Broom-swept

We decide, for the Fourth: a day drive to the Tiller Project, where work has begun, and weirdly not by us. A real contractor has arrived, with a crew, and floor plans and the right kinds of tools.

A very slow parade of Diggers, Trucks and Dumpsters has nuzzled up to the Project in recent weeks: to install new joists under the house, to insert a foundation under the ell. One of Wendell’s buddies did some grading on the back hill for us. Another poured a new slab in the basement.

Our primary job was to move everything out of the farmhouse and into a bright blue shipping container perched in the upper field, just in front of two beleaguered baby fruit trees, deer-stunted and festooned in poison ivy, but more or less alive, four years later.

When we bought the place, it was emptied of generations of stuff: Ned’s call. If I’d had my way, it would have been delivered AS IS and packed to the gills: I was convinced there was treasure to be found and the process of sorting it out would be good work. The pink armchair piled with antlers! was my main point. The stack of vintage lunchboxes in the pantry! Ned countered with the basement full of dusty bottles, not empty, marked flammable, toxic, poison. I had to admit he had the better argument, and so the P&S specified “delivered broom-swept.” To console myself for the lunchboxes and antlers, I promised an aesthetic future: no thing would take up residence in that house unless we loved it, found it beautiful and useful.

For a while the promise was kept: a copper pot from Paris, France; a quilt that was a wedding gift; the Adirondack chairs my parents gave us decades ago. Friends contributed a handsome rustic kitchen hutch, a green enameled wood stove, a fine chef’s knife. But then: the yellowed television with integrated DVD player? The piles of plastic utensils from a recently-canceled picnic? The light fixtures bought in a pinch, final sale, that don’t have anywhere to go? All took up residence in the house, and then all were carefully relocated to the shipping container in anticipation of the arrival of the real contractor.

We knew the house would be empty, unplumbed and unplugged, when we arrived mid-morning on Independence Day. Ned had been on site a week before, removing plaster from the bathroom; how much could they have done in three days really? We pulled slowly up the drive and, creaking out of the car, proceeded to wait, what? our way around the place. Those demo days had opened up a series of strange views: bare tarpaper flapping where siding had been; a pile of construction confetti where the mudroom and pantry used to end; a peek into the new crawlspace where there should have been barn floor.

We tried to make ourselves useful. I walked to Wendell’s farmstand for beet greens and new potatoes; unscrewed antique hooks from demo’d boards and bagged them for future preservation efforts. Ned moved a few more things to the shipping container and inspected the water heater, which appears to have a leak, may need to be replaced. We attempted to discern the construction notes penciled on the kitchen wall we had so lovingly sheet-rocked and mudded and painted two years before. (The notes foretell it will be coming down soon to make way for a coat closet.) Wow said Ned, who generally sees the someday gracious dinner party, the longed-for shelter magazine feature, but appeared this time to be confronting the current state of affairs. This is really just a shell.

Our derelict farmhouse has been partying without us. You would think that, as empty nesters, we’d be better equipped to deal. We’re invigorated to see her striding toward her future. We are confident in her resilience and good bones. We are grateful for all those who are helping her find her way. We are shocked to find ourselves rendered obsolete. (I start looking for ways to be close by during construction. Not to hover or anything. But just in case I’m needed.)

I am a sweeper and Ned favors the vacuum, but as we ate our sandwiches, legs swinging off the front porch - the only place to sit - it appeared there wasn’t much to do at the moment. The very slow parade is just starting really and it’s too soon to clean up after.