To Renovate, Repair or Restore.

The house we rented when I last lived in Brisbane was the kind that many people aspire to. It was a single storey, four bedroom modern house with an open plan living area, which I do like, and an easy-care paved entertaining area. Did I mention it also had a pool. It was the sort of house that would be perfect for entertaining. Tiled floors made it easy to care for and I was very attached to the beautifully organised dressing room and the large en suite. Smooth painted walls, modern kitchen and easy to maintain carpet. Sounds perfect. Yet that house sucked the soul from my body. I am not really sure why I hated it so much.

On the opposite end of the scale was the house we owned in Warwick. An old workers cottage on posts, which had been progressively enlarged by the standard process of closing in the wide verandas to create more rooms. Single skin weatherboards with VJ interior and original hardwood flooring meant that there were more gaps and spaces for cold air to sneak in than you could possibly imagine. According to the tradesman who was helping to create an extra room for me, there was also not one single 90 degree angle in the entire house. I used to call it the house of many doors because it seemed that whenever they added an extra bit it was just closed of and another door added. One of the rooms was only about five feet by eight feet... and it had three doors. To get to Jeremy's bedroom you needed either to go through the hall, two doors, the bathroom, another door, and then the door into his room. Alternatively you could go into the hall, through the dinning room and into his room. I think that involved one less door but effectively cut his room in half.. And while very few of the doors actually matched they were beautiful. Solid wood with a variety of different sized inserts and glass panes. We loved that house. It really was a lovely home. Renovating it was a delight, though there came a time when Benjamin was quite adamant that he was not going to sacrifice any more fingertips to gap filling all the vjs. And I am not sure how many toxins I released as we sanded and stripped back many years of paint and varnish.

This brings me to the dilemma that I have been wrestling with over the past few days. It is a dilemma that I don't think you would have with modern houses but maybe I am wrong. You see as you strip away the layers of paint, varnish and poly filler from the surfaces of older residences you continually uncover imperfections and flaws which have been hidden by time. Natural timbers have imperfections which were not necessarily planed away. Boards have dints and gouges where successive generations of inhabitants have left the marks of their battles and accidents and play. Mismatched glass panes tell stories of balls tossed in fun and fists thrust in anger. The one I find the most amusing is where doors have dropped because of their weight and continual use and the easiest way of fixing it was just to trim a bit of the bottom till they closed. So what do you do when faced with these flaws and the scars left by previous tenants. What does it mean to renovate, to repair, to restore.

Sometimes you reach a point in the process where a section you are working on has been 'repaired' so many times that you are sure that if you chip away all the filler and the glue it will simply disintegrate. And do you actually need to. Do you really need to go right back to the very beginning in order for the renovation to be authentic, or is the authenticity in the acceptance and careful honouring of all the lived moments that form the buildings history. The biggest difference between the two houses I mentioned at the beginning of this post is that the first had no 'character' to speak of. There may be a better word for it but I can't really think of one. The house in Warwick had masses of character, it was a living entity that had evolved and changed over time through the lives that had been lived in it. You got a real sense that you were part of a continuum, a story that was not yet over.

Sometimes we get so carried away with the idea of repairing and restoring that we effectively remove all the organic proof of lives lived, and in so doing we destroy the very essence of the place. The trick is to work out what can be saved and what needs to be completely removed and replaced. This is not always easy and sometimes we make mistakes on the way. It is not always clear at different points which bits are worth keeping and which bits are not. Neither does it help that others will advise you differently depending on their own sense of what matters. When this happens it is so very important that you have access to like minded souls. People who value the same elements and understand the importance of history and what builds the character of a place. Mostly, people who understand and share your goals in the renovating process.