DESPERATE
HOUSEWIFE
"There has GOT to be a
way." In exasperation, I gazed
around my large kitchen that had no room for anything other than perhaps a
dance in the middle of the floor. My
mind raced around brainstorming for ideas, desperately seeking some workable
solution to my dilemma. A room fourteen
feet long and twelve feet wide and all I had for cupboard space was a credenza
thirty inches wide by thirty inches high
and twenty inches deep
with a hutch above it that was only ten inches deep!
When I married, I had moved onto my husband's
home place that his parents had left for him when they moved to town. This house was his dad's pride and joy, a
house he had built himself fifteen years earlier. A modest home, as farm homes went, two story
wooden structure, twenty-four feet by twenty-four feet, with a lesser concrete
basement underneath, it was heated with a huge home-made furnace - an old
45-gallon-oil-drum-firebox enclosed in an outer shell of brick and mortar. It may have been fine once, but now, even I, coming from humble beginning and a poor
family, was used to having more cupboard space than this house provided.
My own father was a jack-of-all-trades. He built or added things as the need arose. When more cupboard space was needed, he simply got some lumber
(home-planed), put his saw and hammer to work and presto - more cupboards. Here in this house, even with my meagre supply of dishes, pots and pans and
grocery supplies, the space was dismally inadequate.
I had spoken to my husband time and time again
about this deficiency, but my pleas always fell on deaf ears. He was not a handyman around the house. Had I asked him to build me a shed or a barn,
he might have been able to oblige but cupboards for the kitchen were not his
forte. As well, he was probably reluctant
to do any alterations to his father's pride and joy, no matter how necessary. Therefore, for six years I had put up with
this major inconvenience. Now I was at
the end of my patience. Something had to
change and it was obvious I had to initiate
that change.
I knew I was treading on forbidden territory, but
after all, this was my home now. I had
been patient and servile for six years.
Surely, I had served my sentence.
It was time to take matters into my own hands and make this kitchen work
for ME.
I took a quick inventory of the assets and
liabilities of the house. The main floor
of the house had four rooms. There was
the bedroom in the north-east corner, nine feet by twelve. This opened southward into the eleven by
fourteen foot living room which in turn opened via a large seven foot wide
square archway into the nine by eleven foot (almost redundant) formal dining
room to the southwest. The dining room
was separated from the kitchen by a door that had to be closed on cold winter
days because although both the living and dining room faced the south, they had
large double windows on each outside wall.
These were so sealed that when a south or west wind howled at forty
miles per hour outside, it slowed down to a mere thirty miles per hour inside. Even with the primitive furnace puffing heat
at full blast from the two floor rads, on those days the living and dining
rooms were uninhabitable. The upstairs had only three rooms because
of the slope of the roof on the north and south sides but it was even colder with
only the stairway door and one 15 inch by 15 inch ceiling to floor rad to let
heat up there from downstairs. “Forced air”
heat was an unheard of term and convection heat was how things were done.
The six-inch clay-plastered walls covered with the wooden siding did
little to preserve the heat. Time had
left invisible cracks in the dry clay underneath the siding and there was no vapour barrier plastic to impede the Jack Frost’s
invasion into the house. So we closed
the door to the dining room and between the wood stove and the furnace we
huddled together in the kitchen to maintain a semblance of comfort.
Eventually, though, we installed a big box stove in the living room
because, with three kids, it was just too crowed in the kitchen.
Now the kitchen, in the northwest corner of the house
was a work of art. The south wall -
fourteen feet of it - had four feet under the elaborate stairway but
that was utilized because my woodstove and wood box occupied this south east cubbyhole. The other ten feet accommodated my “kitchen
cupboard”; the door to
the dining room; and the
remaining three feet of wall
held the hooks for the coats - an absolute necessity in this closetless
dwelling. The west wall, twelve feet of
it - had the outside door and a large double window against which we kept the
kitchen table and chairs nestled into the corner of the room. No room for cupboards there. The north wall, just beyond the table had
just enough room for a small washstand with the necessary basin on it that served as our “bathroom”.
The remaining ten feet were
taken up with a huge bannistered stairway that angled in the corner to go up
the rest of the way along the whole east wall of the kitchen, above the stove. Underneath this, the wood box and the trap
door to the basement. That was it! No room for cupboards in this huge room because monstrous
stairway took two
walls!
What to do?
That stairway! That was the
culprit. It had to go! We had three bedrooms upstairs; we didn't
really need the one downstairs. Besides,
with the kids growing up, we pretty well had to move upstairs now anyway. We’d cut another rad into the ceiling to get more heat up
there. If I could redirect the
descending stairway from the kitchen's north wall into the bedroom and wall off
the main stairway on the east, it would make my kitchen ten by twelve but it would give me two full
walls free for other things, Like cupboards, for instance.
All I had to do, I decided, was cut out two doorway-sized
sections of the east wall of the kitchen - one under the main stairs and the
other at the descending end of that stairway and put one solid east wall to close off that stairway and voila! a
north and east wall to do with as I pleased.
I could then redirect the descending steps to the bedroom, seal off the
door between the living and bedroom and I'd have free wall space in the kitchen, the bedroom and living
room Entry into the east room would
be from the kitchen side. I was sure I
could do it. I had watched my dad do
fantastic things with a
hammer and saw. I felt sure I could do it too. Besides, I knew that if I didn't do
it, I'd be living like this for probably the rest of my life and I was
determined not to do that.
With my scheme finalized I waited for my opportunity. I knew that if I told my husband what I
intended to do, he was sure to veto the idea and then I would never be able to
go ahead with it. So I decided to wait -
wait until I knew he was away for the day and then I would do it myself. Hopefully, by the time he got home, the major work would be done so that turning back would not
be an option. That was my plan and I
fervently prayed that it would work.
I often worked out in the fields with my husband
- he on one tractor, me on the other, while his mother stayed at home with the kids and made meals
for us. But sometimes during the summer
when the spraying and summerfallow were done and it was still too early for
haying, we had a slack period. I would
then get a break and stay home while he went to the work the fields alone. That would give me the chance to put my plan
into action. That was the day was that I
was waiting for.
My break came one day in early July when my
husband went out to the far quarter to do the summerfallow. I was left at home with the kids. He left shortly after seven and I wasted no
time. I had a great deal to do and I
could not afford to waste a single minute.
I threw some sheets over the bed, the living room couch and chairs to
protect them from the dust and set up the kids to play outside near the house
where I could keep an eye on them. Then
I went to the shed, got the chain saw, a drill, a hand saw, a crowbar, an axe
and a hammer and started "Project Renovation"!
Continued next week....
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