This is a book I know I first heard of from Annie B. Jones of The Bookshelf and of From the Front Porch podcast. A bookstore I really want to visit (but the closest I've been is 3 hours away) and a podcast I've been regularly listening to for 4 years. Actually, I'm pretty sure that's the only place I had heard of it before I read it because I don't recall it popping up on my Goodreads or anywhere.
I had read two previous books by Erica Bauermeister and really enjoyed them both: The School of Essential Ingredients and The Lost Art of Mixing. Those were both novels based around food. This book: House Lessons: Renovating a Life was primarily about house renovating. And also life. Those foodie and house renovating don't seem to have a strong overlap so I was leery but I'm really glad I read it.
The book is a memoir of the author's time spent doing MASSIVE renovations in the Pacific Northwest. She lives with her family in Seattle and they are itching to get out of the city. They find a fixer-upper near the coast, that involves a ferry trip to get to, and battle to get it. And it's a super fixer-upper. The house is caught up in an estate that drags on for months. The house is filled with garbage and who knows what else. They have to fight to get this house and the garbage that comes with it. I can tell you I would have been out immediately. But they stuck with it.
(Spoiler!) They get the house, have to empty out the garbage (including multiple dead rats) and then start renovating. We've taken on some home projects in our day but nothing compared to this. They are also hiring out a lot of the work because moving a house (literally lifting it up and moving it) and fixing a foundation while they are at it, those aren't small projects that any (I hope!) homeowner takes on on their own.
She walks the reader through the renovation piece by piece, how hard they worked, how long it took, the physical and mental exhaustion. How they balanced that with parenting two pre-teen/teen (I think?) kids at home, a couple hour drive away. It made me appreciate and marvel at the projects we've done but more appreciate that we've never had to take on something like this!
Along the way there are reflections on why homes are the way they are, how different aspects of our home came to be. Even facts about the octopuses that live in Puget Sound (The largest known ones in the world! Glad I learned that a decade AFTER we took a ferry boat across it!). It sounds a little random but it really wove together so beautifully.
Their renovation took years and a lot of money. You have to pretty committed to a house of garbage to live through that. (To be clear, they took care of the garbage immediately.) They originally intent, to live in the house full-time after it was renovated, changed as time went on but she still talked with such fondness over this house and the process.
What I appreciated about this book is how much care she took with her very old house. How she knew that renovating it and making it perfect would take time and money and they were willing to give both. I strongly disagree with her stance on plaster wall (she is very pro, myself, having torn some out in the house while living here...I hate them) but I could relate to so much else of what she said. We live in an old house that was in a very livable condition when we bought it but we've still done a lot to it. I appreciate all this house has given us and liked reading about another person having a different yet similar experience.
This home obviously means a lot to her and I learned a lot about homes in general as well as other facts (I immediately told Matt about the octopus). I was eager to pick this one up and was so inspired by reading it. Even if you've never renovated a home but just live in one, I think there is something for a whole lot of people in this book. It may drive you away from ever wanting to change anything! Or inspire you to make your house yours! Or even just appreciate the work one couple gave to a house. I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads which I don't do often for non-picture books but this was a wonderful read.
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