, I stood for a moment nearly dumbstruck by the sight of the place. It seemed to vibrate with an intense energy of compressed memory. It was a sort of feeling of vertigo, a tingling in the chest. The owner was in the driveway, tending to his trailered speedboat, so we approached and introduced ourselves. He was kind enough to let us into the back yard and we reminisced about the history of the place. I looked up at the back hill and I remembered that I once buried a cat up there, where there was now a white vinyl fence. Apparently he had dug up a box while setting posts, but he assured me that he reburied it once he realized what it was. Seeing the backyard, my heart sank. The wonderland of trees and cacti that I knew as a child had been nearly stripped bare. What motivated them to cut down such glorious trees I can only guess, but he mentioned something about maintenance. I remember having to sweep the pool of pine needles, but this hassle never would have led me to the conclusion to cut them down. And probably the plum tree, and the pear tree, and the apricot tree were removed because of their "litter" as well.

Several years ago, when I first drove by my grandparents' house in Iola, Wisconsin after it was sold, and saw that they had painted it beige, I felt violated, like they had tampered with something sacred and gotten it all wrong. I wanted to go inside and tell the new owners that the house was supposed to be red, that they should put it back the way it was. It was enough that my grandfather had removed the light-up Haroldson Electric sign from out front when I was in grade school. It made no sense to me that it was no longer needed because he had retired. It was simply supposed to be there. I wanted it back. And now some stranger thinks that he can go and paint the house any color he wants, just because he bought the place. This was the house that my grandparents had bought with another relative and then split in half because they could not afford the whole thing. They literally cut it in half and had their side moved to the site. They lived in a renovated chicken coop on the property before they could afford to have the house brought in. And this was the place that I had gone every summer of my childhood from the time I was a toddler and built up a treasure trove of sweet memories. All of those memories are housed. They belong to that place. I can crawl up the carpeted stairs in my mind and I can tell you what is in each drawer of the dresser at the landing between the two upstairs bedrooms. I can see in intimate detail the star patterned holes in the acoustic tile ceiling, the light up painting hanging on the wall, and the plastic flower arrangements in the corner. I can see my grandpa fiddling with the receiver on his satellite TV and I can feel the texture of the rainbow striped carpet in the three season room. And when we bought the bungalow and I stepped into my very own garage, I smelled the odor of the gas lawnmower and grass clippings and instantly I was transported to Grandpa Leo's shop in his garage where we would search through innumerable tiny drawers of parts for things we did not understand and there would always be a Jolly Good Cola in the fridge. For a hundred some thousand dollars, my family relinquished all rights to this place and our memories are buried, one by one, under layers of paint and new carpet. Of course there would have been no sense in keeping it. There would have been no one to live there. But it is painful nonetheless.

I came to Canyon Country bracing myself for this sense of loss. But when I first set eyes on the place and felt that rush of energy, I knew that somehow its essence remained. And I drove through Canyon Country on instinct, searching out places that gave me that sense of warm nostalgia. I found it in the hill in front of my house that I used to skateboard down, and I found it in the old green utility box on the side of the road that served as our bus stop. It has often been noted that nothing can trigger memory like a smell or a taste, and I knew that the nostalgia jackpot was waiting for me in the crispy pepperoni on top of a Round Table pizza, a taste that I have been craving for twenty years. We pulled into the strip mall and there it was, where it had always been. I walked in and instinctively ordered a root beer. I took one bite of pizza and I knew, and was comforted that some things never change. Looking around the room, I saw that they had remodeled a bit, but the arcade was still there, and the same coat of arms, although it had been moved, was still hanging on the wall. It struck me that the world is a palimpsest, alternately being covered and revealed in layers, reconfigured, rearranged, but never really fundamentally changed. Space remains where it is, and seems to contain all that was ever there.

Before we returned to LA, we stopped at Vazquez Rocks, where my parents had taken us on a yearly excursion for Easter sunrise service. It is also the place where many films have been shot, usually portrayed as an alien landscape. Climbing on the rocks Shana turned to me and remarked, "Being here, I think I understand you a little better," because it is after all, a part of me.

Bungalows Galore

Up to Mulholland Drive to gawk at the Beverly Hills mansions but to no avail. We drove into the clouds and saw nothing but gray. But down on the flats we saw many exquisite bungalows throughout the city. Here are a few of the gems.

"Love has conceived a house,

and out of its labor

brought forth its likeness

-the emblem of desire, continuing

though the flesh falls away."

-Wendell Berry

Arriving in L.A.

"...the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of the 'first stairway,' we would not stumble on that rather high step. The house's entire being would open up, faithful to our own being. We would push the door that creaks with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch has remained in our hands." Gaston Bachelard - The Poetics of Space

And it has been twenty years since I've been to Los Angeles. Shana and I are here to give an artist talk and scope out venues to develop a future project. But for me this is also a journey into the past. Today we will drive to Canyon Country, where I spent eight of my most formative years. I hear that our house has undergone a million dollar renovation, and that the suburb is much more densely populated. I go there in search of memories, but I know that the landscape will be very much altered. I hope to find some things that have not changed. The transition had already begun when I lived there. We had a hill in our back yard that we would climb up to the top and watch the landscape being inscribed with twisting mountain roads lined with innumerable houses. Everywhere the hills were being reconfigured by bulldozers, and these became our playgrounds. We would ride down the plateaus with our BMX bikes, steal lumber from job sites to build skateboard ramps and explore the drainage tunnels that went below the new roads. I know that what I will find is a very different place. But the train bridge where I dodged a train after egging cars in the middle of the night with Eric Close, buzzed on my first sips of alcohol, will still be there. The hill where we made makeshift snowboards out of skateboard decks and bike tires for bindings the one time it snowed will still be there. And maybe, maybe some of my neighbors will still be there. Maybe I will vaguely recognize a face or two, transformed, like mine, by twenty years of a different life.

Upon arriving in LA, the first thing that draws my attention is the foliage. Even though I grew up here, the palm trees and cactuses seem so foreign and exotic. It feels like another country. Then come the place names; Marina Del Rey, La Brea, Malibu. They are so musical and romantic. I remember reading these names on the freeway signs as a child and dreaming of these places. Some I visited and some I did not, but they all exuded a feeling of great leisure. And as I walk through the streets of Los Angeles, I feel that old slow step coming back, and my speech begins to become a little bit more drawn out. In Wisconsin, we are always in a hurry, because we know that even in the middle of summer, the bitter cold is right around the corner. Here summer lasts forever, and there's nowhere to go, because you are already there.

Sara Daleiden, our host and an old friend from Milwaukee, has put us up in fabulous penthouse designed by Viennese architect Rudolf Schindler. Schindler came to California on a job building furniture for some of Frank Lloyd Wright's California commissions, but soon established his own practice. He built the first examples of international style architecture in California, planting the seeds for the playful explorations of modernism that are so characteristic of the Los Angeles architectural landscape.

After settling in, we had a bit of free time so we drove down to Venice Beach, where I went many times as a child. Here's a quick photo tour:

Greeted by the Buddha

We ran across a classic beach house designed by the Greene Brothers. Later in the trip we will visit the Gamble House. (Correction; this house was built in the style of Greene and Greene, but by a different architect)

Some calisthenics at muscle beach

Reminders of home.

Dad and the Art of Wall Repair

Preparation;

Detritis;

Calisthenics;

and Color;

Thanks to Dad for coming down on my birthday to help with the painting and for babysitting the cat while we are away.

A Typical Contractor's Lunch

The Book of the Five Circuits

In a surprise development, Shana's brother Evan, who I had practically begged to come up and help me with the electrical work, decided he could spare a weekend and drove up from Iowa with his mother and fiance to lend a hand. We spent Mother's Day in a web of tangled wires and electrical circuits, tearing holes in walls and puzzling over the logic of several generations of electrical updates. I gained a new respect for the electrical trade as I saw first hand the amount of shear brain power it takes to decipher a system whose guts are hidden inside the walls.

At the tail end of our second fourteen hour day, I was relegated to the task of running up and down the stairs to flip circuits on and off, which was all right by me, because this was the one job that I was still mentally capable of performing by then. Somehow, even though we never touched the upstairs tenants' electrical system, their refrigerator had lost power and their freezer defrosted. Luckily, it was a frostless freezer so this did not result in a puddle of water on the floor. There were, however, some popsicles that were considered a total loss; a minor disaster compared to the one that was lying dormant in the adjacent outlet. Mysterious, inconsistent readings from the outlet that powered the fridge prompted Evan to investigate further. There was an outlet that the tenants had plugged up with plastic covers because they said that the one time they tried to use it, it sent sparks flying. On the other side of the same wall was an outlet/switch combo that the tenants claimed would shut the power off to the entire house. I was skeptical of this when we first bought the house, so I tried it and nothing happened. But some electrical work had been done since then. Apparently it had been many years since the incident. When we opened it up to investigate, one of the outlets looked like it had been struck by lightning. They each had separate supply lines and were on separate circuits, yet somebody had taken a short piece of Romex wire and connected the two. In theory this would mean that the outlet was receiving 240 volts of power and this would explain the fried outlet and the switch that shorted the power to the whole unit. I certainly would not want to be the poor soul who tries to plug a toaster into that outlet.

Between trips down to the breaker box, I chatted with Sarah and Michael, the upstairs tenants. Sarah handed me a book written by a Japanese Samurai called the 'Book of the Five Rings'. Apparently this book is popular amongst businessmen who are looking for more inspiration than their 'Successories" posters can provide. She said that she thought of me when she read the chapter entitled "Likening the Science of Martial Arts to Carpentry." So I read this while I waited in the stairwell for my next instruction from above.

From the text:

"When sorting out timber for building a house, that which is straight, free from knots, and of good appearance can be used for front pillars. That which has some knots but is straight and strong can be used for rear pillars. That which is somewhat weak yet has no knots and looks good is variously used for door sills, lintels, doors, and screens. That which is knotted and crooked but nevertheless strong is used thoughtfully in consideration of the strength of the various members of the house. Then the house will last a long time."

and:

"Efficiency and smooth progress, prudence in all matters, recognizing true courage, recognizing different levels of morale, instilling confidence, and realizing what can and cannot be reasonably expected - such are the matters on the mind of the master carpenter. The principle of martial arts is like this."

Reading this, I was feeling lofty about my trade, and I mused about the role of the electrician. Electricity was not yet discovered in 1645, so the Book of Five Rings contains no entry likening the samurai to the electrician. But if there was, it would certainly extol the virtues of patience, reason, and endurance.

Sisyphus Exonerated

Finished, finally!

Carbide Sisyphus

Scrape.. scrape... scrape... scrape... Take it in stages. A few feet at a time. Make it down to the door then I'll go home. Should have brought kneepads. Almost half way done. I'll do more tomorrow. A little bit at a time.

'If a Tree Falls in the City...' and Other Zen Koans

Shana has always said that when a tree falls, its time to move. Its happened at every place she's lived. It happened at the apartment where I first lived with her; the place on Warren St. where she took me in like a stray dog and rescued me from my flea infested hovel that was the Acme Building. Oh, the Acme Building - the original ancestor to this project, the first renovation, the failed renovation. It was me and my friend Bob. We were living at the job site, camping out (I literally slept in a tent on the floor) in the front room that was once a bar, and was eventually going to be our gallery. Meanwhile we were fixing up the back apartment, exchanging labor for rent. We had big plans. I remember we were going to do a gas station themed bathroom, complete with a urinal, a tile mosaic of the Mobil Pegasus and a shower head made from a modified gas pump nozzle. The project ended badly. There was standing water in the basement, and a whole ecosystem was evolving down there. There were any number of insects, including giant flies that we imagined to be a new species. One day I got up my courage and crept down to the basement. I was staring at a soggy cardboard box full of fiberfill when I noticed a movement. Suddenly one, then two, then three little heads popped up. Inside the box was a whole litter of baby opossums. Adorable as they were, they were contributing nothing to the project so they had to go. We took them down to the bike trail and set them free. I don't remember how we drove the mother out. The opossums were gone, but they had brought fleas, and this is what truly made the place uninhabitable. During this time, the landlord was nowhere to be found. He refused to return our phone calls and the fleas got exponentially worse. When the exterminator finally came he said that it was one of the worst flea infestations he had ever seen. I remember walking in to the house and just watching my white socks become instantly peppered by them. Meanwhile, the landlord had transferred his affairs over to Mickey Shanahan, the loose cannon who owned the bar across the street. Apparently there was miscommunication regarding our arrangement and he was now threatening to sue us for back rent. Shana, bless her heart, took pity on me and cleared out a room for me in her apartment on Warren St. I've often thought that if it wasn't for those fleas, we may have never gotten married.

And then the city came and cut down the tree out front. They said it was diseased and promised to replace it with a flowering crab. We waited, and the crab never arrived. It was time to move.

Hearing of the demise of the Acme project, the landlord that I was working for offered me a proposition. He had an old Riverwest cottage that was badly in need of repair. By now I was working primarily as his finish carpenter and he had begun to trust my design sense. He proposed that I design and renovate the cottage and Shana and I could move in when it was completed. I would offer my labor at a discount in exchange for cheap rent. I was feeling highly reluctant after the experience at the Acme Building. I felt that accepting the offer would just be setting myself up for another failure. If there was one thing I should have learned from the Acme Building, it was not to get into some harebrained deal with another landlord. I decided to run the idea by Shana anyway. I was pretty sure she would be against it. I knew she was skeptical of the neighborhood, and I didn't think that she would trust me to pull it off after the Acme debacle. To my surprise, she went for it. And we went from this...

...to this...

There was a tree out front. It was a pear tree. For several years it produced bountiful numbers of pears, some of which Shana made into excellent pear sauce. The rest were eaten by squirrels or composted. The tree had never been properly pruned. It was badly misshapen, and much too tall for a fruit tree. But we loved it. The squirrels loved it. The birds loved it. We loved the birds. We had mixed feelings about the squirrels. And the tree created a barrier between us and the rest of the world. Beyond it were scores of typical Riverwest rentals; frame houses covered haphazardly with layers of asphalt, vinyl and aluminum siding. They were eyesores, and the more I learned about restoration - the more I could see how these houses were supposed to look, the uglier they became to me. Every time another clapboard house was stripped of its architectural details and covered with vinyl siding, I took it as a personal insult. The tree kept all this at bay. I could look out my window and the first thing that would draw my attention would be the tree, or the birds and squirrels that made use of it.

One fall day we heard a crash. We looked outside to find that the pear tree had lost one of its major limbs. It had caved under the growing weight of its fruit. On closer examination we noticed a line of sawdust trickling out of a hole in the trunk, building up in a mound at its base. A colony of ants was hollowing out its center, and the tree began its decline. After that, we lost about one major limb per year and eventually it became evident that the the whole tree would soon go, and it would likely take out my fence and porch railing in the process. We had the tree removed...and we started noticing For Sale signs.

Occasionally I would run across a house for sale that looked somewhat promising and I would check it out and report back to Shana. Inevitably, she would ask, "Is there a tree?" The answer was usually no, or there was a tree, but it didn't look very healthy, or there was a tree in the neighbors yard that at least would provide some shade for our yard. Then I spotted a house a few blocks from the bluff that looked like a tiny old farmhouse plopped down in the middle of the city. I imagined that when it was built it was surrounded by forest. It was painted pink and somehow this seemed perfect for it. It was tucked away behind a couple of cedars that covered most of the facade. In the backyard, there was a small fruit tree. In the yard next door, there was a massive white oak. At first I saw this as an asset, but upon closer examination, I noticed that there was severe deterioration at the base of the trunk. Its years were numbered, and I imagined that our time at that house would correspond to the lifespan of that oak tree. It was a ticking clock, a tragedy waiting to happen, and it made me very uncomfortable. We toured the house and discovered that its proportions were just too cramped. I could barely stand up in the upstairs bedrooms. It turned out that my boss had once lived there. He called it the clown house, (I can't seem to get away from those damn clowns!) and it was painted pink then too. He said that it was horribly drafty in the winter time. So we kept looking.

When Shana first saw the For Sale sign in front of our house, the facade was almost completely obscured by foliage. She nearly passed it up before she observed that, behind the wall of green, there was a solid, brick bungalow. The next thing she noticed was that the backyard was entered through an arch made up of two ancient yew trees. There was a towering spruce tree in the adjacent yard. She was interested.

In many ways, this house seemed to be hiding when we got to it. Surely many prospective buyers were turned away by the mountains of clutter that occupied every room of the house, obscuring her finest details. A layer of crusty, alligatored shellac covered all of the cabinetry and woodwork in the kitchen. To an untrained eye, the place looked like a dump. Luckily I have seen enough projects from start to finish that I can recognize a place when it has potential.

A couple o f days before we closed on the house, Shana and I decided that we needed to get away, so we went up to the Zillmer trail in Northern Kettle Moraine, where we often go hiking. There was snow on the ground and it was a perfectly still day. The sun was shining. As we came up over a hill on a familiar trail, I noticed some movement up in the trees up ahead. The sound came a second later. A massive oak tree, probably a hundred and fifty years old, had chosen that moment to fall, just as we came upon it. No wind had stirred it, no lightning had struck it. It just simply gave way amidst the silence of that calm day; its time had come.

Now we are pruning, and our bungalow is coming out of hiding. We are fortunate that the property is well endowed with greenery. In the back, beyond the archway of yews, there are two tall cedars. In the adjacent yards there are spruces on both sides and a giant maple. In the front yard is a pair of juniper bushes, a yew tree and a yew bush. At one point the realtor suggested to the seller that he do some pruning to expose the facade, and he lopped off the tops of the junipers. At first we thought that they were too far gone and that they would have to be removed. Unsure of our pruning skills, we consulted our friend John who used to work as a landscaper. On visiting his house, I was delighted to see that he had developed an obsession with bonsai trees. He had probably 75 bonsai trees in and around his house. This was perfect, because I had a secret hope that I could turn the front yard into a sort of Japanese garden. He encouraged us to be bold with our pruning and we set about creating our third giant pile of brush to line the curb.

Pruning the junipers was an act of sculpture in the most traditional sense. It involved selectively removing material, standing back and observing the results from multiple angles, then adapting to the results, sometimes taking broad strokes, hacking off a major limb, sometimes making subtle alterations with a pruning shears to refine the shape, working towards an overall gestalt; a finished statement that exists as a unified whole. It is pure abstraction, a dance between artist and material. Here again, Shana and I are collaborating, and we expose the trunks and refine the foliage into multiple, distinct tiers with space in between. Our zen garden begins to emerge. Standing back, there seems to be a missing element in the composition. Theres a open space on the ground between the tall yew and the juniper on the right. I think it needs a stone... a big one. I'm thinkng like a foot and a half high. I'd like it to come from a place of significance; maybe the twenty acres up in Iola that my grandfather owned before passing it on to his children, or maybe the Mines of Spain on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi where Shana and I were married. I have no idea how I'll move this stone. I'll find the stone first, then I'll figure out how to move it.

Demolition and Discovery

As the giddiness of the new house wears off, I become a bit more focused. I take up my hammer and crowbar and and tear into the bathroom, the only room in the house that we are gutting down to the bones. Opening up the bathroom walls, all of her systems are exposed, and so far they look healthy. But the demolition comes with a bit of anxiety, because a false move can send water gushing into the room or sparks flying. I'm not a plumber or an electrician, so I spend a good deal of time staring at these systems and trying to decipher them. I remember that there is an access door to the tub in the bedroom closet so I decide to open it up and have a peek.

There's a tradition amongst tradesmen to burry objects inside of walls and woodwork before they close them up. They become time capsules; little messages left for some future worker to uncover. I've uncovered a few and I've left many. They are usually something that speaks of the time period, of who the people were who built the house. The most common is a newspaper. Unfortunately, a 100 year old newspaper does not hold up very well, and attempting to even turn the page can make it disintegrate into dust. So I pick them up carefully and decipher what I can on the exposed pages. If I'm lucky, I can make out a date, a few headlines and some adds for new cars selling for a couple hundred dollars.

I open up the access door and examine the plumbing for a while and then I see it; a wadded up newspaper tucked into a corner beneath the tub. I have no way of knowing whether it was left intentionally as a time capsule or if it was just used to wipe up a spill after a leak in the plumbing, but either way, there it is, and I know that it contains clues to a different time. I turn it over looking for a date and I can't find one. There is an ad for the Sound of Music, which, if it is referring to the movie, would place the newspaper somewhere around 1965, or, if it was the broadway musical, it could be 1959 or any time since. There is an editorial talking about why the Pabst Theatre is worth saving and a headline that reads "Plant Worker Gets a Beating". On the back there is an article about four people dying in a house fire and I shudder and pray that its not an omen. I place the paper on the buffet in the dining room, and decide that I'll examine it more closely later.

I'm looking for a door to cover up the tub while I'm tearing out the plaster and I remember theres a stack of old doors piled up by the basement toilet - in the room with the clown painting. I start pulling out doors and stacking them in another room and there are more than I thought. I find the old swinging kitchen doors and the original storm door. Unfortunately its a bit too far gone to use, but now we know what to look for to replace it.

Pulling out the last door, I'm startled by a face, and I can hardly believe my eyes. Its another crying clown!!!

Removing the door from the room, a scene emerges; two clowns facing each other with a toilet in between. Whose bizarre sense of humor was it that dreamt up this uncomfortable configuration? Certainly not the one who bought the paintings originally. At one point these were cherished objects. They are both original paintings, done by one Ruby Hoiland of Pasadena, California. And original paintings, however hokey, are not cheap.

After a while, when doing a job involving repetitive motions, the task starts becoming automatic, and the mind begins to wander. Back in the bathroom, I get to daydreaming, and I start thinking about that wadded up newspaper sitting on top of the buffet. Why was it rolled up like that? Was there something inside? If someone needed to hide something in this house, a logical place would be behind the access door to the tub. It was screwed shut when I got to it, almost as if somebody was trying to keep people out. Maybe there are drugs inside. Maybe there's money. Maybe there's a gun! This last thought piques my curiosity and I go to the dining room to examine it further. I pick it up. Of course theres not a gun; it hardly weighs anything. I start to unroll it and it begins to crumble. I pause and set it back down on the buffet.

Stripping the Tease

When I worked as a carpenter, there were four separate incidents in which the leaded glass windows were either stolen from the job site that I was working at, or I was called in to replace ones that had been stolen. In all but one case, the house was vacant and there was evidence of work being done. When these thieves see a dumpster out front or contractors going in and out they know its an easy target and they break in at night without having to worry about confronting the residents. Then they sell the leaded glass piano windows and cabinet doors to antique dealers. Many antique stores have stopped buying these because they don't want to support this activity, but you don't have to drive far to find one that will. So think about that next time you walk into an antique store and see stacks of stained glass windows. We're not taking any chances, so we stripped the house of all of her finest jewelry and tucked it away in an undisclosed location until we're ready to take up residence. Here's the living room and dining room with most of the art glass removed:

We brought in some of the cabinet doors for restoration; some of the panes are cracked.

Holiday Inn Demolition

We had our final walkthrough on Easter Sunday morning. The house was finally ours. Funny how all the formalities for this house have happened on holidays. We first looked at it right around Thanksgiving, we had a contract a couple of days before Christmas and we closed on the house on April Fools Day. I found this last one especially appropriate, especially when we signed the piece of paper which disclosed the total cost of the loan after interest. Well, fools or not, I couldn't wait to get inside and start tearing shit apart. People think of demolition as thankless grunt work. For me its just good clean fun. Its the only time you can get away with breaking things and actually feel like you are accomplishing something. I know of no better way to release all of that pent up aggression. I've spent the last week running around the house like a little kid and randomly demolishing all of the stuff thats gotta go. Here's a few of the highlights:

Some exploratory demolition in the bathroom reveals a window hidden behind the shower surround.

A relic from a generation that bought into the idea of 'a better life through chemistry'; the back of one of these fabulous plastic tiles reads: "100% Virgin Polystyrene - Nationally Advertised - De Luxe - Unconditionally Guaranteed" No thanks. But we will keep the honey comb floor.

Meanwhile, Shana is in the backyard going about her task a bit more methodically. By the time she finished cleaning out the brush and pruning the cedars, the curb was lined with brush and lawn and leaf bags taking up the entire width of our lot.