The Crooked House

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.

And they all lived together in a little crooked house”—Nursery rhyme

The sounds of power tools echo in my head 24 hours a day. Building an addition on to a house that was originally built two centuries ago and added on to during the 1980’s is not an easy task.
Trying to build straight onto crooked would make any man’s head spin. We are doing most of the work ourselves, which is time consuming but we believe will be worth it in the end. The question is will this ever end? This is a project we have been dreaming about for over 6 years now. We have fought with attorneys, city council members, local historical groups and constantly the weather!

It all started when we wanted to take down an old shed to make room for our addition. The area in which we live is considered historical and therefor all sheds were considered to be of historical value. The funny thing is that this shed we are talking about was rebuilt during the 80’s and there was nothing left of the original shed that had been standing there before. After over a year of bureaucratic nonsense we were finally allowed to take it down, but our fight was not over. Certain architectural demands had to be met and getting approval for such things as skylights and a winter-garden was not easy. Finally we had everything in place and then the weather decided to continually surprise us. We have done our fair share of running around with buckets to catch the rain coming through the roof and there has never been so much snow as there has been this winter. At least now we have a roof, windows and doors so we are now concentrating on the inside of the house. This is a crooked house, where walls and floors do not match up and old is fighting the new at every corner. Take a little blood, sweat and tears, mix it together with an abundance of cursing and the sounds of power tools and you have a pretty accurate idea of what life is like here.

The other day I was watching as my husband Rune was balancing on a ladder at the top of the stairs, he was literally hanging off the wall and all I could think of was Spider-man. Not many women are so lucky as to be married to their super hero. How he manages to continually fit a square peg into a round hole amazes me and if I can just hold out a little longer I know that we will be living in our dream house. It may have started out crooked but it is ours.