2207: Cleaning Out My Family Home before Its Restoration.
One year ago today, I was framing the addition of my house and now I am living in it! It feels so surreal looking back at pictures and remembering the stress of retrofitting, finding reliable contractors, and having the energy to work on the house while also working full time. I spent many moments overwhelmed and in tears while feeling like everything was going wrong. I can’t begin to explain how many times this project felt like a hopeless money pit that I wanted to take a match to it and watch it go up on flames. I’m glad I didn’t because here we are, 2021, and my husband and I are living in the home my grandpa built and we renovated/restored. I feel like I am still letting go of all the tension I carried from 2018 until now. Yet, there is something so refreshing and fulfilling to breathe life back into something that others thought was hopeless.
Framing the rear addition, September, 2020
A Brief History:
My house was originally a small workman’s cottage located in the flats of Butte, Montana, built sometime between 1914 and 1916. It served as a home to multiple families until landing in the hands of my grandparents, John and Ella Mae Cunneen, in 1943. They moved into the small home with their two young daughters and another baby on the way. John was a foreman carpenter for the Anaconda Mining Company, so when the house quickly became too small for his growing family, he put his skills to work and enclosed the front porch, making it part of the house.
John and Ella Mae loved being parents and knew they wanted more children, which meant that they would also need more space to raise their children, so John began construction of what is now the front of the house. He built a 24’x24’ addition with a large attic space to serve as two additional bedrooms. This more than doubled the square footage of their home. John continued to work on and add to the house throughout his lifetime, altering the structure to fit the family’s current needs. Together, John and Ella Mae raised eleven children in that house.
John passed away in 2001 and Ella Mae moved down the street to a smaller house on the same block in 2002. The Irish are a sentimental people, and my grandma couldn’t bear being in the house and couldn’t live without it. The house became a box of memories for the family, and was rarely opened for 17 years. For a while, my uncle, Bill, would come sleep in his old room during the day when he would work night shifts at the mine, so he wouldn’t be woken up by his young children. My dad and I would also go into the house from time to time and adventure through his childhood belongings. These are some of my favorite memories. I loved learning about my dad’s childhood and what Butte was like when he was my age.
The house remained in Ella Mae’s ownership until 2019 when my dad and I officially purchased the house from her. She was delighted that we wanted to renovate it, as my grandpa’s wish for the house was to keep it in the family.
Cleaning Out the House:
When I first told my large family in 2018 that I was fixing up grandma’s old house, their responses were typically, “Wow, you’re brave.” and my reply was always “yeah, or crazy!”
The house was pretty far gone, as the roof was old and had failed in certain spots. This resulted in water damage and mold/fungal growth. To add to this conundrum, the neighbor built a garage on the edge of the property line without a gutter that would drain onto the abandoned house, but that was just one of the many contributing factors to the damage of this house.
We began by roofing the newest addition (the 24’x24’ section that my grandpa built in the 1940s) as it was still in good condition. We had contemplated re-roofing everything, but there were many soft spots on the back half of the roof which would require further assessment. Roofing the front addition was very straightforward, a simple gable with only one vent sticking out of it. The tough part was removing four layers of shingles! Once the roof was completed, we began cleaning out the house.
John and Ella Mae were both born in the nineteen-teens and were adolescents when the Great Depression took place, and, you guessed it, they kept everything. I threw away at least two trash bags filled with just coupons! Aside from saving everything, they also had eleven children who left things behind when they moved out, as most people do.
My dad, the youngest of his siblings, requested that I go through everything with him so he could make sure I didn’t toss something of sentimental value. I obliged, but was very eager to start. He was somewhat dragging his feet on this part of the process, which I get… I was clearing out the space filled with his personal and family history, removing things from their context for reminiscing… it must be hard to let go of a space that was so cherished.
Waiting for my dad caused me some anxiety. I was ready to get working and get the house stripped to the bones to assess how salvageable it was. When I was having a hard time motivating him, I would come to the house and organize the clutter into categorized piles for him to sort through. I could have been more patient. However, we found many cool things, such as old family photos, my aunts’ handmade dresses from the fifties, hash jeans (a staple of being a teenager in the 1970s), and much more. Looking back, I do not regret taking the time to go through every little thing in the house.
There are so many happy memories that have been made in this house and is part of why the renovation took so long. Every time one of my aunts and uncles would come into the house to check on our progress, a new memory would be jogged. I loved getting to hear the stories that the creaking walls aren’t able to tell, to hear of the joy and tears shared in the house for decades. There is nothing quite like seeing someone’s face light up from a tender moment of nostalgia.
I was told of how my grandpa, after a long day of work, would come home, have supper, spend some family time, or catch the baseball game on television, AND THEN he would begin his workout going up and down the stairs to the attic where all of the girls were trying to sleep. Or how, if you were coming into the dining room from the small room with the swinging door, you would drag your feet so that Mick, the second oldest boy, wouldn’t hear you coming and swing the door into you. There is still a divot in the floor from years of this!
There are other stories, like how John put up plexiglass over the front windows so the glass wouldn’t get shattered from games of pickup football in the front yard. There is also writing on the wall of my dad’s room from when my dad’s dog was hit by a car. Written is the date and words from a young boy saying, “my dog died today”. There are tales about “the gum wall” where all the girls would stick their gum before bed… luckily someone else cleaned it up before our renovations.
I remember crying out the window when my mom would leave me to be babysat and when she would finally return, I didn’t want to leave because I was having so much fun with my grandparents. I remember eating sunflower seeds when the family would gather at the house to watch baseball games, and playing in the yard with my cousins and feeding the wild bunnies.
Looking back at the long journey of renovating my house, a house that was “too far gone”, I don’t regret my work at all. Taking the time to painstakingly go through everything was a unique and beautiful experience. I got to learn more about my family, their personalities as children, and the context of Butte that shaped their experiences. We also found so many treasures!
All the blood, sweat, and tears were worth it and are now new memories for the walls of my house to hold. All the history I learned during the process gave my work even more meaning.