Home by Design

from O.Henry March 2021

Short Stories

Elbow Grease

Because the heart wants what the heart wants

By Cy nthi a a daMs Closing our eyes to our termite-

riddled garage and a looming bathroom tear-out, we snuggled down by the telly, cuddling our dogs, and watched Escape to the Chateau.

It is an ironic choice of escape f rom our to -do list.

T he ser ies of fers comfor t ing perspect ive f rom years of projects in our (a lmost) cent ur y- old home. T hese t wo do -it-yourselfers beaver ing away on an ancient, shut tered, abandoned chateau lend perspect ive to t he mont hs of sweat equit y we poured into our ow n relat ively modest abode.

T his BBC program follows Dick and Angel Strawbridge, a British couple who bought a glorious French “pile” in 2015.

Pile is Brit-speak for a ver y large house. But the French call this a chateau. L arger than Sleeping Beaut y’s Castle (albeit smaller than the Biltmore), the couple’s picturesque 19th centur y Château de la MotteHusson is near the quaint village of Mar tigné-sur-Mayenne. T hey bought it for what they might pay for an unremarkable t wo -bedroom flat back in L ondon: £280,000 pounds ($384,000) — a steal.

With 45 rooms, t win turrets, an actual moat and walled garden — all poetically set upon 12 acres of pristine countr yside — it is a thing of sing ular beaut y. But one problem: this veddy beautif ul chateau is in r uins.

No r unning water, heat or electricit y. And af ter the purchase, the Strawbridges are lef t with an impossibly small budget for the k ind of home improvements this pile will require.

Yet the couple dauntlessly ascribes to the motto “you eat an elephant one bite at a time” and rolls up their sleeves.

T he Mister, 59, laughs like Santa and has the belly to match.

Meanwhile, the flamboyant and romantically inclined Missus, 40, t wists strawberr y-red hair into vintage curls and has a passion for red lipstick, arched brows, a hot glue g un, sewing, craf ting and decoupage.

T hey are dauntless, energetic, car t-before-the-horse t ypes — we were stunned by what they did with this moldering and long-abandoned proper t y in just one season.

Years ago, I fell under the spell of an unusual Lindley Park home. It qualified as a “stockbroker Tudor” given that to af ford its steeply pitched rooflines, many gables, brick and stucco features decorated with handsome half-timbers required a stockbroker’s bank account. As is unfor tunately tr ue of Tudors, the interiors were sunless. If the k itchen is the soul of a house, this one’s was dark.

T he proper t y was in a state of beautif ul disarray that suggested its former splendor.

And I desperately wanted it.

L et’s just say, I should have a realit y show titled, The Masochistic Homeowner: The Early Years.

One of the Tudor’s strangest interior details was a renovation gone wrong, so wrong you had to crawl out of an upstairs window and walk across a flat roof in order to access a room addition car ved f rom an adjacent garage attic.

W hereas a smar ter person would have viewed that matter alone as a deal breaker, I tried to fig ure out how to solve this dilemma, sleeplessly fantasizing about owning this home with a beautif ul arbor and quirks. W hich is why I so relate to Angel Strawbridge — sans her luridly done hair and turban.

W hen the Tudor’s home inspection repor t arrived, it, like the dour Strawbridge’s chateau analysis, filled a binder.

L eak ing roof; problematic stucco; electrical and plumbing issues; even a terrif ying problem with the fireplace and chimney.

If it wa sn’t le a k ing, it wa s cr umbl ing. If it wa sn’t cr umbl ing, it so on wou ld.

I wanted it.

It took my practical par tner to pr y my fingers f rom the binder. My tear y-eyed entreaties did not budge my engineer husband f rom NO to M AY BE.

Did I mention that Angel Strawbridge is an enchantress, 19 years younger than Dick?

Had she wanted my decaying Tudor pile, her besotted husband would have laughed ner vously and followed her lead like a spellbound adolescent.

T hat is not my husband.

We did not make a counterof fer on the Tudor. W hich, by the way, sold any way.

We found another house. One that had many issues that the inspection did not uncover, and which took all of our savings to salvage. It is the house we now live in and love.

T his 1929 house renovation followed on the heels of a 1911 reno that was even harder and costlier. Yet, somehow, my husband was as taken as I was by its quietly stoic beaut y including its thick windowsills, French doors, beautif ul light and park view.

We both fell under its spell, even as we toiled.

It was possible to bribe my husband into nightly work af ter our day jobs. He would plaster and paint; I would pick up pizza and bags of Twix bars before joining him. (If we carb -loaded, we could work till midnight, then do it all over again the next day.)

Like the Strawbridges, we under took most of the work ourselves.

W hen the initial cosmetics were done, there was something . . . some indefinable something. As if the house warmly responded to our months of labor. It became a joy to step inside.

One day, my husband mused, “the house is smiling.” It liked being rescued f rom neglect; it reflected back to us the ministrations, the love.

No doubt, too, that Angel believes their French chateau is smiling at them having been liberated f rom decades of grime and neglect.

She is most definitely right. OH

We agree that O.Henr y’s contributing editor Cynthia Adams should indeed have her own reality show. Go ahead and add T he Masochistic Homeowner to your future Watch List.