It has been awhile since my heart and my head have been in a place that would allow me to continue this thread of posts. For the past ten years or so, I have been living and working in a place where the wooden structures that I so love are a rarity. For a number of reasons, the least of which is another box checked on my personal bucket list, I have been plying my trade in the concrete jungle of NYC where indeed, wood is a seldom prized resource. As one would hope, given enough time, things do come around and the ship rights itself. And so it has in the life of this wood-wright, with the purchase of an 1890’s wooden house on Munjoy Hill, Portland Maine. The East End was in its day a working class neighborhood where the families of those servicing the waterfront, made their homes. These days it is another frontier of gentrification and revitalization, where much of what is taking place in this process is to tear down the old wooden housing stock, and build new synthetic, multi-unit, condominiums. The fate of our house will be different in it’s rebirth, restoration, and period embellishment. As I write this, the project is underway, and the house hovers six feet above the earth, on two ginormous steel beams, defying gravity, attracting much attention, and begging “please put me down”. Although lifting and moving the house wasn’t part of the original plan, it dawned on us in the early imagining, that in the process of dealing with a crumbling foundation and an absurdly close proximity to the house next door, that lifting and moving the house on the lot was the proper first step in the restoration process. It is a case of applying the old real estate adage, “location, location, location”, on a micro geographic level. In this instance, moving it eight feet sideways, and six feet back on the existing lot. It’s amazing what a difference a few feet can make, as it did in this situation. I will be posting photos on the “Project” page and continuing posts here as the project continues. And so begins the next love affair with an old wooden structure in dire need of salvation.
