I BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!

I bought a house.

I haven’t said much publicly yet. Not because I was trying to be mysterious, but because it’s already been a lot, and I wanted to get my feet under me before talking about it. It’s less than a quarter mile from where I live now, same neighborhood in East Nashville, but even closer to Five Points and the Fatherland District. The location is absolutely perfect. I gave my realtors a tiny, tiny radius to work in because I wanted to live here so badly, and in the end, 87% of what I paid was for the lot - they pretty much threw the house in for free.

The house was built in 1920, so it’s over 100 years old and very much acts like it. The walls are lath and horsehair plaster and are cracked and crumbling in a lot of places. What’s left of the trim and molding is original but that is going to be a real puzzle to figure out how to honor while updating, since it’s really piecemealed throughout the house. The windows are single-pane with lead counterweights (I know because you can see the weights as the window frames aren’t all there), and the exterior storm windows are hanging off the outside doing just about nothing to keep the single-digit winter air out. The water I mixed into the joint compound so I could skim coat last night froze on the wall, and this morning the inside of the windows were glazed in frost when I rolled up to the site. It sits on old cedar piers, which is cool and also kind of terrifying. In the attic, amidst the 1920s knob and tube wiring, all the 2x4s are hand-hewn old-growth lumber, which is objectively awesome and probably the most reassuring part of the whole thing.

I’ve been working in the house for about five days and it’s already overwhelming. Here is an example of how it’s going. I tried to patch a small section of plaster beneath the window in the second bedroom and it was so soft I had to demo a section and pull out the brittle, crumbly mess. Pulling that meant removing the window trim. That exposed a bunch of rot, so I pulled that out too. Once that was gone, the window could finally open, and when I opened it, the entire sill fell out of the house and onto the ground outside. As of today, the gas is on and the heat works, which is great, but that 6 inch by 30 inch hole in the wall currently stuffed with drop cloths is as good as an open window.

That has been the pattern so far. Every small task turns into three bigger ones. The have-to-do list keeps growing, which means the get-to-do list—built-in bookshelves with a Beauty and the Beast rolling ladder, a custom vanity with a ceramic vessel sink, floating shelves for pottery, a custom flush-mount AC return—keeps getting pushed further away.

I’ve had a few subs come by to look at the place, but most of them can’t quote anything because of all the unknowns. A crew that came by this morning to quote ceiling demo and skim coat realized the ceilings were a mix of lath and plaster, plywood, and drywall, and got back in their truck. Fair enough.

The current goal is to get the house safe and livable (electrical updated, fix venting from furnace and water heating, stabilize foundation). Today’s problem is demo those ceilings myself because the subs wont touch it, and figure out how to temporarily fix that window so I’m not bleeding heat for the next week. Best-case scenario, I move in the first week of March and get a roommate a month or so later to help split the mortgage. We’ll see how that actually plays out.

I’m excited, overwhelmed, and pretty stressed, but I’m motivated. I want to get through the grind work so I can get to the parts I actually enjoy: the custom builds, the layout, the details. I’ve already modeled most of the house in Fusion so I can plan furniture, built-ins, and projects and not just wing everything in real life.

This is the big thing I’ve been working toward for pretty much my whole life so far and it’s the reason I’ve been a little scattered lately. It’s a lot, but it is moving forward. The tone of this post isn’t as celebratory as buying a house is supposed to be, but that excited, optimistic one is coming. Right now I’m just feeling the long nights working in 20 degrees but with the fan on to help dry the mud on the walls, and as exhilarating as the home reno process is, it feels very real for now. The romantic view of owning a home is temporarily on hiatus while I haul bags of plaster to the dump and sling mud for a couple more weeks.

QC