The trouble with working on projects in the real world is that the dreams you build in your head collapse in an explosion of demo dust when cold, hard, realities hit them. Before demolition day you think “ooh, expose the rafters!.” Fueled by endless Pinterest scrolling through images of immaculate, fresh white or chic greywashed rafters in perfect European apartments, you can already see the Airbnb reviews: ‘I felt like I was in a Paris apartment! Loved the exposed woodwork‘
Here’s where we are: after nearly a year of hemhawing about the third floor living quarters in the brick behemoth we bought nearly a year ago, we became the first homeowners in our historic neighborhood to obtain a permit for short term rentals and have launched operation Vertigo.
The 787 square feet apartment has its own entrance up a dizzying flight of steps, its own bath and kitchen, and can either serve as a private apartment for guests in town, or as our own retreat when we rent the rest of the house (if we can get our stubbornly resistant to stairs puppy to make the ascent). But the space, which housed a hoarder according to neighborhood lore, was the attic apartment time forgot, complete with green shag carpet on the interior stairs, a 1920s gas stove that was gorgeous but completely impossible to keep in a rental, and layers of nastiness including 70s linoleum, owl wallpaper, and a bath enclosure I don’t even want to talk about.
So we gutted it.
Well, a very efficient crew of men attacked it one morning, and eight hours of trips (that I couldn’t watch) up and down those precipitous stairs later, it was down to studs, more or less. And oh, those amazing, 126 year old beams! I was in love.
I took to Facebook to talk about how best to showcase them. And holy moly did the insulation brigade come out in full force. Apparently all those people in Pinterest living in houses with gorgeous exposed ceilings in their attic are either fakers or have $8,000 monthly utility bills for ONE CANNOT NOT HAVE INSULATION. And my objections to erasing the beauty of the ceiling with drywall somehow became a manifesto against insulation.
Lookit. I have nothing against insulation. I don’t want the people staying up there to swelter out the summer or shiver away the winter and I don’t need our utility bill any higher than it already is despite keeping our thermostat set at a bracing 62 all winter (59 at night; that’s why they invented down blankets, yo!). It probably would have made the nights I spent sleeping in a hoodie and gloves in our Detroit third floor attic apartment more tolerable had the similarly sized and aged house had any. It’s the necessary evil companion that comes along with the pink stuff that I abhor.
I. Hate. Drywall.
If I wanted a smooth expanse of soulless, white drywall I’d have bought a new construction in the suburbs. I didn’t. I bought this amazing old place. And the bones of it are the soul of it. To insulate means to cover everything up with drywall and then you could be anywhere. Here’s where the painful reality part comes in: we could plaster instead and that has soul, that has the art and story of someone’s hands working it, but we’re already spending basically everything we have and still may have to stop work for a while when we run out. Hiring a craftsman or woman to plaster the walls is as unrealistic a dream as putting on a historically correct copper roof. Not gonna happen. Or speaking of roof we could put on a new one with the insulation under that. Apparently that’s so expensive the roofer won’t even tell me the cost, but it’s a moot point because there’s no money for a roof either.
So bye, bye lovely rafters. It was a nice dream while it lasted. Time to go back to Pinterest for more ideas, hopefully some that stand up to the light of day. Exposed brick, I’m looking at you.
The Traveling McMahans 