The Barn House (31 page)

I
t's a commonplace to say of old houses that they don't build 'em that way anymore, and in fact they seldom do, but that's not because the skills are lost or the materials can't be obtained or even, in the last analysis, because the cost is too high. The main reason they don't build 'em that way is that nobody asks. I had worked on old houses most of my life, but even so there were things I didn't know to ask for and consequently didn't get—for example, quartersawn oak flooring, which sad story I'll relate a couple chapters hence. But I'd learned I could get custom millwork, and meant to, since few interior features so palpably distinguished an old house from a newly constructed one as the elaborate wood detailing commonly found in the former. I was in the happy position of not having to design the woodwork from scratch, although no doubt Charlie could have worked up something suitable if asked; I simply needed to copy the resplendent molding I already had. Duplicating old woodwork wasn't difficult—all you had to do was give the mill shop a few representative pieces, and of course a wad of cash.

I'd made arrangements in this regard with a young mill shop owner named Guido. His prices were reasonable, but at this point that was immaterial—we'd spent our savings, maxed out our credit cards and could barely afford a cup of coffee, much less a truckload of custom millwork. I'd gone ahead and ordered the stuff anyway, hoping something would develop. The millwork arrived one morning; I opened the mail while the workers piled it in the hall. In the stack I found an envelope from a publisher—a book I'd written had unexpectedly gone into royalties and they'd sent me a good-sized check, which would cover Guido's bill and leave us a little for groceries. For all the unseen forces watching out for us, we had our share of just plain luck.

A staggering number of tasks remained to be completed in addition to the woodwork, many of them made more complicated by the fact that we now lived in the house. A bathroom, for example, required a good deal of intricate finishing under any circumstances, with a long series of tasks that had to be accomplished in a certain order, but attempting to schedule the work, which often involved lengthy delays for processes such as curing that couldn't wisely be rushed, became positively nightmarish once the bathroom was in regular use. I found myself making timelines and checklists worthy of a missile launch, and about as prone to mishap.

Some setbacks were of the more mundane variety. While lowering an old washing machine down the basement steps—we hadn't made up our minds to discard it, and it looked a little rummy rusting in the yard—I lost my grip on the dolly. The washing machine bounced down the steps; I fell on top of it at the bottom. An X-ray established that I'd only suffered contusions, but for a good two weeks afterward my ribs hurt like hell.

After the usual false starts and distractions, we'd assembled the finishing materials for the bathroom walls—tile for the showers, wooden wainscoting elsewhere—and one day Tony sent a carpenter named Mirek over to install them. I was downstairs that afternoon when I heard a splashing sound in the walls, and on investigating found water pouring from the basement ceiling. I ran upstairs to find Mirek pounding nails into the wainscoting in the bathroom directly above. Mirek spoke no English, but by means of frantic gestures I persuaded him to stop. Seeing the alarming cataract downstairs, he pulled out a carpenter's pencil and began writing on the wall, the first instinct of all tradespeople in times of crisis. It was an equation—I realized Mirek was trying to persuade me on mathematical grounds that his nails weren't long enough to cause the leak. I warmly replied that the lack of dripping water antecedent to his hammering strongly argued for his involvement. We pulled off the wainscoting and were doused by spurting water. Acknowledging the reality of the situation, Mirek disappeared briefly to scare up the necessities to put the matter right, my plumbing inventory being momentarily depleted. The repair concluded—Mirek was one of those dependable sorts who might not do everything right, but at least lost minimal time fixing what he'd done wrong—it was back to the wainscoting. A week later I got the shower door and shower head mounted, plus a spout for the half-inch copper pipe, and after that a toilet and sink.

In early November Tom K—the finish carpenter and his helper Frank arrived to begin installing the woodwork. Tom was Greek and retained a heavy accent despite long residence in the United States; Tony had warned me he could be temperamental. He was, but that posed no great difficulty; he was a member of the brotherhood. Early on I learned that when Tom was especially proud of some bit of craftsmanship he announced, “You no like it, I tear it out,” whereas if he had his doubts he said, “You can't do nothing, forget it.” When the latter occurred I gazed mournfully at the item in silence, then offered a modest suggestion about whatever defect had caused Tom pain. Invariably after some coaxing he relented and did it over.

Few such occasions arose, though. Tom's work was exquisite—“like furniture,” he declared periodically. It was hard to disagree. He and Frank built what amounted to a picture frame around the doors and windows, each an elegant composition of casing and backband plus a sill (in the case of the windows) or high flanking baseboards (in the case of the doors). They did one room at a time. The change in appearance was extraordinary—the finished rooms seemed positively palatial. “Looks rich,” Tom agreed. We at last had tangible evidence that the house's interior would someday match its now-handsome exterior.

Like the framing carpenters before them, Tom and Frank took it upon themselves to rectify occasional weak points in the house's original construction. The closet under the front hall stairs had the tiny window of which we've already spoken—the glass measured just twelve and a half by sixteen inches. Originally it had been surrounded by the massive five-inch-wide casing used elsewhere in the house—beautiful there, but in this context absurdly overscaled. Tom and Frank sliced the casing down to three inches wide—the result looked much better. Once again the brotherhood had improved on the house's original design.

 

O
ne may ask: Was
every
tradesman who ambled into the Barn House a member of the Brotherhood of the Right Way? The answer manifestly was no, but I do have to say we encountered quite a few more than might be expected in a random sampling of the population, especially considering the lamentations about declining craftsmanship and incompetent contractors that one routinely hears. To a large extent, I concede, that was Tony's doing, because he hired the bulk of the subcontractors, but even in projects in which he had no involvement the brothers turned up far more often than not. I could claim I had a gift for spotting talent, but that would be like saying I had a knack for picking people who spoke English—assuming you had the eye, about which more in a moment, no special skill was required to detect members of this scorned cult.

Which, frankly, is what it was. In reality, I think, the Brotherhood of the Right Way was respectably numerous; its members just kept their heads low lest they attract unwanted attention, like the Huguenots or fans of the White Sox.
⁸⁵
Fact was, the brotherhood coexisted uneasily with the bottom-line crowd, who recognized that the profit lay in knowing when to say:
good enough.
(Not a problem confined to the building trades, incidentally—ask any software developer.) You were an artist in a world that didn't reward artistry—I knew that from my own experience. As a writer I occasionally got compliments for a well-turned paragraph—people expected such things of writers. But rare was the electrical job at the end of which people came up to me and said:
Hey, nice pipes.

I think the main reason so many craftsmen worked on the Barn House, and we got such a beautiful job as a result, was simply that I recognized them when they showed up. The Brothers of the Right Way liked having their work appreciated, and would go to a great deal of trouble for anyone who acknowledged their efforts. For all that you heard, standards of craftsmanship in the United States hadn't deteriorated to any remarkable extent that I'd ever noticed. The real problem, it seemed to me, was with those who did the hiring. A lot of people wouldn't know quality work if it came up and introduced itself. They lacked the critical eye.

A good eye wasn't a matter of being hard to please. Any contractor can tell you stories about clients who thought they knew more than the tradesmen, asked for impossibilities, and got thrown off job sites. That wasn't the mark of a good eye; that was just being obnoxious. Nor was it merely a knack for judging level, straight, and true, although that was an essential skill. The real trick lay in the ability to give intelligent direction to the project.

That meant knowing what the job was supposed to look like when it was done, and equally important, what was achievable and at what cost.

No question it helped to have some basic familiarity with the trades, and for that matter with manual labor. I'd had the advantage of having grown up watching people work on houses and doing a fair amount of work myself. I'd also had the good luck to come along at a point when my family wasn't so far removed from its working-class origins to have decided this kind of thing was beneath them—if my father had been a stockbroker I'd likely have been as adrift as the next guy. One of my fears, in fact, was that I'd fail to transmit the principles of the right way to my own children, a matter I'll return to. But first, if you don't mind, a few more practical tips: