Once upon a time.....

You think it's a good idea to create a blog for a particular project but then when it comes down to start writing it's hard to know where to begin.  How far back in time do I go with my dream to take a charming but structurally questionable little house into a better state?  Do I start at the beginning or somewhere in between?  Do I tell you how I came to own this house or do you not really care?  Why am I writing this anyway?  I can answer that one- I think mostly I am writing this to keep a journal for myself of this whole process.  It is far easier to write in this format and put in pictures than the old time journal and taping in inspirational ideas.  Renovating a house is unknown territory for me and how it ultimately turns out.... only time will tell.  I have always envied people who were able to take a falling down piece of history and return it to what it deserves to be.  Hoping to someday be able to do this I have spent years cutting pictures out of magazines and pasting them into books for the moment they are needed.  I was not sure however that the moment would ever arrive.

I'll give you the brief history of how we got to rebuilding the little William Tripp house.  In 1999, I was engaged to a guy from Nantucket (no jokes please).  I was in the midst of my postdoctoral fellowship and we needed a place to live with our very large German Short haired pointer after the wedding.  Since at that time we were doing a lot of Revolutionary War reenacting and having an 18th century wedding, it seemed natural that we buy an 18th century house.  Sadly, you can't buy a period home in great shape on a postdoc's salary then or now.  So, I was going to do the best that I could given my limited budget.  I thought that since Dave had been working as a carpenter he could work on the house while we lived there for a few years.  My mother, who helped me find the house, was supposed to take ownership after I found "that job" and moved somewhere else.  The choices were extremely limited in my price range- one that sported a beauty salon connected to the back of the house, a tiny ranch that was inhabited by chain smokers with a penchant for green shag carpeting...  Listen, this is too painful to recollect so let's just say that the Tripp House was perfect given my choices.

We moved in and have lived there ever since.  Dave has done some small projects but could never muster enough enthusiasm to do much more.   Last fall he said he had an announcement...  I could not imagine what it could be.  He says, we're moving!  Huh?  I had no clue that we were going anywhere.  But but- I thought... to where?  He pulled out a listing to a very lovely home down the street.  "It's all done" he exclaims.  "We are going to see it on Sunday".