I know, you’re curious. You want to know how we managed fifty years of marriage. Harmony above all - we accept differences of opinion. We are committed to openness in meaningful communication. We trust one another implicitly. We have the greatest of respect for the consultative process.
As an example, when children leave home, parents downsize, right? Gotcha! My husband, the contrarian, suggested we move to a larger house. Whaaat? Are you crazy? I asked him.
Soon after we moved into this house my husband, looking around at the expanse of the place, and contemplating the upstairs corner room with its balcony overlooking the foyer, opined it would make a great library. What? I squawked, we just moved in!
He set about acquiring lodge pole pine from beautiful British Columbia, and lined the walls. Next came the pine shelving, and after that the cornices, and the wonderfully-designed mouldings, all accomplished with the aid of century-old moulding planes. (Guess I forgot to mention he also collects ... everything, from the modern practical to the antique useful.)
We unpacked all the books from their boxes in the basement. (Placed there at our move from our old, now-inadequate four-bedroom, absent our flown-the-coup-children...) And, voila! A complete library; we had, without even contemplating the purchase of any new volumes, enough from our old house and our old life, to fill in all the blanks ... er, new library shelving.
This house started life as an open concept. I wasn’t all that enamoured of those huge two-story rooms, imagining my husband straddling a height-defying ladder to paint those endless walls. And his first acquisition post-ownership? Two formidable steel-pipe and wood-slab scaffolds. All the better to reach you with, dear heights…
Where I saw unmanageable heights, he recognized scope for the placement of oriental screens and hanging his horde of 19th century paintings. One day when I was at work and my husband had the day off ... at home alone, my husband set up the scaffolds, one atop the other, and unassisted, hung a rice-paper eight-fold screen in the high reaches of the living room. In the process the screen was punctured.
It had somehow managed survived all those years to antique-dom only to be maltreated at your hands? He airily dismissed the misadventure and performed an admirable repair.
The open concept? My husband bought glass-paned French doors. Extra-large sizes between the foyer and living room; between the foyer and the family room; between the foyer and the dining room; and finally, between the kitchen and dining room. Five of those glass-paned French doors stretched between the breakfast room and family room; three fixed and two swung open.
Did we argue over this? Not at all, why would we? I did demur, it’s true, reminding him how much we appreciated that open look. But, he remonstrated, we can see through these doors! They're glass-paned, right? Who could argue with such sophistry?
This house has vast expanses of windows, many of them two stories in height. Hmm, my husband mused, wouldn’t it be interesting to have stained glass in there? Eeek! I shrieked reflexively.
Well, the windows in our bedroom now reflect - full height and width - Tom Thomson’s ‘Storm on a lake in Algonquin Park’; the Palladian windows in the family room a glorious forested winter scene. The library’s windows display a summer lake aside a wood, and the sidelights and Palladian window in the foyer are a kaleidoscope of exotic flora and fauna. Guess what? The heat of the sun on coloured glass is transmitted as heat. Great in winter.
Then he retired. Time to finish the basement. What for! We’ve got more rooms than we need for two people! My weak-willed quibbles are the merest of resistible details, simply reflecting the paucity of my aesthetic vision. He has no such limitations.
The staircase downstairs was re-built in oak, plumbing done, electrical work, framing and drywalling. He read a lot of how-to books. We’re talking big, big floor areas. He brought home a bargain: mauve tiles at 6 cents apiece. We’ve got a study down there (parquet flooring), another powder room and a huge studio where he set up his painting easel. Yes, he also paints, quite acceptable oil paintings, and we hang them proudly in this house with huge walls, alongside the many paintings he/we has/have acquired over the space of some half-century. Get the picture?
Nothing complements a house more than lovely colourful gardens. I adore gardening. No one goes near my gardens. What about delineating the beds and borders? Over my dead body. Nothing, however, deters that man. He simply stepped over my pleading, prostrate, quivering body, and invited me to join his vision.
Massive excavation ensued: soil, dirt, clay and construction rubble. Seeing the driveway full of pallets of stone blocks and cobbles my heart sank. He chiseled the blocks and cobbles by hand, using a stonecutter’s chisel and hammer. Our house became a neighbourhood drop-in centre. Everyone, all the neighbours, including some I hardly knew we had, would drop by out of curiosity. We were certainly that: a neighbourhood curiosity. And I did my bit, joining his vision, brought out steaming mugs of hot tea sweetened with honey punctually at noon. Day after day. Week after week.
Now we’ve got a lovely courtyard from which to view our extraordinary gardens. The elevated borders make gardening easier, but the statuary, fountain, plinths and urns, and the café set make accessing some of the areas a contortionist’s delight. Still, what's the point of complaining? Does no good, and in the final analysis, I love it all!
What did I think of laying ceramic tiles in the laundry room, kitchen, breakfast room, powder room? Hey, maybe up the walls too. But dear, that sounds like so much work! Little did I know. During this process the kitchen counters and powder room counters were ripped up, re-built, and also tiled. End result? Great, really great.
Trouble was, he threw out one of his ankles somehow, don’t ask how. Bedridden for three months as his knee, his leg, and then finally the other became affected. Was he miserable? No kidding. Was I upset? Need you ask?
Since then, we’ve had the master bath counters re-built, laid with tile. The sinks replaced. The floor and walls laid in grey-white pink-streaked marble. The dining room now sports a cherry floor, the library and master bedroom rubberwood floors, the upstairs hallway exotic oriental strip floor, the main staircase retrofitted to oak. AND EVERYTHING LOOKS GREAT.
He’s indefatigable. He’s got black marble, more white-grey marble stored in the basement. More stained glass, too. Lots of work yet left to be done on this evolving house that is our home. I do the cleaning. See me in say, 40 years. We can discuss elements of successful longevity.
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